Orlin Norris vs Pele Reid

Orlin Norris is underrated small HW.

He was ranked at #6 when Bert Cooper upset him (beat Snipes, Ferguson and Page), but then he came back and beat McCall and Tucker (twice, was robbed the 1st time).

His CW campaign was pretty good too.

 

Reid at one point was heavily hyped as the Next Big Thing in the British heavyweight division. He and Danny Williams were contemporaries and seen as potential successors to Lennox Lewis.

Reid had a flashy style, knockout power, and a legit background in kickboxing. Like all Ingle fighters around that time, he had doors opened for him on the back of Naseem Hamed's profile, and all seemed to be running smoothly until he was almost flattened by 41 year old Congolese trialhorse Biko Botowamungu and escaped with an injury stoppage.

Despite (or perhaps even because of) this scare, he was immediately put in a British title tilt against solid but unspectacular Julius Francis, who had just been demolished inside two rounds by Vitali Klitschko. Reid's technical flaws and lack of durability were horribly exposed by Francis, who forced a three round stoppage.

His next fight was the subject of this thread, where in one of the worst pieces of matchmaking ever seen in a British ring Reid was thrown in with the world class Norris. The predictable outcome was that an already demoralised Reid took a one round pasting. In less than 12 months Reid had gone from a future heavyweight champion to a guy who would be stopped in two rounds by 3-1-3 Jacklord Jacobs.

The loss to Norris in many ways also signalled the end of an era for the Ingle camp. The Crown Prince had departed at the end of 98, and a month after Reid lost to Norris, Ryan Rhodes was shockingly destroyed in a couple of rounds by Jason Matthews.

 

I have heard conflicting reports about the Bert Cooper fight... heard that Cooper was behind on points and floored him and that is why the fight was stopped and also heard that Norris was ahead on points and took a bad fall after a knockdown which caused the knee problem.. anyone actually seen this fight? I have asked this before but received only a few responses...

 

Getting back to Norris, he was a quality operator who fought in the shadow of his brother.

His cruiserweight tenure was strangely underwhelming; after campaigning admirably for so long as a small heavyweight, he was expected to clean out the 190lbs ranks and cement himself as the best cruiser since Holyfield. His reign instead was up and down, and he struggled with opponents like Miller and Washington who he handled comfortably when he went back to heavyweight.

 

You are accurate in your post MOMUS... I think he was too dehydrated at 190 and feel that if the limit was 200 at the time he dropped to cruiserweight, he would have had much more success and an extended reign... but that is the story of the classic board... its all just conjecture based upon our wishes for our favorite fighters

 

Orlin Norris is my answer to what short 190lb heavyweights look like in the future. And he’s the proof that anyone can do it. Norris was both modern sized and classic sized when it suited him.

Altogether Orlin was close to the weight of David Tua when he wanted to be a modern sized heavyweight and close to Marciano when he wanted to be a cruiser. He started as a growing heavyweight dropped to cruiser, won the title. Grew back up to HW then dropped to CW again.

....But it was all natural.

 

Pele Reid vs. Vitali Klitschko

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