Lionel Rose Discussion

If you want a good idea of a prime Lionel Rose outside of his masterful fight with Fighting Harada he also looks great against Rocky Gattelari. He did have some really close calls against Alan Rudkin and Chucho Castillo but even in those fights he does look like a special fighter. His prime was pretty brief and by the time he got to Ruben Olivares he was already having trouble with the weight and having outside distractions outside the ring. Just wasn't the same fighter after he got crushed by Olivares.

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Sadly, Lionel's defeat at the hands of Rockabye Ruben effectively finished him.

 

He took a bad beating in the fight, down five times, trying to hang in there between knockdowns. It took a lot out of him.

 

He was great, but he had the glaring weakness of being stylistically a very classic boxer-puncher (his movement, jabbing and hooks remind me of Sugar Ray Robinson at times aesthetically) that didn't have any power at world level. He was hard to hit, with a strong layered defence and top reflexes, but he wasn't safety-first in mentality, or an uncommon defensive virtuoso that built his offensive approach around that. He was a very good mover, but his main approach was classic stance mid-distance pivoting at ring-centre box-punching, or slow retreat on the backfoot stuff. Looking to impose himself with his jab, counter-hooks and sharpshooting right-hands.

Given that he had to win fights through sheer skill by outpointing his opponents, but wasn't inclined to safety-first spoiling, this meant that he needed to be consistently active, but he was also a big bantamweight, one that it's well known was not always the most dedicated between fights, which led to the inevitable weight struggles throughout most of his reign. That, and the fact he could be hurt by solid punchers, so always had to be cautious to a degree, meant that he was never quite able to show the workrate he did against Harada again in his defences; at times he defaulted too much to single-shot sharpshooting, so even if he looked the more accurate and skillful when he did open up, he was not often the busier fighter. It was such a deep division at the time that every defence was against a formidable opponent able to take things to the wire and present a different challenging puzzle. A series of tough fifteen round defences and then a beating, all while being tight at the weight, tend not to be good for longevity unless you've an uncommonly formidable constitution. In hindsight he should have moved up instead of taking the Olivares fight, who was already a known big puncher at the least.

His legs and sharpness of punching didn't look on point against Olivares, however I don't think even the one that beat Harada would be able to win. A very hard hitting, skillful boxer-puncher like Ruben, Jofre, or Zarate is a step too far for someone of Rose's attributes...not in terms of his technical box-punching skillset, but in the gap between power being so big that you're simply not going to beat fighters of that calibre using a balanced, classic approach...unless you can cancel it out with all-time chin, greater workrate and/or some other uncommon physical advantages like significant edge in height/reach. Rose didn't have that.

However, if you don't have that all-time combo of top skills AND power, he'd be a nightmare to fight or clearly outpoint at Bantam. Beautiful smooth boxing skills, great jabs, precision hooks, right-hands, uppercuts, good combinations, can shorten his punches and flurry well inside...very good multi-faceted defence...fast hands, feet, reflexes. Pretty solid fifteen round stamina despite the weight issues.

It would have been interesting to see him at Featherweight; the lack of power would have been an issue, but his durability may actually benefit from the added weight.

 

He was a great fighter for the relatively brief amount of time that he was able to keep his weight down to 118 (which was never going to be long, given that he was a teenager @the time), but once he outgrew the weight he was a fish out of water. @ Fw & above, he was still a skilled boxer, but he no longer enjoyed the advantage in natural size/strength that was 1 of his biggest attributes down @118, & he didn't gain any other attributes (i.e.: more power) from the extra weight either.

But during his run @118, he compiled quite an impressive resume in a short span of time, w/ wins over Harada, Castillo, Rudkin, Medel, Sakurai, & dangerous puncher Ernie Cruz in the span of under 2 years. Given the strength of his resume, I'd say his only obstacle to being rated among the top 10 @118 was his lack of longevity @the weight.

 

he did have a few fights @fw after he lost to Olivares. he beat Vicente Garcia & was briefly rated @the weight, but a pair of KO losses to Fernando Sotelo & raul Cruz ended his campaign there.

Here's footage of his fights w/ Garcia & Sotelo.

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His sheer skill was damn entertaining though. He is one of my favorite fighters in the really low weights.

 

****ing great post, Lora!!!!

 

Sorry, I should have specified that I was thinking in terms of if he had moved up before taking the weight-drained beating he did against Olivares. He didn't really look like he ever regained his sharpness to me, like it had a Honeyghan vs Curry sort of effect on him. not becoming hopeless overnight, but things like timing and balance just dropping a few levels. I remember reading that his training went increasingly further off the rails too.

However, with his weaknesses being what they were, there's definitely a case to be made he would always have struggled to regain the same form at Feather, no matter the timing of the move up.

I'd also forgotten quite how young he was at the time he won the title. He really had a boxing brain that was well beyond his years.