Naoya Inoue vs Orlando Canizales

I have no real problem with anyone picking Inoue, I just thought the Vasquez fight was a poor representation of what Orlando was capable of.

It would be like forming an opinion on Johnny Tapia after only watching his fight with Manuel Medina.

 

cool, i only chose vasquez because it seemed most relevant to the thread.

is that hardy fight really canizales' best performance? top level for sure, but it wasn't exactly spectacular.

 

I would also recommend checking out his fight against Fernando Ramos, Seabrooks 2, Ray Minus, and Francisco Alvarez if you want a better idea of a prime Orlando Canizales. Not the greatest opponents but a good indicator of his abilities.

 

I loved watching Canizales fight his angles and footwork were a thing of beauty, the problem is his opposition was incredibly weak kind of like Galaxy. He never beat one elite opponent and even struggled against B and C class fighters like Hardy, Reyes, these type of fighters wouldn't of lasted 6 rounds with Inoue.

Despite Canizales's skills i think hes a level below Inoue and gets stopped late on in the fight or loses a wide UD.

 

Michael Spinks showed his class against Eddie, Qawi and Holmes, but we'd be saying a similar thing about him if he hadn't fought those guys because his least impressive performances were often against overmatched opposition that didn't pose any threat at all on paper.

I tend to think we would have seen another gear from Orlando had he been faced with an elie level opponent.

 

Canizales had the edge in footwork as well. But Inoue will win this one primarily because of his power and ring smarts.

 

Inoue's physical talents gives him a huge advantage against many of his opponents for sure but his skills and ring IQ are also big assets to his arsenal. His fight against Fulton showed that he's an excellent boxer, has a great jab, and control in range. Even without his power I think he would do well with just his skills alone because he's a smart technical fighter.

 

Spinks fought a whole host of notable names though at Light Heavyweight Johnson, Qawi, Lopez, Davis, E.Muhammad.

Canizales had incredibly weak opposition and even then struggled vs a few of them i mean what's Canizales's best win ? a 17 year old Clarence Bones Adams ? 28-22 Kelvin Seabrooks ? Paul Gonzales who he went 1-1 with who was a gold medalist but only decent at best as a pro ?

There's not much quality names there is there ? the two best names he fought was Wilfredo Vazquez, Junior Jones, and he lost both fights. To be fair to Canizales he was past his prime in those 2 fights but still Canizales has no win against any elite names.

 

Still pretty frustrating knowing that both Inoue and Canizales could have fought some better opponents over the years.

It would have been nice to have seen Orlando Canizales face guys like Miguel Lora, Raul Perez, Greg Richardson, Rabanales, or Tatsuyoshi. Or perhaps moved up to 118 and possibly face Kennedy McKinney, Daniel Zaragoza or Marco Antonio Barrera. Junior Jones and Wilfredo Vazquez were arguably his best opponents but lost to them when he was past it by then.

Inoue also blew his chances by not facing Choco, Gallo, or SSR and that will forever be held against him.

 

Inoue has way better names than Canizales though Donaire, Fulton, McDonnell, Narvaez, those names alone blow away anything on Canizales's resume. Although i agree it would've been nice to see him fight Gonzalez, Estrada, etc.

 

Inoue has fought better opponents than Canizales, no question about it. He has a lot of time to continue to build up his resume with better opposition. Still, one has to imagine just how much stronger his resume would look if he fought and beat any of those 3 guys. A missed opportunity but it happens in boxing.

 

watched all those fights.

ramos was a tough guy who should have been beat in two.
seabrooks was a real fighter and he hit canizales a bunch of times. good fiight.
i was impressed by ray minus and canizales. that was a wonderful fight with a lot of skills shown by both men.
i don't know the timeline or context, vs alvarez he looks mid again. obviously he won but how many times can you hit a lame duck before i question if you have a shotgun.

 

Spinks has a much better resume, but he did turn in pretty horrible performances on occasion against fighters who were not noteworthy.

It's my fandom for Orlando that motivates me here, but it's not beyond the realms of possibility that we would have seen him step it up in a similar fashion had he fought an elite level operator in his prime. Or maybe not.

It's hard to favour Orlando in any hypothetical match ups against great fighters because we never saw him fight one. That's on him I suppose.

Do we know why he never attempted to unify? @Tin_Ribs