Alexis Arguello voted pound for pound the toughest man in the world

..........Which round? I have the fight, I'll go look at it. If they had been feeding the bottle to him thoughout, then why would Lewis make such a demonstrative, descriptive demand for "the black bottle......the one that I mix." ??? If they had been giving that to him all along, why would he need to specify so strongly that way? Shouldn't it have been a given that they'd give him that bottle, especially since Arguello had had a strong couple of rounds leading up to that? It doesn't add up at all.

 

I'm not sure that its in the original HBO broadcast, it may be though.....HBO always has other camera's footage that never gets on the air.

I'm being dead honest here Sal, right before the Arguello-Pryor rematch, there were segments on a piece that CBS did on the issue, of the various times that Panama Lewis brought that black bottle out.
I've heard even Larry Merchant of HBO allude to it.

The thing is that they were not feeding Pryor out of that black bottle after every round.

.....and it makes a hell of alot of sense that Panama would yell and scream for that black bottle just when Arguello was coming on strong late.

 

..........Meh. Still don't buy it. Too much evidence of Pryor being a stamina-diven whirlwind before that fight to say it was all drugs that gave him the edge.

 

IMO, Sanchez outboxes Alexis to a close UD.

 

I may have swept it under the rug myself, if it were not that piece of **** scumbag Panama Lewis who was in Pryor's corner.....the fact that just weeks after the Arguello-Pryor fight, that piece of slimey **** Panama Lewis removes the padding from one of his fighters gloves????:-(

That episode did it for me. You just dont give those types of **** ass characters the benefit of the doubt on anything.

Panama Lewis......now thats a character I'd more than spit on his grave when he's good and gone......I'd take a slimey diharea dump on it!:fire

 

Pryor would've probably always beaten the 140 pound Arguello, black bottle or not. Just a styles thing. Arguello was not in his prime either.

 

As I've stated many times Arguello is my all time favorite. However, in my opinion the rematch settled any controversy over the black bottle.

 

There was some rumour about that fight with Pryor though,that Pryor had taken a stimulant

 

Its old crap listening to this type of logic............in the rematch, its a beatdown version of Arguello that we see.After the horrific way Arguello was stopped in that first fight, how the hell can anyone with any boxing sense, say that the rematch settled it?A fighter does'nt get stopped in the manner Arguello was against Pryor, and comes out the same fighter.The rematch settled absolutely nothing!

 

Arguello was ring worn and fading before the first fight, but don't act like getting stopped ruined him.

After the first fight Alexis avenged his loss to Vilomar Fernandez who was then fighting at 140, and blew Claude Noel out in 3 rounds, but ya right, the loss to Pryor left him a shell of a man. I'm sure that makes sense in the altered reality of a crackhead.

 

Pro career
"The Explosive Thin Man" suffered an unavenged first round TKO loss in his 1968 professional debut, but then won 36 of his next 38 bouts, which then led him to a world Featherweight championship bout against experienced WBA champion Ernesto Marcel of Panama in Panama. The young challenger lost a 15-round unanimous decision in Marcel's retirement bout.

Undaunted, Argüello began another streak of wins, and found himself in the ring with a world champion again, this time challenging Marcel's successor to the throne, Mexican world champion Ruben Olivares in Los Angeles. After Olivares built a small lead on the judges' scorecards, Argüello and Olivares landed simultaneous left hooks in round thirteen. Olivares's left hand caused a visible pain expression on Argüello's face, but Argüello's left hand caused Olivares to crash hard against the canvas. A few seconds later, Argüello was the new Featherweight champion of the world.

Argüello defended this title a few times, then moved up in weight to challenge world Junior Lightweight champion Alfredo Escalera in Bayamón, Puerto Rico, in what has been nicknamed The Bloody Battle of Bayamon by many. Escalera had been a busy champion with ten defenses, and he had dethroned Kuniaki Shibata in 2 rounds in Tokyo. In what some experts (including Ring Magazine writers) consider one of the most brutal fights in history, Escalera had his eye, mouth and nose busted early, but was rallying back in the scorecards when Argüello finished him, once again in the thirteenth round.

His reign at Junior Lightweight saw him fend off the challenges of Escalera in a rematch held at Rimini, Italy, as well as former world champion Bobby Chacon, former world champion Rafael 'Bazooka' Limon, Ruben Castillo, and Diego Alcala, beaten in only one round.

Argüello suffered many cuts around his face during his second victory against Escalera. The on-site doctor wanted him hospitalized, but Argüello had a flight to catch from Rome the next day to return to Nicaragua, and he boarded a train from Rimini. The doctor decided to travel with Argüello, and performed plastic surgery on Argüello's cuts with Argüello awake.

Argüello then moved up in weight again, and this time he had to go to London, England, to challenge world Lightweight champion Jim Watt. Watt lasted fifteen rounds, but the judges gave Argüello a unanimous 15-round decision, thus making him only the sixth boxer to win world titles in 3 divisions, and the second Latin American (after Wilfred Benitez had become the first by beating Maurice Hope one month before) to do it. He had to face some less known challengers in this division, one exception being the famous prospect Ray 'Boom-Boom' Mancini, who would later be the subject of a made for television movie. Mancini and Argüello engaged in a fight that was later showcased in a boxing video of the best fights of the 1980s, with Argüello prevailing by stoppage when he decked Mancini in round 14

Battles with Aaron Pryor
After defeating James 'Bubba' Busceme by sixth round stoppage, Argüello decided to move up in weight class time again, and on November 12, 1982, he tried to become the first world champion in 4 different categories, meeting the heavier and future Hall-of-Famer Aaron Pryor, in what was billed as The Battle of the Champions in Miami, Florida. He was stopped in 14. A controversy erupted over a specific water bottle requested by trainer Panama Lewis which Pryor drank from before the start of the fourteenth. Because the newly created Miami Boxing Commission had neglected to perform a post-fight urinalysis, a rematch was ordered. This time, in Las Vegas, Arguello was KO:ed in the tenth, and stated after the fight "I'm not going to fight anymore. I quit." But he later returned to the ring for financial reasons.

Arguello Comes Back
He attempted several comebacks into boxing during the late 1980s and early 1990s and had some success, most notably a fourth round stoppage of former World Junior Welterweight Champion Billy Costello in a 1986 televised bout that put him in a position for another shot at the Junior Welterweight title. He retired in 1995 with 82 wins, 8 losses, and 65 KO:s after a ten round decision loss to Scott Walker.

Arguello Today
Argüello was Nicaragua's flag-bearer at the Opening Ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

Arguello Now Running For Mayor of Managua
Argüello later joined the Contras in his native Nicaragua but after a few months in the jungle he retired from the war.

Alexis Argüello is now involved in Nicaraguan politics, and, in 2004, he was elected Managua Vice-Mayor. He remains very friendly today with his old rival Aaron Pryor, and they still see each other several times a year. On March 6, 2008, Arguello was nominated by the Sandinista Party of Nicaragua to run for Mayor of capital city Managua in upcoming open elections. Arguello will run for the mayoral office in the upcoming November 2008 elections against Eduardo Montealegre, the conservative candidate of the Liberal Alliance Party who lost the election for President of Nicaragua in 2006 to Daniel Ortega.

 

When you get stopped, particularly in a grueling a war that Arguello had with Pryor, most fighters usually dont come out the same.
....the fact that Arguello had alot of mileage on him even makes it worse.

Example, look at the beating that Fernando Vargas took at the hands of Felix Trinidad. Vargas was only a shell of what he was.
Alot of people claimed that the reason Trinidad beat Vargas was because he cheated with the low blows he landed on Vargas.

Can you imagine if Vargas and Trinidad fought again just months afterward.....in that shot state Vargas was in, Tito would have killed him.
......but yeah, from your logic, it would have erased the shadow that the low blows from Trinidad did'nt play a factor in the first fight.

When a fighter takes a beating like the ones Arguello and Vargas took, chances are you dont come back the same.

You said that the rematch erased any controversy....to that I say bogus!

Again, the Arguello-Pryor rematch proved absolutely zero as far as erasing the black bottle controversy.
.....anybody with any sense could see that.

 

he looked like morales (after his third knockdown in the rubber match with pac) sitting in the ring counting himself out after getting punished by pryor.

 

Very true, but the AA that fought Pryor the first time would have kicked Pac's ass, and the AA from the second fight would have had a chance too. :smoke

 

arguello is big for pac at 140. he was a 5'11 version of morales. and the way morales sat on the ring knowing his is a hopeless cause to take more beating really reminded me of arguello during the pryor rematch.