Best boxing minds.

james toney in his prime.......lennox is a good shout too...

 

I take it you have a notepad on your desktop to copy/paste those things from to save time.

 

Rocky Marciano- Knew his weaknesses , knew that he could never take a step back in a fight because of his physical disadvantages..

James Toney- Master at playing mind games and trying to get inside his opponents head.

Roberto Duran, Bernard Hopkins, Muhammad Ali, alot of the others previously mentioned.

 

Rocky Marciano.

Gene Tunney.

Evander Holyfield.

 

It is bizare that people are mentioning Rocky Marciano but they might be on to something.

 

I don't know about Holyfield and De La Hoya being named. Part of having a good boxing mind is knowing when to do certain things and when not to. Too often for Holyfield, the time to brawl was "right now". Cost him against Bowe and nearly against Cooper. De La Hoya's made too many tactical errors for me to put him up there.

Guys like PBF and Hopkins stand out among recent years.

 

Srl

 

I could not disagree more.

"Un-robotic" is not a measure of mental prowess. Arguello, Monzon, and Ortiz could look pretty robotic in there and no one would question their genius. Louis was the original "killer robot"... Jones' was an athletic marvel and every bit of his strategy revolved around his physical gifts. He was beautiful with making a man miss by timing the incoming shots and then slamming home a return, but that isn't mental fortitude.

Jones still has above average athleticism in the ring. During his prime, his speed, reflexes, and timing were so far beyond the average fighter that the faintest slippage had people believing he was "shot". When has Jones ever been outgunned? He has never met a fighter faster than him and I'm not sure that even Ruiz would match the force of Jones' shots due to the speed and leverage that he showed. He stunned Ruiz early.

The point is that I'm not sure that you can really measure superior mental prowess if he was not forced to make adjustments because he was out-maneuvered or outsped. Jones did in fact have strategic problems with Futch's puppet strings on Griffin -and he had no effective answers -and he hit him when he was down out of frustration. I saw nothing that you would call tactical adjustments. McCallum was his techical superior and Jones never dueled with him for any length of time inside. He did what he does -outspeeded him and potshoted him.

Jones eaked by against Tarver the first time (although I thought he safely won), got wrecked in the rematch, and lost the rubber match handily. What adjustments did he make?

Genious is best measured A.) when a man is outgunned and has no business winning and B.) when the gifts of youth have deteriorated...the fighter is forced in these situations to rely on guile and strategy and we can isolate these from other things. Think Duran-Barkley, not Jones-Pazienza.

Jones doesn't fit here with the likes of Moore, Duran, Ali, either of the great Leonards, or even Hopkins (though I think he'd beat Hopkins always, prime for prime).

 

????

 

Arguello immediately comes to mind. He knew far more than just which punch was the right one to throw at a given moment, or which sequence of punches were best. To give him credit for just that is to do him a terrible injustice.

He knew as well as anyone in history how to gauge the ebb and flow of a fight; when to back off, when to accelerate, how to read an opponent and be able to take advantage of the smallest weakness. He was brilliant.

 

In no paticular order:

Gene Tunney
Billy Conn
Jim Corbett
Benny Leonard
Willie Pep
Archie Moore
Tommy Loughran
Maxie Rosenbloom. Thanks.

 

What happened the other 100 years of recent boxing history?....those boxers not smart?

 

I strongly disagree with what seems like a great choice. Will to win is something I categorize separately. It is with heart / spirit. "Mind", I categorize with ability to employ strategic tactics and remain INTELLIGENT about the goal. He lost that Sugar Ray Leonard fight because his heart & spirit was channeled into anger but he fought with very poor strategy IMO - that's not showing a great "mind". He should have controlled his temper more and fought with his brain. I know it happens to the best of them (Holy against Bowe in fight 1), but Hagler did this many times (and got away with it because he was, well, Hagler) but it showed against Leonard. Leonard showed a clever mind by "slapping Hagler" a lot and scoring points while Hagler went for the powerful, meaningful punches (not as easy to land) in constant pursuit and didn't score as many points - very courageous and willful but far from disciplined and clever. Hagler fans who give the fight to Marvin clearly give weight to his meaningful shots and ignore the flurry of slaps that got commentators excited - but it doesn't work that way with many judges!

My vote goes to Monzon #1, by far.

Runner ups: Ali, Holyfield, Leonard, Louis.

I almost want to tag Joe Frazier in there for his great understanding of working the body and going for the head later (tough to understand and discipline yourself!!!) and for adjusting himself for the second Foreman fight and doing so much better but being shot at that point and not having a GRANITE chin.

 

Arguably, dirty fighters are smart fighters. Used at the right time and only as necessary to gain or regain an advantage it shows ring savvy.

In recent years I'd give nods to Bernard Hopkins, Evander Holyfield and Felix Trinidad for most effective use of marginal and even outright dirty tricks without being DQ'd.

Hopkins would use elbows, head butts, low blows, stepping on the opponent's feet, wrestling, the whole arsenal. But he knew when to stop using a particular tactic and switch to another.

Holyfield is infamous for head butting and making it look accidental. He's such a nice guy you just can't imagine he'd do that out of meanness!

Trinidad would use low blows to give himself time to recover after being knocked down. Very smart trick. Even if a point is deducted he still gets the extra time to recover.

Floyd Mayweather constantly uses his elbows and forearms to batter opponents' faces and rarely gets called on it.

When boxers I like are subjected to dirty tricks it infuriates me. When they don't retaliate it irritates me. Frankly, I gotta admit, if I was a trainer I'd school my fighters in the art of tactical dirty fighting for use only in emergencies. Hey, sometimes the incompetent referee doesn't give your fighter a fair shot, gotta do something.

Best boxing mind overall today? Big George Foreman. This is prolly gonna sound silly but despite the John Madden-like babbling, George knows boxing and has insights seldom heard from others, especially the doofuses who plague HBO.