ive recently been seeing some more fights of him. and the nickname "bad" fitted him well,he was relentless and every punch he threw was meant to hurt the other guy hes one of my favs now. a thing i didnt knew before checking boxrec is that he fought George Benton in his second fight,cuban great Luiz Rodriguez in his third fight and drew with Carlos Monzon in his fourth fight thats insane such tough comp so early in his career. what do you guys think of this Philly legend?
No. You only read one page of his record. They were his twenty third, twenty fourth and twenty fifth fights.
He still fought an extremely impressive array of fighters. Monzon, Hagler, Griffith, Rodriguez, Valdez, Muhammad...
Briscoe was tough. But like all the Philly middleweights, he was overrated by American fans and writers. Monzon absolutely dominated him in their 1972 title fight. Watch the film. Valdes KO'd him. Briscoe in his prime was about as good as Hopkins. Not an elite middleweight.
He reminds me of a Yaqi Lopez (not as much in style as accomplishment and legacy)...Good fighter got opportunities and came up short in the biggest stage... Very under rated very underappreciated...but still celebrated in PHILLY BOY!
I like Briscoe but am not blind in judgement of him...Like all Philly Phighters I cheer him....But he is not in the class of Hopkins...I think you sell B-Hop a little short in this one...But back to Briscoe Monzon dominated but ccould only earn a draw years earlier...dre w/ Griffith wins against Mundine, Rondan, Benton & EM MUhammad...Not over rated by any stretch..perhaps not elite but very good...perhaps the best of the runner ups...
The second Monzon-Briscoe fight, were it available somewhere, would be fascinating, because from what I've read about it, was Monzon at his very best, at his peak, and was actually the fight where Monzon went beyong just a very good champion, and became a great champion. The report of the fight was in a 1972 edition of Boxing Illustrated, and it reports a fascinating, tactical type fight from Monzon, who avoided a ko in the 10th round, and showed a grat chin and defensive smarts and ring generalship in the process. Where Monzon became great, was in taking the fight offensively to Briscoe in the last 5 rounds, like a man, and actally nearly decking Bennie in the 14th round with some big right hands. If there was a tape of the fight somewhere, it would have shown Monzon to have compared to Ali in the 3rd fight with Frazier. It was that big and impressive a win for Monzon against a guy who would have ko'd anybody else that night and would have been a champion.
Personally i like bennie briscoe too, but yaqi has wins over rossman, mike quarry and several other light heavyweights, i think he would rate higher.
