Quite a debate to think him as a pillow fist or not,despite that reputation of not being able to finish his opponents,there are plenty of moments he ko'ed high level middleweights as a welter himself.
What Flo said. He was a small middle who fought a lot of tough, crafty fighters too who weren't easy to stop unless you were an A-grade puncher. Quite a slashing puncher who seemed to cut fighters up. I don't know if anyone else ever stopped Benton on cuts tbh.
Benton had only been stopped twice by Rodriguez (on cuts) and Briscoe (retiring on stool). Rodriguez definitely had that slashing type of punch that made him dangerous. He also cut up Nino Benvenuti real bad before getting stopped himself.
He could jab you all night and pop you pretty good with the right hand. He had great balance and always seemed to be fighting at his preferred middle distance.
Loved to bang the body as well. Really enjoyed any fight with Rodriguez and I had him winning all 4 fights with Griffith, BTW.
Well called scar, he was an excellent body puncher. You beat me to it. I thought he won all four too, all of them clear cut and inarguable other than the first one imo. The fourth was an especially bad decision. It's one of the things that unfairly shits on his all time rating which might be top 15ish had he gotten a fair shake. One of the other reasons Rodriguez didn't stop more people imo was that he had a tendency towards sloppy arm-punching on the move. Always with intent and mixed in with harder punches but he rarely hit fighters consistently with his hardest potential shots half the time.
Anybody who could stop a prime Denny Moyer on something other than cuts had power. To my knowledge other than Luis, only Freddie Little was able to do it. The Monzon TKO was a premature, bogus, hometown stoppage long past Moyer's prime.
