Anyone Remember Livingstone Bramble?

Bramble should never have left Lou Duva. Bramble complained about Duva taking advantage of him financially but Duva knew how to keep Bramble focused and disciplined when training. Duva complained how hard it was to train Bramble. Once he left Bramble like Bowe when Eddie Futch no longer trained him he was never the same.
The ko of Rosario was brutal but he was still young and Terry Norris recovered from Julian Jackson ko and so did John Ruiz did with Michael Moorer.

 

the difference is that Bramble knock out
more similar to the Hearns/Duran knockout than the Julian Jackson one punch knockouts. Hearns hit Duran over and over and Duran took great punches but Duran was knocked out by the last one, and Bramble took great punches from Rosario, but it was a beating. Duran recovered better and won another title 5 years later, and that was Duran more versatile even at that age. Bramble took a lot of punches and he quit also which never really was talked about. Even Mancini in an interview I saw a week later said "I never thought I would see dog in Bramble" meaning Bramble stayed down and said he was thumbed, but he was hit over and over with punches which would have stopped other guys earlier. Bramble was strong and punched ok but not hard enough to walk guys down all the time with his high defense and switching. He had a good jab like some have said and a strong jab, but if guys eventually hit him where was he to go? Where was his other gear, like the post someone had about adapting. He did not have much adapting style. And Ruiz against Tua was another one punch. Somehow they recover better from one punch than even a one or two round beating, because the beating is still a beating whether it was 20 punches opposed to one. Usually there are not one punch knockouts like Jackson, which is why he was so scary.. I mean his knockouts were just terrifying. The Graham knockout. Graham was asleep in the air.

 

I am going to watch the Bramble fight again right now . Ok at the end of round one, Rosario rocks Bramble. Rosario had started to counterpunch him and hit him and Bramble had felt the power by now, but at the end of round one a right hand by Rosario had Bramble sort of walking back to his corner a little shaky.. Then in round 2, Rosario started to land his jab as Ray said and back up Bramble, and he was faster than Bramble and out fighting him even this early. The level of fighter was showing. No insult to say Bramble was not the fighter Rosario was.. Or the fighter Mancini was for that matter, but he fought Mancini well because of style. So in round 2, Rosario is jabbing him and starting to back him up. The punch which started it all was with 1:47 left in the round with a left uppercut and Bramble felt that and knew right then that the power might be too much just by the way he reacted

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and that leads to Rosario building momentum and swarming and Bramble quitting about a minute later. He was hurt so it was not a big quit, and Rosario was going to knock him down and out anyway.. He was hitting him too easily and too clean. You don't take punches like that ever... the supposed thumbing was at 1:24 left in the round. I think it was a punch. Rosario hit that hard. Bramble was not going to win this fight getting his this clean thumb excuse or not. That left uppercut of Rosario was what did the damage in the supposed thumb and at 1:47 left in the round.. Either way, Rosario prior to hurting Bramble would sort of dip to the left do anticipate a counter. So he had Bramble's number.

 

The more I reflect on Bramble, the more he reminds me of a LW ken Norton - he was very effective vs. certain styles of opponents, but he crumbled or was reduced to helplessness vs. the uppermost echelon of punchers.

After his initial post-Rosario decline, he did have a bit of a career resurgence @140 when he bombed out Harold Brazier in 2. In the early 90s, he lost several close, debatable decisions to rising prospects, including an awful 1 to Oba Carr. I wouldn't be surprised if the Carr "loss" broke him mentally, as he quickly descended into journeyman status after that.

 

He said a number of things to try to get under Mancini's skin heading into their 1st fight, including disparaging remarks about Italians iirc. he wanted Mancini to lose his cool & based on the reckless way he attacked Bramble in that fight, it seems to have worked.

 

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/1986/0...ot-going-to-let-one-cold-vibe-stop-my-boogie/

 

A real underrated bout of his was his dismantling of Kenny Bogner. They were both up and coming prospects at the time and we never do get too many of matches between the divisions prospects. That bout really put Bramble on the map and he sure looked terrific that night.

 

For me he was one of these fighters that lost something that never returned after their first big fight loss.

 

Agreed. After the Rosario loss, he went 17 wins and 24 losses. I will never forget those wins over Mancini and Crawley. People forget how strong Mancini was but he had no answer for Bramble. Crawley was a good fighter as well.

 

Absolutely, Bramble looked the goods at that stage. I'm sure the mags had him top 3 P4P so that gives an indication of how he was perceived.

 

He was solid and had some great fights with Ray Mancini and with Freddie Pendleton and Oba Carr among others.

Interestingly enough, he was one of the three heads of the Lightweight monster in the 1980s along with Macho Camacho and Jimmy Paul. But Paul gave his place to Greg Haugen, Camacho gave his to Jose Luis Ramirez when Camacho vacated the WBC title, and Bramble gave his space to Edwin Rosario. Then, Bramble's career started slowly but steadily declining and he lost many fights afterwards.

 

No one was surprised in Puerto Rico!

I had a betting thing going on in my school and well, on this fight we could not bet because everyone put their money on Rosario so at the end, i gave everyone their money back lol

What surprised everyone was how easy it was! Generally, we thought it was going to go at least ten rounds before Chapo won and in fact, I saw Chapo winning in the fourteenth.

 

A good, solid, but basic boxer-puncher in his prime, but he was in retrospect massively overrated in some of the hypothetical pound for pound listat the time. There were tons of fighters around that would have been 50/50 or favourites with him with in pfp fights, imo.

His main problem was not being able to fight well going backwards/side to side, and as said earlier, he didn't quite have the power or durability to do the Lightweight Dick Tiger sort of thing that he seemed to be aiming for.

The '80s lightweights had a lot of entertaining colourful and quite evenly matched fighters like this. Fighters that were maybe not the biggest overall talents, but had some excellent traits, or were just very solid and tough and made for great fights with each other.

 

I met him in person and he was very nice and he was freakishly strong for his size - I watched him man handle jr.middleweights in sparring.

 

I remember the Bramble-Mancini era well as I actually trained at the same gym as Bramble before he fought Mancini, (I was only a young kid at the time and didn't know him). I did get to meet him a few times years later after the Oba Carr fight, and he was actually just a down-to-earth guy and very appreciative of fans. I know when he fought Mancini he gave himself a lot of publicity with the whole "voodoo" thing and "putting curses" on Ray. He admitted later all the taunting was to try and get an edge, though the "murderer" remark was a bit far, (in comparison to today's fighters, I think his behavior was mild).
Bramble was an odd guy. I think he summed it up best when he said "Bramble listens to nobody, including himself!".
He looked like a strong pressure fighter with a good punch and strong chin, and had good height and excellent reach to top it off for a lightweight.
I don't think smoking weed and fighting with managers does a boxer any good. You have to keep growing, improving, and learning. He stayed too one-dimensional and became opponent status quickly.
At around the time he fought Tyrone Crawley, he only had about 26 fights. Maybe fans rated him too highly too quickly.