Fighters who copied their idols but ended up looking different than them

Sharkey and Dempsey.

 

James Toney claims he emulated Ezzard Charles and looked up to him a lot but while I do see some similarities I think the differences are pretty high between their styles. Maybe Ali and Holmes as well though they are more similarities between the two at least to my eye but enough differences as well.

 

Ali with SRR

 

I seem to remember Floyd saying he was an avid fan of Aaron Pryor as a kid and that he based a fair amount of his style off of him. I guess you can kind of see it if you squint but not much.
Shakur Stevenson very clearly tries to emulate Pernell Whitaker and does a good job but isn't as offensive as Pernell and doesn't have his power either.
Most Mexicans champs since Chavez burst onto the scene have stolen moves from Chavez.

 

Barrera idolised Salvador Sanchez. While Barrera's style evolved and changed through his career, and he did show glimpses of Sanchez-style counterpunching in fights, it isn't how he is generally remembered. Most people would probably associate him more closely with Chavez than Sanchez in terms of fighting style.

 

Roman Gonzalez trained with his mentor fellow countryman Alexis Arguello and you can see some similarities in his style but also some notable differences as well. Chocolatito had a swarming, high workrate style compared to Arguello's more patient methodical approach.

 

Larry Holmes, although he mixed Ali with some Foreman guard manipulation.

 

“Foreman” guard manipulation? That stuff has been around since the 1800s… Larry had tons of boxing guys around him to teach him - I doubt he was inspired by Foreman to do so if that was the implication?

 

Jeff Fenech tried to be like Duran and fell short of him with respect - Qawi wanted to fight like Ali - Tyson Fury emulated Hamed, they’ve definitely got the same herky jerky movement… but not much else, today even less so as he’s sort of leaned into fighting that weird mauling way of his.

 

It was more to say that he didn't copy everything from Ali. He had his own style, influenced to a high degree by Ali, but he took other things from other boxers. Foreman just first came to mind as he was fighting in the similar era.

 

He squared up on the inside, Duran would never leave himself open for uppercuts the way Jeff did, Duran would get his head into the chest, Jeff also didn’t use his hips when he punched and couldn’t really “box” the way Duran did, he took an aspect of Durans style made it his entire game and still fell short… now, I do think Fenech is a great, a guy who could beat a lot of ones we’d call “ATG’s” namely Salvador Sanchez would be a very close fight but JF propped himself up a lot on mindset and physicality.

 

Spoiler

https://a.espncdn.com/boxing/a/2002/0807/1415254.html

According to this article James Toney actually patterned himself after Sugar Ray Robinson and Archie Moore:

James Toney could have said at some other point that it was Ezzard Charles. There is anyway overlap between the styles of Sugar Ray Robinson and Ezzard Charles. However, on the shoulder roll James Toney claims it came from Jersey Joe Walcott and Ezzard Charles:

Source:

Spoiler

https://www.boxing247.com/boxing-news/james-toney-says/224807

James Toney did also look like Jersey Joe Walcott with his erratic movement:

Spoiler

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