Which boxer was the most subtle in defense?

I don't think people realise how hard it was to land clean on Harada.

 

Eubank Sr was so impressive at that.

 

Jose Luis Ramirez might fit in here.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone discuss him as a defensive fighter, but he was basically kind of a plodding southpaw who was always in front of his opponent but even against very high-class opposition he didn’t often get clean of beaten up. (His one stoppage loss in 111 fights came to Ruben Olivares in his first step-up fight — even though he’d had 40-odd bouts they’d been mostly against nobodies on the lower end of the Mexican circuit.)

But even Alexis Arguello and Pernell Whitaker (especially the first fight — even if PW got jobbed, he didn’t exactly overwhelm JLR the way he did most of his opponents) and Chavez had degrees of trouble in getting their offense going.

Mostly just kept his hands up and knew how to use his southpaw stance to his advantage, but there’s probably a tad more to it than that.

I’m not saying he’s in the class of Benitez or some of the other defensive masters, just that there must be some subtlety to his defense if so many world-class fighters didn’t find him easy to snipe with their best ammunition.

 

Golovkin was the first guy that came to mind too.

Forget guys like Toney, Canelo, Locche and Pep. It's obvious that they have a great defence.

If you watch Golovkin, especially in slow motion, it becomes clear that it's actually really hard to land clean on him if he's actively defending.

He moves his head just enough so that punches brush past him, and often picks off the incoming on his gloves. He has a great stance against most punches, keeping his hands high , chin tucked in and has a somewhat forward stooping stance like a t-rex. It means that if the opponent wants to attack the body they have to reach for it and possibly leave themselves open to being countered. He often drops his elbows and arm to cover his midriff and flanks if attacked to the body. If you watch Canelo / GGG #2 you will see in slo mo that quite a bit of the stuff that looks like its landing to the body is in fact hitting arm and elbow. He's got an excellent use of space, using his feet to blunt attacks by throwing the other guy's aim off.

The only punch I think he's vulnerable to in particular is the uppercut. His forward leaning stance makes it harder to avoid than most other punches and Canelo in particular lit him up a few times with that blow.

Unfortunately since he's a pressure fighter he gets painted once in a while trying to land his own stuff, and then there's the macho crap that he does if he thinks the other guy has nothing for him, taking combinations and then beckoning them in. That makes people think his defence is leaky whereas in fact it's one of the best out there.

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The answer my friends, is Nicolino Locche...even when he wasn't providing a spectacle by clowning his opponent. Having an iron chin and great recuperative powers (see Locche-Hernandez) didn't hurt his cause at all.

 

Wilfred 'El Radar' Benitez was the first name that sprung to mind for me.

“Go downstairs!” (Angelo Dundee to Sugar Ray Leonard). “You can’t stand in front of him and hit him with a right hand. Forget the right hand!”

 

Bernard Hopkins
Shane Mosley
Erik Morales
Rocky Marciano

 

100% agree. I thought about this when I first posted too.

 

This thread made no sense.

OP asked who were the most subtle defensive fighters and people responded by naming every single one of the flashiest and most universally appreciated defensive fighters of all time

 

@roughdiamond understood the assignment with LaMotta, I think I got it right with Ricardo Lopez and Joe Louis - GGG is also > @BCS8 saying Toney, Locche, and Benitez is whacky because all those guys made you miss so obviously highlights can be made of it, similarly but unnamed would be Chris Byrd… a new one I thought of is Marciano, everybody said he was extremely difficult to hit hard clean… similarly I think Ezz Charles is a decent pick as is Emile Griffith, not flashy, not overly obvious just an Inch here or there.

 

Everytime you rewatch Lamotta Vs Ray Robinson VI it becomes more evident to me how good of a defense Jake had, some of the punches Ray threw i could've sworn on my life that they were hit clean, rewatch it in slow motion and almost none of them hit him

 

My pick would be Roberto Duran

yes, his defense became evident later in his career, but early on the man was slipping centimeters and completely missing his opponent's punches, there's moments in The Brawl in Montreal, Hiroshi Kobayashi and Ken Buchannan bouts were you see the punches hitting him and sometimes even HEARING them hit and when you rewatch it you realize they never hit, or never hit completely

easily my favorite kind of defense, the one's that leave you in doubt most of the time thinking the punches just went through them like they were some kind of ghost

 

Chavez Sr has a pretty subtle defense,I watched some rounds of his fight with Fuentes,and while the Puerto Rican wasn't that bad,he failed to land a lot of clean blows vs Chavez because of his small parries,block,slips and the way he tucked his chin and hide inside his gloves (sorta like peekaboo style)

 

When I think of subtle defense, I think of the high guard guys like Winky, Ike, Abraham and Starlon. Out of those four, only Abraham was ever stopped and that was late in his career. All four were hard to hit clean and fought for years at a high level.

 

Billy Petrolle, Mike Gibbons, Tommy Gibbons, Jock Malone, Jem Driscoll, Tony Canzoneri, Harry Matthews, Lee Savold, Greg Haugen and Jimmy McLarnin were all masters at drawing leads by slipping, rolling with, or stepping back from punches and then countering. I think Jimmy Wilde was in this category as well. You can add Billy Graham and Joey Giardello to this list as well.