Trevor Berbick vs Leon Spinks Primes

Wow.

Not too many bouts out there to envision Clever Trevor getting his hand raised at the end.

But I think he presents a better version of Ledoux & Leon is just not good enough to overcome that. Good entertaining decision bout But I like the conditioning and strength of Berbick to back up Leon. And Leon backing up is not going to be anywhere near as effecive in there.

 

Spinks’ sole claim to fame is a fight I don’t believe for a second he won on the level. Berbick is by far the more proven fighter here.

 

Both fighters are known for beating a completely washed up version of Muhammad Ali, but i think overall Berbick has more proven performances at world level than Spinks does at Heavyweight. Berbick beat undefeated versions of Greg Page, Pinklon Thomas, and KO'ed John Tate.

Funnily enough Spinks does have a win over Bernardo Mercado which is probably his 2nd best win at Heavyweight and it's significant since Mercado KO'ed Berbick early. But i don't think that fight has much relevance in regards to an actual match up between Berbick/Spinks.

Both Spinks/Berbick are aggressive fighters with a good engine but Berbick is significantly bigger he normally weighed between 215-218 pounds where as Spinks was barely over 200 pounds.

I'll go with Berbick by decision in a entertaining fight but a possible late TKO isn't out of the question.

 

I think Berbick stops him. He's the better fighter really here.

 

This is it in a nutshell. Spinks looked somewhat lively against a terrible version of Ali and a good win over Mercado but Mercado is thin on the ground for good wins. Shavers never had a decent win post Holmes tho he did have Mercado down and Berbick was way short of the good fighter he was to become.

 

If there was any justice in the world, it would be a draw.

 

Gotta make Berbick the favorite. If both guys are in shape and motivated it could be entertaining for a while

 

So hard to say because the world never saw the best of what Spinks had to offer, but, I always say, character matters, and if Spinks was a guy who always came in undertrained, then Berbick wins it on that.

 

When he was in shape, Leon could be a tough guy. Determined with a big punch

 

And fast hands!

 

His big issue was that his chin was extremely weak, and on top of that, he didn't have a style to work around that issue. He got rattled against an old Ali for chrissakes.

 

True. He went on a decent win streak in 1980 and again in 1985. I was always kinda surprised he didn’t do better at cruiser

 

He would've done fine if he went down to Cruiser earlier, but he just wanted the Heavyweight title.

 

I read somewhere that for the fight with Qawi they couldn't even find him when he was supposed to be training, and tracked him down to a hotel room where he was with a hooker eating fried chicken and drinking malt liquor. He exclaimed, "c'mon, coach, it's not what it looks like!"

After losing the fight, he told the press that if he came back, it would be at heavy, because he was so drained from training to get down to cruiser.

He was quite a character.