Absolutely my friend, we all know Rocky Marciano cheated Ezzard Charles!!!! LOL! Absolute great parallel!!
Thing is, Pryor beat Argüello without the bottle, anyway. There's no reason to say Argüello would've won, Charles came a lot closer to beating Johnson and Marciano.
You know zero about the sport of boxing if you're of the mind to think that getting hammered and stopped the way Arguello was stopped in his first fight with Pryor doesn't have its effects. Most fighters who get beatdown like that are never the same, and in Arguello's case he's rematching Pryor less than a year later. Lets remember here, the first Arguello-Pryor fight was a grueling fight for both fighters, neither fighter was the same afterward, but the facts are that Pryor cheated during that fight, their's video evidence of it and then there is Panama Lewis getting caught cheating just months after the first Arguello-Pryor fight when he took the padding off of the gloves of Luis Resto who as a heavy underdog hammered Billy Collins. Resto years later admitted in HBO's documentary "Assault in the ring." that Panama not only took padding from his gloves, he admitted to drinking out of a bottle that Panama Lewis made and put in his water bottle to dring during the fight. Resto described the contents of the bottle to contain crushed asthma pills with water. He described it like this, "I'd drink out of it and it would just open my breathing tubes." Video evidence from Panama Lewis asking for the special bottle that he mixed in-between rounds of the Arguello-Pryor fight and Luis Resto describing what Panama Lewis would mix into his water bottle. If you cant put two and two together I don't know what to call you. No reason to say Arguello would have won? There's every ****ing reason to say he would have!!!
No. There isn't. Stop being a deluded fanboy, look at it with objectivity. Argüello didn't win. Isn't a 4 weight champion, and you look like an idiot.
That's your opinion, but I think the idiot is you who will just dismiss the fact that Panama Lewis kept asking his helpers in-between rounds of that Arguello-Pryor fight for that water bottle that he mixed. At one point, "No, not that one, the one I mixed!" I'm sorry, but I have some semblance of common sense and wont turn a blind eye to that and pretend it didn't happen.
the bottle thing, it went unchecked and uunproven during the fight, case closed. I hope it wasn't an illegal substance, don't know though. What they did to Collins is disgusting. I bet Resto has a hard time living with that. But you don't really know what was in that bottle in the Pryer fight, so Pryer won.
Arguello is the type of throwback fighter and sportsman that the sport of boxing should take heed of. A class act who didn’t hide behind a promoter to a avoid a tough opponent. If he won (which he usually did) he was humble. If he lost he was gracious. An absolute legend. A great, great, great fighter and an even better human being. I love the man and wish he was still with us. Happy birthday champ!
Man, July 2009 really was a ***** of a month. Arguello, Gatti and Forrest all gone, all well before their time and while they were otherwise healthy. What a dreadful few weeks. Like he is for a lot of others, Arguello is right up my list of all-time favourites to watch, both in terms of his style and the number of great fights he was in. A few years back I used to converse with a fella (huge boxing fan) who'd had the pleasure of meeting Arguello a couple of times, and he said that Alexis was every bit as genuine and classy outside the ring as he was in it. What a fighter.
Still can't believe its been more than 10 years since his passing. An artist in the ring and a gentleman of the sport. One of my absolute favorite fighters. Beautiful style and savage knockout artist.
Arguello didn't need a hype machine or the extensive backing of a promoter to gain notice or respect. He got it from honing and applying countless lessons learned in the rings and gyms all over the world, learning the hard way but somehow never lost his humanity or sense of decency. Truly a gentleman in a game for the seamier element.
I'd recommend you watch HBO's "Assault in the ring" Its a documentary of life after prison and boxing of Luis Resto. Let me ask you this, what more proof do you need than a fighter of Panama Lewis re-calling what Panama Lewis used to mix in water bottles to give his fighters between rounds???? As well I tried looking for an old interview Eastside boxing did of Emmanuel Steward but couldn't find it. I believe the article is about 20 years old, maybe older. Emmanuel Steward tells of Aaron Pryor not having a trainer for his rematch with Alexis Arguello because Panama Lewis had his license suspended for the incident of taking the padding out of Luis Resto's gloves against Billy Collins. Don't know why Emmanuel Steward said it in the interview, but he was quoted that early on in the training camp with Pryor in preparation for the rematch with Arguello, Pryor confided in him of being worried for the rematch in that he and Panama had been pulling some shady things before and during fights. Emmanuel goes on to tell how he straightened out Aaron Pryor's mindset and got him the confidence back to go on and again beat Arguello. That's fine and dandy, except that anyone with knowledge of what fighters go through would know that the fighter who wasn't the same from having received the prolonged batting, (vicious from Pryor in that 14th round) was Alexis Arguello. Fighters just don't recover from something like that especially when you're talking about the rematch having taken place in less than a years time. I've heard the same crap in this forum for years on end, "There is no proof what was in that bottle, plus Pryor beat Arguello again without Panama Lewis." No, boxing isn't simple like that, there's so much more to factor. It just blows my mind that history doesn't record the words of Luis Resto of what Panama Lewis used to do with his water bottle and equate that to what was in Pryor's water bottle against Alexis Arguello. For God's sake, Resto's fight with Collins was just a few months after Pryor's fight with Arguello. To this day I keep hearing even people in boxing say, "we'll never really know what was in that bottle that Panama asked for that Pryor drank out of...……" WTF, Luis Resto is quoted on "Assault in the ring" what was in that water bottle. Unbelievable that it doesn't sound an alarm for people to wake up to reality.