“He was running away”

Lol yeah

 

Lemeiux is basically crying, "he wouldn't stand still and let me hit him".

 

There are outside boxers like Ray Robinson and Muhammad Ali who are great and exciting to watch. They are tall with long arms and trying to keep the fight at a distance where they can hit their opponent without getting hit in return. They use their movement to find appropriate angles where they can attack. They aren't running. They are circling their prey like wolves. There are other types like say Rigondeaux or Lara who have no interest in attacking. They combine a counter punching style with the outside boxing so that they never initiate an exchange and always wait for an aggressor to come to them. They fire one punch and skip away. They are entirely negative. If the opponent did not submit to their will and agree to fight their fight, there would be no action.

There are degrees to this, but it can be pretty excessive. That Ulysses kid that fought the Hebrew Hammer on the undercard was running. Saunders only ran a little toward the end. Most of what he did was fine. However, when you see that the opponent is hopelessly outclassed, can't touch you, is physically and mentally exhausted from chasing you, and you can probably put them away with one or two good punches, it's frustrating to watch a fighter stay on his bicycle. Against a fresh strong fighter that's tactical, intelligent, and cautious. When you've got them in the palm of your hand and could finish it quickly but you don't, that's cowardice. It's not always the same thing. As circumstances change, what's appropriate and acceptable change.

Let's say the guy you've outmatched is a featherfist and couldn't hurt you even if you stood toe to toe with him. Should you be prancing around, pot shotting, and running away from that guy? Personally, I hate to see a fighter run the last couple of rounds when he knows that he's got a heavy lead. Part of it is sportsmanship, like you should at least give your partner in the ring a chance. Fighters owe each other something, some level of respect, an adherence to the rules and customs of the ring. Don't low blow. Don't clinch. If they haven't quit, then you shouldn't run.

Some people think that being negative is the perfect and most pure form of boxing there is. But when you have a guy totally dominated by the mid rounds and you don't close and finish him off, I suspect that it's a flaw in technique. Like maybe you can't fight any other way. Maybe, you only have one gear: reverse. You can't go forward or press the attack. That's just the mark of a limited boxer who's fine as long as he's fighting another limited boxer with a style his is good against, but that's not the complete package.

 

Boxing isn't "the art of hitting without being hit." Everybody gets hit. The most evasive/defensive fighters ever caught some leather. A guy get's hit ten percent less than his opponent and we call it amazing. It's not the art of "hitting a guy more than he hits you" either, because there are power differences. It's not even "the art of hurting someone more than they hurt you" because some guys can take a beating better. Boxing is the skillful administration and management of pain.

 

people complained about yves running away 2 fights before the main event. it's easy to call it running when it's the guy you didnt bet on. but "running" is a part of boxing. you don't have to trade and why would you.

 

Lemieux needs to lean how to cut off the ring, if he does he would be awesome! His punching power is unreal, but he needs to work on something he has neglected for many years, now it's time he learn, if you fight Lemieux, you'd better be aboe to box a perfect fight or get knocked out! So, yes, he got out boxed, but he deserves credit for being such a huge puncher, now it's time for him to take a year on how to cut off the ring, it can be learned, but it takes time and lots of hard work..............

 

Still have to see the full fight to come to a conclusion myself, but from what I understand and saw in the first 2 (before I fell asleep) is that Saunders had the gameplan most people expected him to have and executing it perfectly. The ones that believed Saunders' pre fight "meeting Lemieux in the middle of the ring, not backing down" were unsuprisingly very mistaken, as that would have spelled disaster for him.
He did exactly what he had to, and it paid off. Not so easy to do.

Many of boxing's greatest names have used this style, and defensive has even become the US and Cuban housestyle for quite some time now. Of course most people including me like a frontfoot brawl more as a game of tag, but it's the way you do it that makes all the difference.

 

Saunders has changed his camp, he trained hard for that fight, did his homework, he had a plan and it came off quasi perfecto! Against Golovkin it will not work, styles make fights.............