Benny Leonard vs Vasyl Lomachenko primes

You’re so far in one camp you can’t even conceive of a balanced view, can you? It’s just you against the old-timers.

 

He is a better amateur than Benny Leonard. Fighting 3 rounds with helmuts, bigger gloves and 1 point for simply touching, he beats Benny Leonard.

 

Do you think Loma is one of the greats? Comparable to Benny Leonard?

 

Your framing not mine I try to be balanced when I can but the amount that old timers look down on modern fighters and glaze old timers makes it hard to be balanced

 

What was so sophisticated about what teo did to Loma? he controlled him for 2/3 of their fight w/ a fast right hand & some rudimentary boxing skills, both of which Leonard had in abundance.

 

Amateur programs of the time also seem pretty overlooked, it existed and many amateurs did have steadily documented careers. Jimmy Britt and Jack Munroe were pretty accomplished amateurs iirc, however it seems like the ‘amateur experience’ for most guys was having hundreds of pro fights lol, which I think is definitely comparable experience wise to Loma having like 400 amateur fights.

In fact, in a weird way, you can kind of compare Loma, Beterbiev and Usyk to dudes like Sullivan, Jeffries, Corbett in the sense that most of their experience came from 4 round scientific exhibitions/disguised fights, but didn’t really have that many pro fights.

 

I was talking purely in terms of amateurs where Loma is legit one of if not the best amateurs ever in pros while he's a very good boxer and would give any boxer a tough time H2H he obviously does not have the resume to be one of the greats compared to Leonard who is probably at least top 20 maybe even top 10

 

Leonard.

 

For whatever that counts towards? I will say YES Loma is maybe one of the best amateurs but only a good pro, it’s all relative - today he is one of the best pros around. For his “weight class” though… Loma isn’t special in its history not at all, Charles weighed 40lbs heavier and boxed much better, Conn, Tunney, Gibbons… We’ve seen Loma fight in this time, he's got nothing to be ashamed of but doesn’t compare with men like Leonard as boxers - he wouldn’t be giving any of those top fighters at 135lbs in Leonard’s time or decades afterwards “tough times” no sir. This age we have fighters with endless amateur bouts and few pro fights the amateurs aren’t an experience to build a professional it is a different world.
Now many come out of the AM’s with a rigid style after many years there, they don’t abandon it because they don’t get enough exp to develop into a true professional.

 

Yeah, and since then great amateurs like Buster Mathis were just that, great amateurs... if they make it in the pros too, great!
Lomachenko chose to be one of the ATG amateurs. He needs to be ranked there, his style (and the one of Usyk and some of the cubans) are a problem though in my humble opinion, they came up in a era where the amateur rules was very different than the pros with the machine counting touches...

 

I would disagree Loma would give any man his size and even some bigger then him tough fights including Leonard

 

No, it’s your framing. I commented on the evolution BS you cited. You’re the one who implied there are only recency & old-timer views. Check my history, I pick fighters across all ranges.

 

No

 

I agree all of these look good and def has shades of the modern style but they look kinda like rudimentary versions of modern boxing someone like Ali or Robinson looked a lot more fluid with a similar kind of style at least to my eye but I could be wrong I'm not an expert.

That's my point Loma has shown he can overcome pretty large size differences and we can both admit size matters, so I think fighters who are the same size or smaller (Leonard was a bit shorter then Loma) wouldn't be as hard for him to overcome but obviously that's just one factor.

'He did have some difficulty with it in the first fight but adapted well but again I don't think think Tendler compares well to modern southpaws who are much better and more fluid as well as much better at southpaw things like hand fighting and establishing foot position.'

Sure and Loma has done the same making good opponents look basic but like I said I think we can both agree southpaws are more advance today then they were in the past.
'Name a single boxer in Leonard's time who had this "Russian aristoricratic style" Soviet style is unique and you didn't really get to see it in the pro league until the fall of the USSR., you're making a huge assumption here of which there is 0 proof'

Well afaik he only fought Americans maybe a Brit or two. It also seems you're not super knowledge on the Soviet school which is understandable, it was an invention of the Soviet Union there wasn't really much of a boxing history in Russia before that, it was seen as a Western sport and not really embraced until the Soviet Union created boxing state programs in 1930s and it was in the 1950s that Soviet boxers started taking over and showing the success of these programs and these programs later spread to countries like Cuba and other Eastern bloc countries which we see now with the rise of great boxers from Ukraine and recently Uzbekistan

'I think it would Johnny Dundee might have similar attributes (of which I doubt tbh but lets say we agree) he did not have Loma's style or technique which is unique to him and you can't just assume that because Leonard can deal with someone like Dundee he can deal with Loma that's not how boxing works Loma would be something completely unique and not something Leonard is used to dealing with.'

Perhaps but watching the footage of him (and its hard to judge how good he was with the footage) he doesn't look anything like Loma nor would I say his footwork or handspeed is as good but that's just my perspective

His speed, his feints, his footwork, his defense, his pressure, how he string together combinations etc I don't see any boxer from that era who has a similar style the closest is maybe Pacquiao who is also a modern fighter.

 

Okay enjoy being wrong then