Artists vs Scientists

With regard to Calzaghe,i have seen him employ pure boxing off the back foot behind a perfect southpaw jab. Watch the second half of the Kessler fight and those fights were Calz broke his hand. Against lacey he employed in and out movement followed by lightning combinations.
Against hopkins and bika he employed an ugly brawling,mauling volume pressure style.
And when he needed to he unloaded fast and hard punches to stop his man,byron mitchell,manfredo and mario veit being examples of this.
I would say he mastered all these styles,simply because he could win with them proficiently.
And by 'mastered' i dont mean he was as good at pressure fighting as JCC for example. I mean he had that particular style down pat.

 

Heres my take on it, boxing is science. There is a formula to boxing. Professional matchmakers are correct 99% of the time. Its proven. There is a formula to apply to boxing and its calculated by styles and ability.

 

Someone hasnt read the OP!

 

If your referring to me, I was adding something here. I dont believe there are artists and scientists. I think even if you have an artistic or unorthodox approach to boxing, you still have a style or rhythem that can be figured out when applying a stylistic thinking. Thats all.

 

No worries my man. Just injecting a bit of humour in.
I dont class an 'artistic' approach as being unorthodox. By artistic i mean 'inutitive' which means a fighter has a variety of skills,styles and an opponent may find it hard to know which 'style' is coming next.
Tyson,Jones,Hamed and even JJ were unorthodox,but as you rightly point out they each had a particular style which you could employ a strategy against.
But against a 1978 duran what strategy can you really use against a guy that can sit back and counterpunch,can fence from long range or bash you on the inside. And whats most telling is that he can employ all three in the same fight. This is what i call an artist.

 

Adapting mid fight or the ability to mix styles mid fight seems to be what seperates the great fighters from the legends.
This is why i believe hagler and hopkins cannot be rated higher than guys like robinson or ray leonard.
I dont believe that improvisation is just one of the attributes of the artist,on the contrary you cannot be a true artist without improvisation.

With duran he had a skill for every situation and thus the seamless blend between offense and defense which seemed like one style.

On a final note and with further reflection,perhaps there is another category. The one dimensional (and in no way is this phrase meant negatively.) artist,who basically has only one style,but what a style!
In this category are monzon,armstrong,arguello,marciano.

 

Or a complete fighter. It would be up to the fighter to make Duran fight in a certain way so he could counter it. Again, the ability must be there to do so but it can be done. There is a way to unlock and offset everything.
Matchmaking is far simpler on the lower level. The 1% is probably seriosuly skewed because its taken as a whole.
A simple strategy could be applied to inexperienced fighters to offset their opponent, but as you said, it gets more tricky with a fighter who can do more but there is always a way to do it.
Thats why I just laugh when people think boxers can just go out and fight on their own. Thats not how it works. The matchmaker, trainer and fighter are all crucial parts to the fight and they all have to be capable.

 

I think its right to say that the 'complete' or artistic fighters are very rare. Maybe the 1% that you talk about.
Lets conclude that the complete fighters are bloody hard to beat,and clever matchmakers/managers shoud steer their proteges away from them,in the early stages at least...

 

Being one dimensional is not necessarily a bad thing if your a master of it. Even one dimensional fighters make plenty of adjustments.

Marciano was one dimensional and we never saw him beat.

 

Yes. This is why i proposed a new category of artist for marciano,monzon,armstrong.
These guys mastered their particular style and used 'improvisations'/adjustments to impose that style.

 

It's a good thread. But it seems that mostly the folks being considered artists are the fighters with the kind of athleticism that allows them to get away with making unorthodox movements and showboating. It's the sweet science but not every boxer takes time to learn (or has someone to actually teach it properly) so they fall back on their athletic ability to overcompensate. There are folks also who are born fighters and do so many things in the ring with ease.

Charley Burley looks like a natural fighter who had a nice handle on the science.

 

I dont really look upon jones as an artist. Just one gifted with tremendous talent and athleticism,who perfected one unorthodox style.

 

Sure. Look at Mike Tyson for example going into the Carl Williams fight. Everyone and their mother knew the Truth was a sucker for a lefthook, so Tyson still came forward with his usual intensity, but he was looking to make Carl miss and then counter with the lefthook. With Holmes Tyson was using his right a lot, because he knew Larry carried his left a little low and hung his chin out.