Hard to put a title on it. Little things that get said over and over again and start to become the norm. Hopefully it'll be a bit more clear after a couple examples. For example, Ken Norton. The generally accepted view is that he is absolutely awful for stylist boxers and looses to all big punchers. He was always involved in highly competitive, borderline controversial fights with top level boxers, this shows that better boxers(albeit there aren't many better than 70a Ali & Young), would be able to beat him. Norton, in his prime, was only stopped by Foreman & Garcia, no shame in being stopped by Foreman, and Garcia was a bit of an anomaly, as Norton won the rematch handedly and Garcia wouldn't KO anybody of note again. Norton also took bigger wacks off Quarry and Holmes without crumbling. Joe Frazier is often described as a slow starter. In reality, he's not at all. He's a slow starter in comparison to how strong he came on later. He still worked well and hard in the early goings, but obviously picked it up as the fight progressed, but to say he started "slow" is complete bull**** imo. Another HW example is Rocky Marciano having paper skin. How many times was he heavily cut? 2? 3? Not much more. Plus the most famous case (Charles 2) wasn't even from a punch, but an elbow. I hope that clears it up! Any others you can think of?
One that was overblown well into his career was that Lennox Lewis had a stamina problem and was vulnerable in the later rounds. I think this was based on him dropping his hands, switching off in fights, and sometimes fighting with his mouth open. Looking at his career objectively, he never lost a fight due to stamina issues; you could argue I guess that the Rahman loss was set up by not being in shape, but it was still a bolt from the blue one-punch KO. He also rallied late on in several fights, stopping Bruno when behind on the cards, sweeping the last few rounds against Holyfield II and Mercer, and dropping Tucker late on when the fight seemed to be turning against him. However, you still get people saying that his stamina wasn't great, and that he would have fallen over if the fight with Vitali had continued.
That Carmen Basilio was rough, tough, pure brawling man. I mean, he was rough, tough and could brawl, but he had an absolutely excellent skill set and a very good defensive radar. He gave both Gavilan and Robinson, amongst others, fits boxing and style wise.
Ricky Hatton's overall skill and style is also vastly underrated on these forums, compared to a Miguel Cotto type who I find quite overrated. Ricky was an excellent body puncher and mauler, who was adept at getting good angles inside and imposing his strength in a calculating way. I also thought he had good punch selection too. I swear, Ricky Hatton never gets picked to win fantasy H2H, even ones where I think he would win quite clearly.
Not that much of a knock against him when that punch was being delivered by an ATG top 40 ALL TIME fighter at the peak of his powers. What other fighter at 140 wouldn't be KOd? Very, very few.
I think that was his point, that being stopped in 2 solidified Hatton as fragile, whilst in reality he was moving down in weight against a peak ATG & ATG puncher who was a really bad style for him.
Pernell Whitaker is usually viewed as a pure defensive fighter who hits and moves a lot when he was really a great all-round fighter. Somehow his offensive skills always get overshadowed by his fancy looking defense. In reality he threw a lot of punches, could punch from all angles, combinations, threw great body punches, excellent jab and counter puncher, and was a great inside fighter (and even outfought Chavez on the inside as well). I think most people just watch highlight videos of Whitaker's defense and immediately think that's what he is. There's been many fights where Whitaker stood his ground up close without moving a lot and displayed excellent offense.
Wholeheartedly agree. Hatton gets severely underrated on here because of the misconception of him being just a one dimensional brawler when he was more than that. He's only lost to 2 of the very best fighters at the time, and lost again immediately after when where he was clearly not fit to fight again.
The Norton one is good. People always parrot that bull&%$*. Mancini's middle name must actually be "Glorified Clubfighter." So many armchair warriors here who read a boxing magazine once in the 80's read that and have a simple answer to something that they think makes them sound authoritative. What it makes them sound is simplistic and unimaginative. Ray might not have been the greatest lightweight in history but he was a hell of a sight better than some are willing to give him credit for.
Marciano was cut against Charles in the first fight Against Walcott first fight Moore And badly cut against Schkor, Simmons, and Charles.
Naseem Hamed's career regression gets overblown. While he was clearly a better fighter at (eg) the Johnson fight than he was for Barrera, some people talk as if he was untouchable in his prime and deteriorated rapidly once he split with Ingle. In reality, his training habits were lax even early on in his career, and he struggled in a few fights even when at his best. One of his standout wins (Bungu) came only a year before the Barrera fight. Barrera is another example. It gets overblown how much he changed his style after the losses to Jones, mainly based on the Hamed fight. He boxed more than brawled in many of his earlier fights, including the second fight with Jones. He picked a strategy that worked with Hamed, based on studying his fights and his obvious weaknesses when he lunged in. He was probably capable of doing so earlier in his career as well. Jones (similar to McKinney) presented some technical and stylistic issues for Barrera, which he wasn't able to resolve fully even by changing things up in the rematch.