Billy Graham - please stop talking nonsense

Hmmm... am I getting a feeling of Deja Vu here or what? A certain poster claims that a Hatton opponent wasn't ranked at the time they fought then claims it was a mistake but he shouldn't have been ranked.

Firstly, Ring p4p list from January 2007 a few months before the Hatton-Castillo fight:

http://www.doghouseboxing.com/chee/cheering_011107.htm

Secondly, Castillo's record:

http://www.boxrec.com/list_bouts.php?human_id=8837&cat=boxer

As you will see Castillo came to prominence in the early 00s beating fringe pound for pounder Stevie Johnston. He then racked up wins over prime Casamayor, Juan Diaz, Lazcano and Cesar Bazan amongst others if you don't know who these fighters are I suuggest looking them up? Gave a prime Mayweather at his peak weight the two hardest fights of his career, split the two bouts with Corrales (a conclusive avenging KO in the rematch). Mayweather and Corrales were the only two fighters to beat him in over ten years. Castillo was a legitimate pound for pound beast.

But then again, I guess he only got put into the ratings cos he was about to fight Hatton and Golden Boy who are Hatton's mates own the Ring. ;-)

 

Not true.

He ran Mayweather close and many ppl feel he won the 1st fight.

He beat world class Cesar Bazan in a great fight, and got the better of excellent Stevie Johnston over 2 fights.

He had a terrific run in 2004, beating Julio Diaz, Juan Lazcano and Joel Casamayor in consecutive fights.

Heck, in the 1990s he had great fights for the Mexican super featherweight title, vs Julio Alvarez and Javier Jauregei.

Castillo will be remembered for many things, prior to Corrales cheating, and cheating vs Corrales; Hatton, not making weight, etc etc. He was a superb, elite level pressure fighter.

I don't even like him being called a poor man's Chavez. He didn't have Chavez's head movement because he's tall for his weight. Castillo was great at breaking down faster fighters, knew how to parry punches, was very calm and clever and hurtful in the ring.

He was defnitely well past it vs Hatton, though.

 

Graham was part of a major time in Manchester boxing. Manchester became the fight capitol of Britain with guys like Bingham, Foster Jr, Carl Thompson, Gomez. I think he deserves props for this. He helped shape a lot of compact, hard hitting fighters who seemed to base their styles more on Mexican boxers.

It seems that perhaps when he stuck with Hatton, who got some big fights and massive paydays, that by doing the same thing, he and Hatton almost seemed to become parodies of themselves. I don't know, I'm not trying to be nasty or anything. You can't argue with the success they had, and the Hatton brand sells, but post Tszyu things seemed to unravel a bit.

Probably the insular nature of British boxing, with its Inrernational/Interim/Fringe belts, the big home crowds, milking all that to death seemed to use up a lot of Hatton's prime. On his day, Hatton was a very hard fighter to live with, very fit & fast.