Better All-Around Fighter: Tony Galento or David Tua?

We've seen him in his greatest test, for the title against Louis,is that a fair representation of his abilities or not?
Probably a good job for Galento's legacy that we can't see him getting stopped twice by light heavies?
Here's the radio broadcast of Galento v Nova,listen to Joe Jacobs ,Tony's manager complaining about grease on Nova's hair.

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An over the hill Max Baer is made to look almost skilled here against the fat man.

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Galento the dedicated trainer.

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At the end of the day we have to make our own assessment.For me Galento was a crude brawler with a top class
left hook if you came to him, but those that made him use his feet seem to have done rather well.
I think we can get enough of Galento's ability from his fights with Louis and Baer,he appears,to me at least ,as a pretty uncoordinated slugger who was a stranger to a combination ,and one who had a penchant for fouling as much as he could get away with. We can extrapolate how Galento would do against ordinary fighters such as ;
Jack Dorval
Al Friedman
Neil Clisby
James Lawless
Johnny Alberts
Bob Tow
Marty Gallagher
Harold Mays
Jack Gagnon

Because we know he lost to them!
Tua ever lose to a third rater?

 

I think they were both limited to only trying to close the gap and trying to land that big left hook so neither were very dynamic in my mind, but anything galento could do tua could do better.

 

Tua also ko'd people with his right eg Moorer.

 

I think that you are grossly overstating the importance of Galento's early losses.

I think that his early career circumstances and Tua's, are so dissimilar, that comparisons are pretty much meaningless.

 

Sometimes he's serious and does make good points.

Other times I'm 100% convinced he's either trolling or being a contrarian "just because".

 

Thats exactly what this thread is and it's very transparent. Im disappointed this is the hottest thread on the 1st page. People want to argue about the same thing over and over every week.

 

I'm sure, you're right... it's the only logical explanation. Some of the stuff he's trying to defend here, is so outrageously absurd, that he can't possibly be serious.

 

Monte Barrett was coming off 3 consecutive looses when he drew (and was robbed) against Tua. Then he had another draw with a 19-21 hack fighter. So that is zero wins in 3 years and 5 fights which is dangerously close to 3rd rater material to me.

And then Barrett beats Tua and doesn't win again for his career.

 

The better question here is, will the percentage be higher or lower than the..... you know the Thread

 

while true, Barrett wasnt a bum either. He didn't finish strong as you point out, but it's not like he didn't win much more than lose early on. Really though, that wasnt a prime Tua and we can see that with our eyes. So that Tua is irrelevant really, but also, even then it was a weird foul ridden fight. Anyways, I guess to me, and using my eyes, it clearly tells me Tua is considerably more technical in way more areas than Galento. It seems very clear. So all this resume stuff and who beat who when isn't needed much. It's already apparent, very little added research is needed beyond obvious outliners/exceptions imo

 

Yeah, I think the eyeball test is a much better gauge of who is a better all-around fighter. I’m willing to look beyond it and suspend my judgment in some of the rare instances when a fighter’s resume is so far out of sync with what I can see on film, but this isn’t really one of those instances. I’d expect someone who looks like Galento looks on film, and who is described how he was described by contemporary sources, to pick up the kind of embarrassing losses Galento has on his resume.

 

All true. Tua was better than Galento, pretty clearly in my view.

But the question was asked, so I answered. Barrett was close to a 3rd rater by the time he fought Tua despite being a decent fighter previously. And Tua was well passed his best by then and wasn't world class anymore either, clearly. I may be being a bit pedantic but the Barrett fights did offer a microcosm of a lot of Tua's shortcoming as a fighter.

 

I think Tua may have had his feet stuck in cement more than Galento did.

If you measured the amount of distance both fighters covered in the average round of their fights, im pretty confident that Galento would have covered more ground.

Just look at the sparring clips for both. Tua fights as if the ring is twice as small as it actually is. He gets in the pocket and stays there. Galento actually steps in with his jabs and tries to punch through the pocket to make something happen.

Tua could be overly tentative, and that’s not a problem Galento had. Galento was stopped in 4 by Louis. But is knocking down one of the Goats, and landing vicious blows on a legendary champion but the losing in 4 really worse than following them in the ring all night, pawing the jab, getting boo’d by the crowd, and losing a UD?

Both of them fought an elite HW legend. But it seems only one of them put up a fight.

 

Once again you see what nobody else does, just as you did with Braddock and Carnera.
Knocking down Joe Louis wasn't a unique feat was it?
Failing to follow up after knocking him down because you are wearing cement on your feet emphatically shows my point!
Did Max Baer put up a better fight against Louis than Galento ?
Remind us again how Galento and Baer turned out.

Why look at sparring clips when we can watch actual fights of both men?
I would have zero problem in believing that Tua would do better against Louis than Galento did.
Louis, looking at Galento, saw a crude ,slow, funny little fat man,who had been beaten by several of his ko victims , he wouldn't think that of Tua!

I would struggle to accept that Tua would lose to ;Clisby,Gagnon,Delaney,Gallagher,Alberts,Tow,Mays,Dorval,Lawless,
Walker,Gainer!
If I were you ,at some point I would be asking myself two questions.

1.Am I right and everybody else is wrong ?
2. Is there another possibility?