Alexis Arguello: Where P4P?

Even left to his own devices McGrain would have churned out a brilliant list. It was a bit of a golden era in here for talented historians too as clearly seen throughout the thread. He also knew how to sort the wheat from the chaff poster wise and one had to put up an argument vs automatically affecting his list.

 

Of course Duran was at a disadvantage vs Hagler. He did a good job of negating a fair bit of it.

So what you are actually saying in the bolded, is that height in itself isn't much of an advantage unless one has the skills and quality to back it up? Barkley had enormous physical advantages as well as natural size. Looks like they aren't the be all and end all. You forget to add Hearns brilliant ability to disguise his right hand with jabs and feints, it wasn't just speed of hand. Incidentally Arguello wasn't known for speed of hand.

So reach is next to nothing without class and quality. Who woulda thought?

 

Nice one, F!

 

25 to 30 seems about right to me. Great fighter.

 

Duràn did kinda grew up from lightweight to more of a light welter tho,his frame got a bit wider but he's still fatter,he basically just got Toney-ified

 

Yeah, Duràn was definitely the smaller guy but he used all his experience to be competitive,but for Tommy's case, it's hard to be competitive when he's that skilled, explosive and such.

 

Duran's just one example. Tyson routinely left big tall heavyweights on the floor with their eyes shut despite huge differences in reach. We can hardly say all of these guys didn't know how to utilize their height and reach either.

Henry Armstrong defended the Welterweight title 19 times, the man was first champ at Featherweight, had an inch more reach than Duran and was an inch and a half shorter. He was weighing inside the lightweight bracket when winning many of these fights.

Mickey Walker had a 67" reach!!! Have a look at the guys he beat.

GGG wasn't tall and had arms so short he couldn't scratch his nuts without bending over. Valdez had the same reach but was shorter and gave Monzon something to think about at times.

The list is endless. In summation if height and reach were as much of an advantage as you imply, via Alexis Arguello, then boxing would have a great many more tall champions and ATGS. Height and reach also come with, often inherent, disadvantages.

 

Having been in here as long as you have you should know some of the tall fighters those guys beat. However you also should know how to put height and reach into context. You've answered your dilemma yourself above. You bet all those fights were brawls. In hello speak, tall rangy fighters are at a disadvantage inside and throughout history smaller fighters have routinely crowded them and beaten them. At times the taller guy has prevailed, it all comes down to who is best at imposing themselves and their style.

As for "all those other fights being brawls", how could they be brawls if the other guys had solid reach and height advantages

 

Yeah they were also very ordinary on the whole. He did have good success with that short little jab of his tho. He did reign for a while tho with that short reach.

 

@Mark Anthony

Corny Boza Edwards all but matched Arguello via height and reach and was a VERY good fighter who was stopped by Arguello.

Jim Watt had an inch less reach than Arguello and was considered the best lightweight in the world when Arguello beat him convincingly.

Bubba Busceme, not as good, was very rangy from memory.

The monster punching Andy Ganigan had a 70" reach.

When shot he pole axed #3 ranked Buffalo Billy Costello who sported an impressive 71 inches.

These guys were paws too which make sit even harder.

Arguello was a BEAST!

 

Put Arguello with any size of guys and he'll mostly do the job,kind of the same as Duràn(you need to motivate that man tho)

 

Isn't the fact that if You lose, You don't win - enough weight given to defeats on fighter record? The problem I have with "punishing" fighters for losses, while assesing their careers and resumes, is that it creates a situation where sitting on your couch is better than getting into the ring and coming up short. This does not make much sense to me.
This kind of approach certainly made it's way to the minds of boxing fans, which created the current system, where protecting "0" is everything and talented fighters are forgotten about after single defeat, to make room for new faces - whose only advantage is the fact that They were never seen losing, but also typically only fought on the level where it's hardly an accomplishment to be undefeated.
It disincentivizes risk taking and promotes safety-first career-management. At the end of a day, every fighter would be undefeated if He did not take the fights He ended up losing.

If We have two fighters with similar quantity and quality of wins - with one being undefeated and the other having bunch of losses, I would probably rank the second boxer higher - since there's usually something to be found in losses that I also believe deserves some recognition, acknowledgement.