He’s best known for his fights with Aaron Pryor at 140 obviously. Nevertheless for someone like me who is interested, what are some of his best fights aside from that. Looking up his record on boxrec he won world titles at 126 and 130. Nevertheless I generally seem to see him referred to as a “great lightweight”. Where his featherweight fights not memorable because of a lack of competition?
He was arguably a top 10 all-time featherweight, has a very strong argument as the best super featherweight ever and was a fine lightweight champion who was may have just passed his absolute peak when he reigned between 1981 and 1983. His title winning efforts over Ruben Olivares and Alfredo Escalera were huge. Add to that the quality of the challengers at 130 (Chacon, Limon, Boza, etc) and a TKO over Mancini at lightweight and I'm not sure he is automatically best known for the defeats to Pryor. His legacy was already well-established before he stepped in the ring with the Hawk. Had he won, he'd have been the first 4 division world champion. But between 1974-82 he was absolutely one of the best fighters in the world at any weight and that was during a great era of outstanding champions so that statement really means something.
Well, if you're starting from the start, watch his bout against the extremely talented, underrated Ernesto Marcel (which he lost) for the title. Shows the difficulties his style faced and how he could still improve. I'd then say check out the Olivares bout (which he was losing till the KO). A passing of the torch from one old legend to the other. Weightwise, its my belief that around 130 and maybe 135 was his best weight. Check out the Escalera bouts, and of course the Ray Mancini bout at LW for a comprehensive showing of his adaption and skills.
Just a quick note - among deeper fans he's definitely not best known for his fights with Pryor. 130 was his peak.
I believe 130 was his best weight and I wish he’d have stayed there a little longer, but 135 was beckoning with bigger-money fights so he stepped up. His win over Jim Watt in Scotland for the lightweight title is worth watching. Complete dismantling of an underrated champ.
Check out his fights with Alfredo Escalera and Andy Ganigan. Very entertaining battles from Arguello.
He was a handy Featherweight, and a brilliant Lightweight - but in between those two, he was an absolutely sensational Super-Featherweight, and that's where he was at his absolute peak. Roughly half way through his Super-Featherweight reign Arguello lost a decision to Vilomar Fernandez in a Lightweight non-title bout, remember. I guess there's a possibility that Arguello might not have been fully focussed under the non-title circumstances, but I think it's a symptom that he wasn't quite as amazing at 135 as he was at 130. Once he got to Lightweight he took care of some damn good fighters in style, but as others have observed, the Super-Featherweight version of Arguello wouldn't have let Watt off the hook after flooring him so early in the seventh (I think) round, and probably would have chopped down the tough, speedy but also wide-open and inexperienced Mancini a lot earlier than the fourteenth. On the other hand, the Super-Featherweight version of Arguello had a machine-like ruthlessness to him. Remember that the next four men to hold that WBC Super-Featherweight belt after Arguello relinquished it - Limon, Boza-Edwards, Navarrete and Chacon - had all been beaten inside schedule by him during his reign there (Boza-Edwards admittedly in a non-title bout). So to recap: decent Featherweight champion, brilliant Lightweight one, but still arguably the very best Super-Featherweight one to this day.
Absolutely spot on Chris. Regarding the loss to Vilomar Fernandez, as I understand it Alexis was up at lightweight to test the waters for a possible showdown with Roberto Duran. I still have my doubts that it would have happened even if Arguello had won that tune up as Duran was up at welterweight by that point (although still lightweight world champ) so coming back down to 135 for Roberto would have been torture. A match between those two though would have played a huge part in how we view their respective legacies and it's a real shame it didn't materialise... but given the way the fight went with Vilomar, maybe it's good for Arguello's legacy that he lost that and stayed down at super featherweight. He managed to enhance his reputation further there and the loss to Fernandez now looks like a temporary blip that didn't interrupt his overall momentum. I'm not sure a defeat to Duran would have been so easy to recover from.
What I don’t get is that during Naseem Hamed’s fights on HBO, they would say things along the lines of “there’s been a 50 year dark period in the featherweight division since Willie Pep vs Sandy Sadler”. Is that just a case of them missing Arguello? It seems to me he fits the profile of being a featherweight star. In that sense they contradict themselves slightly because they feature Pryor Vs Arguello before Chavez vs Taylor 1 as the biggest fight since that point in time but then don’t acknowledge Arguello as a star during Hamed’s fights.
If anyone wants to the know the difference between a champion and an All Time Great, check out Arguello vs. Cornelius Boza-Edwards. And if you want to know the difference between a Hall of Famer and an All Time Great, watch Arguello vs. Chacon. His fight with Limon is great entertainment, but he fought uncharacteristically sloppy in that one.
I don't recall such statements being made by HBO commentary teams. However, if that was the case, then all one can perhaps surmise is that sometimes there's no accounting for the **** that paid talking heads will come out with to promote their network's investment. Featherweight is an historically deep and talent-rich division. Top-20 or so ATG Featherweights, post-Sadler/Pep, might include Moore, Saldivar, Pedroza and Sanchez. Dark Days, indeed...
