Less technical fighters who strangely excelled against better 'boxers'

Hi everyone. A thread posted this evening about great all-round boxers who struggled with quick, technical guys got me thinking about Kostya Tszyu. Before I go to deep, let me state that I'm aware Tszyu racked up phenomenal amateur numbers and achievements, even making light of huge height and reach disadvantages to box his way to an amateur win against Vernon Forrest.

So Tszyu was no club fighter - let's get that straight.

However, in the professional ranks, Tszyu did abandon some of these silky skills and adopted a more straight-up, aggressive style, underusing his jab and preferring to rely on aggressive lead rights, his excellent engine and strength coming forward.

And yet there's a strange vagary to his career, in the sense that, rather than struggling with quick, slick boxers (as per the other thread I've mentioned), Tszyu seemed to excel against these guys, often beating fighters who were quicker than him, harder to hit (generally speaking) and who liked to fight on the back foot, using all the ring. Examples of this are his superb wins over Gonzalez (who got an absolute chasing off Tszyu, and remember up to this point Gonzalez's only defeat had been a very respectable effort against a prime De la Hoya), Mitchell, Hurtado and Judah.

On the other side of the coin, when guys were able to hold their ground against him, and fight in close with a lot of aggressive exchanges, he tended to struggle; it's how Phillips and Hatton beat him (granted, Father Time might have played a hand in the latter one), and it's one of the reasons why Mosley would almost certainly have knocked ten bells out of him had he made a pit stop at 140 lb at the turn of the century.

Tszyu seemed to have it backwards - he excelled and sometimes dominated against styles which, in theory, he should have struggled against, and had a hard time dealing with more basic, crude styles.

Can anyone else think of any fighters who fit this strange description? Thanks everyone.

 

Sung Kil Moon. Wild Korean beast who actually also won World championship gold medal (by destroying everyone in his way).

 

Kenny Norton comes to mind. He performed well against boxers like Ali, Young and Holmes but got crushed by bangers like Foreman, Shavers and Cooney.

 

Jose Luis Ramirez strikes me as fitting in this thread.

Yeah, the split decision over Sweet Pea Whitaker was a bad verdict, but as an unknown he floored and lost a split to the technically flawless Alexis Arguello, lost close to Edwin Rosario and knocked him out in the rematch, beat good fighters like Terrence Ali and Boza-Edwards and a few more.

Yet he was all but run out of the ring by Ray Mancini.

JLR was better than the sum of his parts.

 

Mustafa Hamsho. Didn't have devastating power like Hurricane Carter or Rodrigo Valdez but overcame all styles with sheer tenacity, bull like strength and a indomitable fighting spirit .

 

Jung Koo Chang

 

Most obvious to me is a young Pacquiao. He bum rushed Barrera, Ledwaba, and Sasakul with a less than polished offense.

 

Chang was very skilled though. He just had a swarmer style, and wasn't as fundamental.

 

Ricardo Mayorga against Vernon Forrest.

 

Vincente Saldivar.

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Thanks Russel. Never seen that intro before the bout.

 

One of my favorites. I have a lot of rare amateur footage of him on my channel. A beast in his amateur days for sure.

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Another great upload from the man himself.

 

I've had those up for almost a year and two of them still have less than 75 views.

It's pathetic, really. Smaller weights in boxing is such a niche thing nowadays.

 

Well, atleast we can make out we're better than those darn 'casuals'.

Smaller weights really do have some of the best fighters and bouts.