Brian Viloria - "The Hawaiian Punch"

A very good fighter, honestly. One step below the 'elite' H2H level compared to a few peers. And he also had the misfortune of boxing an absolutely prime Chocolatito, though he gave a good account of himself.

Also one of the best rope slippers I've ever seen. Those vids of him training are an event in themselves!

 

If we had a forum for fighters who weren't necessarily great, just cool fighters of their time you might want to chat about, Viloria would be one of the guys I'd mention a lot. A distinguished and talented gentleman who should've been in a league of some sort.

 

I remember him having some hype because he was an Olympian, but basically failing to live up to it. And then he turned it around and had a high quality run way later when I’d forgotten about him.

 

Cool fighter, fun style, very good but shy of great. I watched his fight with Choco the other day as it happens, and yes he was brutalised but he took with it dignity and went down swinging. What more can you ask of an outgunned fighter?

 

Very good by the standard of the era, just a capable to good fighter in an all-time sense. Threw nice sharp punches most of the time and was a very good body puncher. Ballsy too.

He had around 240 amateur fights iirc before he'd turned 21 and turned pro with quite a bit of excessive hype, no doubt due to being a rare marketable sub-bantam American. He twatted about for too long at light-fly though when struggling to make the weight and was never a stamina machine anyway, tending to work sporadically and inconsistently throughout fights, which caused the listless upset defeats to Nino Romero and Sosa and the dramatic late collapse against Tamara.

He did really well to rally up at flyweight though and looked rejuvenated against Segura, Marquez etc throwing off the underachieving tag but inevitably falling short against Estrada and Gonzalez albeit in gutsy efforts both times. I actually thought he did well early to mid fight against Estrada before his lack of stamina/defence and Estradas own endurance nudged him in front towards the end.

He had some good early spells against Choco too stalking forward with quite a few good single shots but couldn't sustain it or slip/block much once Gonzalez started flowing and pushing him on the back foot where he was less capable.

I often wonder if he ever had his heart and head fully in things after the fight with Contreras where he badly hurt him and ended his career. It would partially explain why he skeepwalked through fights at times and seemed to be holding back.

 

Hawaiian Punch?

Andy Gannigan says ‘hold my pineapple.’

 

Yeah that lad could hit like a b*stard.