Did anyone see much of him in his prime?. Though destined to be totally forgotten, i found him to be a very talented fighter-certainly one of the prime examples of someone that wasted their career in recent years. He was an excellent technician with good mobility and excellent handspeed.Had a terrific one-two and lead left, with an excellent right uppercut at medium\close range.Could fight at any range well.Just a very fluid efficient fighter in general. Defensively was well schooled and a lot slicker than the other ex-Russian\soviet amatuer products like Tszyu and arbachakov, though his reflexes didn't quite seem to match his fundamentals here and he was not safety-first.Before or after countering he would often linger in punching range looking to slip 2 or 3 punches in whitaker or Locche-esque fashion and end up taking some punches he could have avoided.That may have been an issue against better fighters that would make rounds closer than they needed to be. Main knock against him woud obviously be his mostly sub-par competition which makes it tough to judge him overall.He also had a lot of injury problems and a relatively short prime because of turning pro quite late.The injuries meant he ended up slapping\pushing a lot more wiht his punches nearer the end of his reign, not unlike Calzaghe. Forget the Freitas cash-in fight btw.He was totally shot by that point, coming off more surgery and a long layoff, plus some outright gifts and struggles previously that showed he was finished. johnston, Mosley and him could have been in some very interesting fights.I've always viewed that period as a missed oppurtunity for the lightweights. The gift decision he got against Zegan in the fight before Freitas is up on youtube by the way, though it's hardly worthwile footage of the prime version.
Ashamed to say I haven't seen him fight, but if he did have the talent to mix it with the Mosleys and Johnstons then it's a crying shame he spent a career fighting mostly trash.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJkhGyf9Xok[YT][/YT] There's the start of the zegan fight.At the end of his career, but it's better than nothing i suppose.
i remember who he was although i have never seen him fight. the number of title defenses he had was incredable.
I used to enjoy getting his fights in on tape. You had to read flash to get the results of his bouts & then watch them later. I'm certain other managers and promoters around back then certainly knew who he was though. And there was never anyone calling him out or anyone signing contracts to fight the guy. He had a style that's very difficult to look good against and the guy knew how to box. The other thing with Gregorian was a skill for some reason that is always vastly underrated--he knew how to win. It seems like potential and other skills are far more respected than a guy that simply knows how to win. Grigorian was kind of a poor man's Nazarov. Not popular but nobody was putting their guy in with him either. He really was about 40% in that Frietas bout and I guess it was just a matter of getting him a big payday in what was going to be his final bout. He'd struggled with lots of guys other than Frietas and once that deterioration sets in, those lower weight classes really don't show much mercy, do they?
Yeah Mantequilla, i watched him when he was a world class operating 135 pounder, though unfortunately the only performance that really sticks out in my mind was the Freitas bout. I remember there was him, Daniel Santos and Antonio Margarito all holding wbo titles and you wanted them to be mixing it with top guys way more often cos you felt they could possibly do the business. From what i remember he was a stan-up type of boxer and had as you say very good fundamentals. Don't remember him all too well though unfortunately
