Best Plans That Lesser Fighters...

Jim Braddock's strategy against Max Baer. The plan used by Carlos Ortiz against Joe Brown when he won thw lightweight crown by 15 round decision. Ortiz pretty much just countered with the left, mostly the jab for 15 rounds as his strategy. Willie Pastrano used the battle plan of refusing to lead against Harold Johnson for 15 rounds, thus forcing on Johnson the unnatural role of the agggressor, while Willie boxed and moved and countered all night. Hugo Corro boxed, countered and stayed away from Rodrigo Valdez for 12 rounds, then in the last 3 rounds, suddenly switched roles and became the aggressor, finishing strong and winning the fight and the middleweight title by decision.

 

You just said that Ortiz was a lesser fighter against Brown, do you really believe that, or did you not mean it?

 

Good historical summary "Cobra".

Ralph "Tiger" Jones must have done something right against Ray Robinson in the mid-fifties too.

 

tommy morrison against big george.

 

The obvious for me is Norton's brilliantly laid out strategies vs Ali.

 

Plenty have and tried to get dirty to win the fight, particularly if the better fighter busted up easier than most....

 

I stand corrected on that. I got carried away and departed from the part that says..."lesser fighters etc',... I was thinking more on the lines of great strategies that certain fighters have used that ended up working, that led to victory. Of course Carlos Ortiz was a better fighter than Joe Brown. Wilie Pastrano was a specialist in that he was fast, defensive and had an excellent jab. Harold Johnson was a master technician and had more pop on his punches tham Willie, so let me qualify that one too. I guess Jim Braddock's strategy of boxing and relying on the jab worked against a superior fighter like Max Baer. I know a lot of you will denigrate Baer and say that he was not a superior fighter than Braddock, but I believe that Baer had inner problems that kept him from performing at a higher caliber, which he was capable of. I believe that if he just had the killer instinct for that fight with Braddock, like he had with Schmeling, Campbell and others, he would have clobbered Jim Braddock.

 

I also agree that Tommy Morrison fought his career best fight against Foreman, with his change in style, strategy and tactics, and that Ken Norton used clever tactics against Ali, and deserved to be crowned as champion when they fought in 1976.

 

Lloyd Honeyghan vs Donald Curry could possibly fall into this category.

 

Recently Campbell-Diaz.

 

Recentely I was very impressed at Carlos Quintana vs. Paul Williams. You can bet that, whoever (if anyone) beats Paul Williams in the future will have learnt a lot from Quintana's plan of focusing on counter-punching and moving against the taller boxer, like a high-speed version of Chagaev-Valuev.

Doug Jones vs. Ali. Jab and jab often and watch out for the jab coming back; it was the fundamental basis for Norton's winning approach. Jones certainly ran Ali a lot closer than anyone expected.

Oscar Bonavena vs. Joe Frazier. He VERY nearly won their first fight and in my opinion did very well in the second fight. He moved away from Joe without running, always making sure he was balanced enough to unleash some hard punches. Bonavena's strategy against Ali (drawing Ali into linear situations in the corner and then counter-punching) was also very clever.

Buster Mathis Jnr. vs. Mike Tyson. Right up until that one punch, Mathis was doing a great job of using a strategy very few people had thought of with Tyson: get CLOSE to him! He moved under Tyson's punches and crowded him; Tyson looked like an entire cow field that night. Holyfield's team learnt a lot from this fight: get too close to Tyson and you take away the space he needs to load up; be either too far away or too close and Tyson is no longer an unstoppable puncher.

On the subject of "too close or too far", you can't fault Jimmy Young's performance against George Foreman. Based on that fight alone, you'd have to think Young was an ATG. Young's footwork is BEAUTIFUL in that fight: always moving, never running; always on balance, always just out of range. Perfect footwork 101.

 

Griffin had Eddie Futch in his corner.

 

Eddie Futch was involved in a lot of great strategies in his time: Frazier-Ali, Norton-Ali, Bowe-Holyfield, Griffin-Jones... The man was a master. Only when his boxer didn't do as he told did he tend to lose fights.