Yeah because Horn has never legitimately beaten a top 10 rated fighter all his best wins are over fighters who are on the wrong side of 35
Yep that's the only thing that may tip it in horns favour, but in saying that there is no evidence that horn can take the punch of a young bigger guy like zerafa at middleweight, the Mundine skeleton don't count lol, horn won't have the size advantage that he had at welter and he was still being hurt at that weight, dropped & stopped. Things change when you go up in weight 2 divisions, this is also one of the reasons I believe brook struggled at times vs zerafa. We have seen it time & time again these weight bullies as the yanks call them lol can seem to dominate and look great when they have the size advantage but when they jump up in weight they can't take the heat and start to struggle. I believe zerafa has the youth, the momentum, the confidence, the size & weight, and the style to beat Jeff horn, he has some good skills also, it's a toss up for me.
Yeah Horn has made a career out of fighting undersized guys over the age of 35 and when he did fight a naturally bigger man in Mundine he made sure to boil the old man down to a zombie. Yep Horn was badly hurt by much smaller guys in Pac & Crawford even ancient Randall Bailey had him on rubber legs. I think that Zerafa has a better chin as I believe Kell Brook would spark Horn out with his accuracy.
Brook cuts up horn to shreds, he is still sharp enough to beat horn, and beat him inside the distance, spence got him at the right time. What pisses me off about Mundine is he's got enough money and still would of banked plenty after the fines he would of payed if he came in overweight similar to what Jacobs did vs canelo, Jacobs said **** you I want to win, Sadly Mundine opted for money over legacy in his career.
Agreed Brook pieces Horn up and stops him. Yeah if Mundine came in at 160 he would've made it a fight you could see in the locker room and his ring walk that he was a corpse. If Mundine had enforced weight stipulations on one of his opponents the Aussie media would've crucified him.
I remember seeing him in the locker & ring walk and knew he was a corpse as you say. In hindsight I should've quickly put a decent sum of $ on horn early.
Mundine was at his best at 168 in the early part of his career. He was a decent fighter at 168. Anything above or below 168 he was ordinary.
I enjoyed the early part of Mundine's career. You could really see the improvement in him fight by fight. He incrementally cleaned out the local ranks (Australia & NZ) of all the best fighters in & around his weight division. In progressively doing that, he got better & better. There's a lesson in that for a lot of our fighters in how to develop a professional boxing career. Mundine departed from that approach when he took the Sven Ottke fight way too early. If he'd fought someone like Rick Thornberry at that time instead, he would have continued his development & been ready for Ottke 12 months later. How much better off would our current crop of Super Middles be if they were all willing to fight each other? In fairness to them, they probably are but the money just isn't there to support it happening. That's why I'm loving the Junior Middleweight division in this country right now. The money is there to support the fights happening & they are.
I hate that people bash Mundine over the ko loss to Ottke. He was a rugby league player who had a background in boxing and after only 9 fights or so goes to face Ottke in Germany for a world title. From memory Mundine would have been ahead and then gets stopped in about rd 10. He really put up a solid performance when you consider everything. Also Ottke was an underrated fighter. Does anyone remember what the official judges had the scores at the time of the stoppage ?
I was just a kid but I remember that Mundine should have been credited with a knockdown in round 8 I believe. It was truely disgusting how the Aussie media outlets took pleasure in having the picture of Mundine out cold on the canvas putting it on all the front pages and mocking him.
Mundine made alot of money out of people hoping he would get beat up, far more than if everyone liked him... I wouldn't feel too sorry for him..
