Biggest Boxing Lessions you've ever witnessed in a fight?

Floyd versus...well, most of his opponents i guess..
But the Canelo fight stands out. Levels.

Ali v Williams, Patterson, and Terrel

But for me the most terrifying, merciless beating I've watched was Mike Tyson dissecting Tyrell Biggs like a sadistic toddler tearing the legs off of an insect. Surgical dismantling and as awesome an example of controlled power and ferocity underpinned by malevolent intent as I've seen

 

Off top of head. Calzaghe vs Lacy, Hopkins vs Pavlik.

 

-Mayweather vs Gatti. Floyd beat the heck out of Gatti (RIP).
-Hamed vs Barrera. Barrera beat him like he stole something, put the arrogant sod in his little box.
-Hopkins vs Trinidad. Bernard boxed his brains off.
-Calzaghe vs Lacy. Joe beat the snot out of Jeff. Literally.

 

Calzaghe vs Lacy and Barrera vs Hamed.

 

Your family sound like my Uncle! He forced boxing on me and I also performed VHS recording duties! Longplay made my life a lot easier when it came along .

Yes I recall that interview with Marlon Starling in KO magazine when he said the decline of Curry was down to his 'wanting to fight everybody' rather than box. Ironically he could just as well.have been talking about Honeyghan.

What an unusual career Honeyghan had. A smart cagey boxer with terrific reflexes right up to the Curry fight. He adopted the guise of a remorseless slugger while neglecting his considerable boxing skills. All the while his hands deterioted. After the Breland beating he had a long layoff and came back as a slick fancy dan boxer ( albeit at British and Commonwealth level) . He was only really fighting for money and his punch power and reflexes were seriously compromised.

Just as sad to see Don Curry's fight with Emmet Linton which recently surfaced online.

 

W Klitschko vs Chagaev
V Klitschko vs Herbie Hide
Burns vs Mitchell
Froch vs Abraham
Bivol vs Ramirez
Bivol vs Alvarez
Lomachenko vs Walters
Breidis vs Charr
Malignaggi vs Senchenko

 

Yup, the days before the internet and Sky TV seem like caveman times now, with VHS, Boxing news, and KO magazine, along with the other American Magazines being 3-4 months behind the results. Nowadays, it's all instant gratification everywhere, especially with social media, and I think the current generation has lost something special in that mentality. It's also created a very toxic dynamic, as social media revolutionised the narcissistic supply for the needy attention-seeking types and trolls.

I was never that much of a fan of Honeyghan at his peak, probably because he beat Curry, but there is no denying he was a genuine undisputed champion. He cemented it with the defences against Bumphus, Hatcher, and Blocker, but he kind of got exposed against Vaca. Even in the rematch, had he not gotten Vaca out of there with the body shot, I think he was on the verge of punching himself out.

When Breland beat him and knocked him down all those times, I thought he was going to be the next superstar, as his style that night seemed impenetrable, then he got knocked out by Aaron Davis and faded away. Lloyd won me over, though, when he beat Mickey Hughes, who was coming off his one-punch knockout win over Gary Jacobs. After that, Pazienza and an up-and-coming Adrian Dodson, who underachieved in his career, used him as fodder.

I recall seeing Dodson, then Carew, win the ABAs, and he was on a different level all the way through that tournament. He beat Rob McCracken in the semis but stopped everyone else.

Curry ended up like so many, and he was one of my favourite fighters from that era, along with 84 Olympians Meldrick Taylor and Pernell Whitaker.

Nowadays though there is too much information, too many champions, and so on......

 

Superb post. It was more exciting back on this days when things were more hard to source and consume. My favourite era was the nineties when I first got Sky. It blew my mind.

 

Yup, Sky in the 90's was something else, even the complimentary free channels like Screensport aired weekly boxing shows from all over Europe. Sky Sports had Ringside, and back then the PPV cards were stacked; you'd have a British card as the precursor for the big US card, which was often a Don King card with 4 title fights or a big heavyweight showdown featuring Tyson or Lennox.

Plus it was a great era for British Boxing

 

I remember I was very surprised when Vernon Forrest completely outboxed then P4P1 Shane Mosley in their first fight. He did an absolute number on him, very impressive performance.

 

Yes over half a dozen title belts..like 30 years ago...only now they each have a interim regular, super,silver and gold champion, the British,European and Commonwealth titles are totally devalued. Old school trainers and skills are lost and I could go on.
Ive not followed the sport outside the Heavyweight division since 2013. Boxing really declined after the mid 2000's.

I think Honeyghans party lifestyle,his suffering a broken heart,and his chronically injured hands caught up with him. He was living in a sauna before the Breland humiliation.
Yes Vaca was a very tough durable man...he outlasted Breland and ended his career. I felt Jorge was lucky to win the title
Watched Donald Curry's v Lupe Acquino yesterday...it illustrated how when Don adopted that inside fighter all the time persona he lost a lot.

 

I agree boxing was so straightforward to follow years ago. Nowadays, it's oversaturated, and for me, social media took the soul out of the sport, with everyone trying to capitalise. Before, all you needed was a Boxing News and A Sky Subscription, and if you were a hardcore fan, you'd buy the monthly magazines, too. Plus, back then, the journalists had integrity; now, it's all clickbait and hustle culture.

Even with subscriptions to Sky and DAZN, you're not guaranteed to see all the big fights anymore because the promoters have their own TV deals, whereas before, at least with Sky and Terrestrial TV, you were not getting bled dry, and PPV was only a couple of times a year for stacked cards or the big Tyson/Heavyweight fights. Plus, Sky would often layer it with a UK card first; even the Turki cards are not as layered as the PPV cards of the mid-to-late 90s, aside from the recent one in February.

Now, with so much content, the quality has dropped, and any pleb with social media or a YouTube account and a phone believe they're an expert content maker. It's the same at the core of the sport too with multiple belts, etc., and Eddie Hearn literally being the Puffy Daddy of the sport in more ways than one.

With regard to Honeyghan, yeah, party lifestyle and bad hands caught up with him, but his win against Curry is still arguably the best win by a British boxer abroad, and his first loss with Vaca, you're right, was fortunate a technical decision.

With Don Curry, I really thought he was going to have a resurgence when he beat Rosi for the belt. He totally dominated him, and Rosi had been on a roll since being knocked out by Honeghan, and even later regained the title. Yet, Curry went and lost in his first defence to Rene Jacquot, and that was him done at a championship level. I thought he did well against Nunn, but he took a beating against Norris, who was a beast back then, albeit a vulnerable one, and look at Norris now; he's another with CTE who also got robbed of his money.

 

You nailed it

The TV situation is the biggest turn off. As a 13 year old in 1989 I could name all 57 main belt world champions. Now i couldnt name any titlists outside the HW & LH divisions.
Yes social media and boxing coverage are a bad combination but in this country the last 35 years...for bull**** and boxing mixing....we were always world leaders .....we pioneered the WBO ' world champions' who werent even top six in their own division eg Chris Eubank snr...and others who werent even top ten!!

The recent cynical attempt to nick and nudge his way to a world title by Hamza Sheeraz rather than 'fighting' for it is a modern day boxing thing.

The whole sport needs a revamp starting with getting rid of the stupid longwinded ring entrances and excrutiating longwinded ring announcenents where an old man loving the sound of his voice ( buffer) holds up the fight by giving the referee and sanctioning officials a mention for 15 minutes...the ludicrous restating the rules by the referee when the fighters have already had them in the dressing room......just get on with it like the UFC.

Id prefer it also if the loud between rounds music went and we returned to dimmed arenas with a spotlight on the ring.

 

My Grandad would have loved you; whenever Prince Naseem boxed and we watched a replay, he'd fast-forward his ring entrances. and turn the sound down during his post-fight interviews. Yet his wife, my Nan, loved Eubank's entrances and posturing.

I'm much like you. I think my peak boxing knowledge was around the late '80s and early '90s. I was like an encyclopaedia back then; the only thing I have maintained from that time is my Boxing News subscription. yet even with that, I am months behind on reading it, and now my subscriptions to Sky and DAZN don't even guarantee the best fights in Britain, let alone the world. Plus, I only follow a handful of people within the sport on social media and couldn't name the majority of the current British Champions, let alone all the world title belt holders.

And I avoid the vast majority of the saturated YouTuber's content which has just evolved into clickbait.

 

It wasn't a boxing lesson, it was an assault. Try to box properly when your opponent keeps hitting you low and headbutts you.