Are brawlers "limited" or do they simply excel in one of the aspects of the sport?

If it wins fights it ok.Usually fighters only care about money.You can make money not only winning but also being entertaining.......brawlersare entertaining.

 

IMO, brawler, boxer, whatever, if you are only limited to one style then there will be some very wrong opponents for you, which ever way.

Seems the cream of the crop can always do a little of everything.

 

yes.

off the top of my head pavlik, miranda, pac (prior to morales 2), hatton, mayorga (although he did box well against shane) are good examples.

 

Considering how many times brawlers have been able to upset fighter that would be considered far more skilled in pure "boxing", I would definitely say brawling is its own skillset.

that said, brawlers are still limited, and overall are the easiest of fighters to beat

I myself have my own taxanomy of classifying fighters,

1. Brawlers
2. Punchers
3. Boxers

which go further into

A. Offensive
B. Defensive

These then go into

Pressure
Pin Point
Wild
Counter Puncher

which then are given the identification as

Inside fighter
Mid Range fighter
Outsider fighter.

Some fighters may excel at more than one area, and can be combinations of each
These taxanomys are not necessarily in order of dominance, other than the first three

For example

Ricardo Mayorga

Wild Brawler-Offensive pressure-mid to close range

 

Yes they are limited. For the simple reason everybody knows if your plan A, your one and only plan is brawl, you are going to lose to a skilled boxer puncher or counterpuncher in most instances.

Unless a fighter has a plan B after brawling it is safe to say he is limited.

 

Good post TFFP.

Sometimes though the brawler is able to break the boxer/counter puncher mentally.....

Without having a plan B.

Margarito vs Cotto is a classic example. Margo did little different in the second half of the fight to what he did in the first - but a few people have said that Cotto could be broken..... Margo proved it.

I was going to say Duran vs Leonard, but that wouldn't be as accurate.

 

Brawling CAN be a skill in itself. Most brawlers do it bcause they have no choice, but there are a few people that can do other things but use brawling as an important part. Joe Cazaghe actually loves to brawl but can box.

 

Cotto is essentially a pressure fighter/boxer though - he is pretty one handed as pointed out by Roger Mayweather.

Beating guys like Gomez can mask that to a degree.

 

Good post, MJ.

 

Depends on how effective they are at it.

Watch a guy like Sung-Kil Moon at 115. Completely wild and devoid of any technical skill seemingly, but so experienced in the ring that he was able to make his style work and somehow manage to get off his huge power shots and land them almost at will, or at some point in the fight even if made to look foolish beforehand. Technically stylists don't get much worse, but if it's effective it's effective, and he was against the cream of the crop in the golden age of the division.

 

Ya, but if you consider his outing against Shane, one can not say that Cotto is one Dimensional. Hell in his fight with Margarito he showed the different levels of his game, though eventually his will was broken. COTTO!

 

Cotto was never perceived as one dimensional.