Your favorite fighters best performance

Ray Leonard is one of my faves, and while he had bigger wins he was absolutely terrifying vs. Dave Boy Green.

 

Kirkland Laing. Truly talented fighter, so unique the way he fought. The obvious answer is against Roberto Duran but that was just before my time.

I remember him being written off after a one-sided loss to Fred Hutchings and then a "no mas" loss in Australia to the brave but crude Brian Janssen.

He was given a British title shot against the powerful Sylevester Mittee. Mittee had lost the biggest fight of his life against soon to become

World champion Lloyd Honeyghan but was still world ranked and expected to wear Laing down and go on to better things.

Laing fought beautifully early on and in the 5th showed uncharacteristic power to stop Mittee and effectively finish his career.

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Close runner-up

Laing proved a brilliant British champion but lost an EBU title shot (to Nino Larocca) and was brutally koed by dangerous journeyman Buck Smith when he faced big punching Antoine Fernandez (who had dethroned Larocca) in London.

Laing massacred his younger rival to score an emphatic 2 round win. World title shots were mentioned but unfortunately Laing never won another important fight again. Still on that night Laing was superlative.

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Marvin Hagler vs Thomas Hearns. He knew they were going to stop the fight because of his cut and he was going to lose his title so he went for broke and got the job done. Plus it gave us one of the best fights of all time.

 

My immediate answer is Holmes-Norton, but I think Holmes-Witherspoon is real close. Both are artistic, supernatural displays of courage imo.

I was rooting for Norton, because I hadn't seen Holmes before. The early rounds were Holmes, who imo looked like he'd be stopping Norton in the 6th round. Soon after that Ken told his corner "it's my turn".

I thought Ken and Larry crushed practically every other heavyweight fight in terms of the aforementioned heart as well as dogged perseverance and action.

Against Witherspoon...one wonders if Larry knew how hard Tim could punch before the fight. Because Tim's right was Bowe-level power, a nasty shot. When I watch that fight I always watch the 9th and 10th rounds really close. Those rounds are really inspiring to me, and are the epitome of what Championship Heart really means. Holmes fought in that 9th round like he was just fine with dying for his title. Tim cracked the hell out of him, it's unbelievable that Holmes could survive that...not just survive it, but get right back on the muh fuh with a display of extraordinary ring IQ.

Every man in every one of those fights were great. They were ATGs that night, and champions.

 

Obviously, he was not boxing during my lifetime, but Joe Louis is my favorite all time. I like watching him in the Max Schmeling 2 fight, and in the Max Baer fight.

 

Henry Armstrong v Barney Ross

 

Nigel Benn v Gerald Mclellan

 

Floyd Patterson in the second Johansson fight, made Ingo look like the clumsy oaf he was.

 

Some excellent shouts in this thread!

Since I don't have a favorite fighter, and as I see a mention already of hometown guy Matt Franklin (Matthew Saad Muhammad), I'll go with another Philly great: Bernard Hopkins in his masterful performance against Felix "Tito" Trinidad.

 

Carlos Monzon - Rodrigo Valdez II

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Can I really be boring? Ali vs. Cleveland Williams. Ali is supernatural in that fight. He does things that make no sense. He throws damaging power shots while moving backward for ****'s sake!

 

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That would be my one of Marvin's too.

 

My own choice. Definitely the one that displays all of Muhammad's prime arsenal. My runner up choice would be the Rumble in the Jungle. Muhammad beating George Foreman in a totally unexpected way.

 

Foreman-Norton