What fighters from the era of 15 rounds were best at navigating through that and use the whole distance to win a fight?
Archie Moore ,as he aged was pretty adept at knowing when to coast and when to put his foot on the pedal.
He didn't even cross my mind the top 2 I thought of were Carlos Monzon and Alexis Arguello because of the way they made intelligent adjustments and set up there opponents to stop them late in the fight.
2piece, it's funny because I was going to start a thread called 'an attrition fighter'. You called it a '15 round navigator'. The same thing because we are talking about the fighter that thrived over the 15 round distance. The kind of fighter who possibly came from behind and doled out late round stoppages or just really put the hurt on from rounds 11-15. The fighters I thought of immediately were: Lupe Pintor Vicente Saldivar Alexis Arguello Eusebio Pedroza Matthew Saad Muhammad
I like Moore, throw in Ali. Ali was also was a master of knowing when to cruise and when to put to put his foot on the gas during a round . I wanted to give honorary mention to Sugar Ray Leonard for his masterful job of gamesmanship against Marvelous Hagler . . .but of course a key part of game was getting Hagler to agree to making it 12.
Gee...wasn't expecting to hear that from you. Good shout, though. I think the championship rounds of a hypothetical clash btx Sanchez and Pedroza would have been epic. They both liked to accelerate in the final third of a title fight.
I would throw Harry Greb into the argument. He had a penchant for coming on late in these longer fights. He was excellent at pacing himself.