Surprisingly a tough hard fight for certain. Eubank in first Nigel Benn ft mode hurts cerdan several times. But cerdan takes over and drops eubank in the 9 th round. After that eubank takes a boat load of leather until the final bell Cerdan by close but unanimous Dec
I'm in the minority here...but IMHO the Eubank that fought Benn the first time would stop Cerdan...too big and too physical for Cerdan's style.
what exactly is cerdan going to do to win? if he fights anything like he does in the film of him then how does he have a chance? bulling in with wide sloppy shots? hanging around on the outside using basic head movement and timing a sloppy left hook? i don't usually argue with fantasy fights, because no one and everyone is right. but in this case i am baffled what you guys are saying.
Your description of Cerdan's style seems well off. I was impressed by Cerdan's short compact punches, accurate punching, quick counter punching.. The way you describe makes him sound like a sloppy brawler, or worse. Eubank on film looks the one to have the worse habits for throwing crude punches, lunging in off-balance. His posing was a big joke really. But Eubank was a very good fighter, and probably at his best in his middleweight days. Cerdan looks a cut above, and after a few competive early rounds, he'd have Eubank on the retreat. Eubank would survive but lose a clear decision I believe.
no doubt the posing was a joke, same as when fury put his hands behind his back vs wlad or that mma guy was bodypoping while winning his title. all jokes, but irrelevant ones. i wouldn't describe cerdan as a brawler, but he def looks sloppy and reliant(not bad just style) on pressure to me. both guys didn't fight the best(although eubank fought much better) opposition, so i reiterate that we are all wrong and all right, but i just can't see a big ww beating a big mw when he isn't obviously better and doesn't have an obvious style advantage. if you are a 10-0 algerian or 147-25(not correct i guessed williams record when they fought) american then cerdan will **** you up, a world level fighter weighing well over 160, not so much imo. edit - i made a point about reach, but looked and couldn't find one for cerdan, eubank's taller but cerdan did have that long arm body type.
I guess it depends how highly you rate Eubank. I think Cerdan was significantly better. Even if we acknowledge Cerdan was perhaps fortunate to get a past-prime champion Zale, it still seems clear to me that Cerdan was at the very top level in a great middleweight era, among the very best, definitely among the top 2 or 3 at that time. Eubank, while a very good fighter, was never in that top tier in the middleweight division. He was a good British champ, not a world's top 5 middleweight.
At middleweight I think Eubank fought a total of 2 quality opponents, Benn and Watson, and neither of them were in the top tier of world middleweights. I had Watson a couple of points ahead of Eubank, that was his last fight at 160. A lot of the men Eubank was fighting were third-raters, pumped-up light-middles or less, who were not world class in any division. Cerdan was way better than this type of opponent and a much smarter fighter than Nigel Benn.
true enough, i think the men eubank fought were significantly better than the men cerdan fought tho. without quibbling over exact qualities i would put watson and benn on a similar overall level to cerdan (both natural mw's for a start) perhaps this is me getting biased by more modern film and the lack of prime cerdan film, but i dunno about that. who did he fight that the film is likely to show me anything different or more relevant? i'd like to see the delenoit fights, but watching him go 1-1 vs a true euro level guy aint likely to change anything
Eubank, Benn and Watson were well-matched and drew huge crowds in Britain but these days there's a tendency to overrate them. Especially true of Eubank!
