Canto or Zapata

Canto was clearly the better offensive fighter. Zapata was maybe stylistically more creative (think a cross between Whitaker and Pedroza) but Canto let his hands go a lot more and with greater effect.

I think they are different levels of fighter, with Canto clearly being the better.

 

It may take a while to do Cobra, but I'll eventually do it. Probably won't be for a couple of weeks though. I'll try and get around to it though.

 

Cheers man. I pick up bits here and there, whether it be downloading them from boxing torrents or trading with mates.

 

I'm not suggesting that Zapata was in Whitaker's class, but just from an aesthetic standpoint, he was an even more beautiful boxer. He was roughly 30 lbs lighter and up on his toes a lot, beautiful footwork. Like a lot of the Panamanians (young Duran, Laguna, Pedroza, Marcel) he had that rythmic upper body movement. Beautiful fighter who couldn't break an egg.
Canto is a master in his own right, great counter puncher, beautiful left hook. I agree that he was a level above Zapata. Purely from an aesthetic standpoint, I liked watching Zapata a little more.

 

Sweet, keep in mind most of the fights you've seen of zapata were against Bassa and Chang, who were excellent fighters in their own right.The bassa fights coming right at hte end of zapata's prime...about relative to when Canto was fighting Park and Vargas.Bassa had great technical chops in own right.

imo, i've little doubt that Chang would have beaten Canto as well.I don't think there has been a flyweight since Harada that would be favoured over the korean at his best.

That said, i think Canto was clearly the greater fighter overall.he was sturdier, with far more focus and steadyness about him.Always in shape compared to zapata and giving 100%.he'd never be caught clowning around or quit for instance.His long title reign against good opposition more or less makes him the Joe Louis of the Flyweights in a sense.

I expect if you put them both in against all the other notable flyweights he would have less WTF performances and generally maintain a more consistent level than zapata would.

On the other and i can't see canto winning head to head.he's a midget even for a flyweight- generally at a significant pyhsical disadvantage.

zapata was huge and extremely quick of foot.he'd find it a lot easier to shut down Canto's offense than vice versa.A slight half step back when canto moves in to jab or counterwould take him easily out of range, then let one of those very long straight lefts or uppercuts go.I don't agree that the difference is so big offensively between the two, though Canto was definitely more consistent in putting his punches together.

I tend to think Canto's lack of size combined with his versatility would cos him against a lot of the great borderline\great Flyweights actually, despite his immense skill.I rate him higher on accomplishments than pure head to head ability.

 

Over the last day I've had a look at a couple of fights in Zapata's prime against Santos Laciar and German Torres, and I'd say he was closer to his prime in the Bassa fights than what Canto was in the Park fights - well at least in the first Park fight that I've seen. Supposedly Canto does much better in the rematch.

Perhaps. His speed and pressure would be nightmares for Canto, but I still wouldn't count him out. Canto was great at counter punching and Chang would give him plenty of chances for that, even though Canto probably wouldn't be able to keep him off him.

Agree totally with that.

I've got to disagree here. After watching and scoring Zapata-Laciar, I thought Zapata lost to Laciar by a point, and Laciar is every bit the midget that Canto was.

Canto and Laciar have different styles of fighting of course, (Laciar being a more aggressive sort, Canto being more the counter puncher) but Canto could still fight in an aggressive manner when he had to, as he has shown against Oguma and even Park (not succesfully in the first fight, but moreso in the rematch). He's never done it against a defensive specialist though like Zapata, and he may struggle to close the range, but I think he could employ similar tactics to Laciar, (fighting cautiously then feinting and quickly rushing with a body attack) to get inside and work Zapata over for a close points win.

Zapata, for as good as his defese was, was still quite hittable imo. He put on a dominant display against German Torres, who is a kind of orthodox flyweight version of Jose Luis Ramirez, but even Torres with his slow looping punches was catching him, especially in the second half of the fight. Canto will be able to hit Zapata more often than not when he intends to, in my opinion.

As to Canto struggling because of his height with other Flyweights, I'm not so sure he would. Which flyweights in particular do you see him struggling against? He sure didn't struggle with Betulio Gonzalez, who had a fair height for the weight. The second fight against Betulio was a wonderful schooling of a very good fighter and the third wasn't much different.

 

Couple of weeks, couple of days, who's counting?

Here's a clip I slapped together of Zapata featuring his fights with Chang, Torres and Bassa. Sorry that the quality of the first Bassa fight came out shithouse.

But check for the cheeky little **** in Bassa's corner around the 5 and a half minute mark that pulls Zapata's leg out from under him when he's in the corner .

Without further ado, Viva Zapata!

[YT]SPkh4t1XU30[/YT]

 

I think the park and Bassa fights are very similar in terms of where each fighter was in his career.Both struggled against a very talented opponent but came back to look good and arguably win the rematch for a last hurrah.

I think highly of Park-a lightning quick master boxer-puncher, but he was a headcase with severe dedication,stamina, heart and durability issues.he wanted to quit in the late rounds of the canto rematch of instance, despite not being in any danger.It was his own mental issues and turning up out of shape that allowed canto to do better in the rematch, and also what allowed the significantly lesser talent Oguma to win their trilogy.

I tend to think a lot of what threw canto's timing of in that first fight was park's superior speed and offense simply being too much for him ala benitez against Leonard.I tend to see Park doing really well against most of the more passive technical flyweights though, so that's not a knock on canto.

As far as canto head to head goes, i still rate him very highly, but on a pure head to head list i might favour between 10-15 flyweights over him, whereas all things considered i think he's among the best five or so flyweights.

I doubt he would have reigned at all had Ohba not been killed, though Ohba had his own flaws and was on a similar level overall.Chang imo was flat out better than any of these fighters being discussed, the best fighter around this weightclass head to head since harada.his lack of dedication and Benitez-esque early fading is the only thing that holds him back in my eyes.

The problem i see Canto having with him is that not only is Chang quicker of hand and foot than him, but he also has terrific reflexes and intuitive radar of his right..if not quite as schooled about it as someone like Duran.he rarely got caught flush in his prime unless he was treating the opponent with disdain.

He would be able to box with Canto on the outside simply because of his athleticism, while closing the gap so quickly that Canto would have to play defence a bit too much imo.He will hit Chang but nothing he throws is going to bother him in the slightest.I see the fight unfolding in a Duran vs Buchanan manner, even if the styles are different here.Canto will look really good and score his shots, but will get hit a lot more than usual and beaten to the punch repeatedly.Chang's awkward unorthodox attacks are likely knock Canto's rhythm out more so than his more textbook skills will do to Chang.

Again this isn't a knock on Canto though, as i don't think there's been a pure boxer\defensive specialist that wouldn't struggle massively win or lose against a Chang.He's the right kind of swarmer to give these fighters fits.

I don't agree with most of the things you say about Zapata, especially on the Torres fight which i thought was thoroughly dominant, plus i thought he beat santos by a few points ina tough fight.Laciar's offense is nothing like canto's however, he liked to bullrush fighters throwing a lot awkward, accurate teelgraphed shots in bunches.A typical varied argentinian slugging style like Ahumada or Earlier Galindez.If anything he's a lot closer to Chang offensively than Canto.

It's miguel's very regimented classic style when allied to his height and reach that will give him problems imo.His offensive style i thnk would be alot easier to work around for zapata than awkward unorthodox guys like Chang are.Quite similar to the way Park was able to anticipate him and use his superior physical ability.You can say the same to an extent about zapata's shots for canto of course; the difference i see it is zapata will be operating from a much larger comfort zone.

I'm not sure you should be considering him if a good defensive fighter at all to be honest if you think he's quite hittable.Probably just semantics, but that to me suggests someone like Shane Mosley or Yuri Arbachakov to name but two.But if you aren't impressed, you aren't impressed.

Zapata can be a bit smug and disfainful at times, a bit like michael nunn ot a much lesser extent.He's still rarely ever hit twice in a row or with anything too meaningful imo.

 

Speed is always an issue for an older fighter though. It's the one thing above anything else that old fighters have trouble dealing with. Even quick fighters themselves, like Ray Leonard for example, had a world of trouble against Terry Norris' speed because of his aging. Not saying Canto was as far gone as Ray was of course, but I am implying that age had a lot to do with Canto's struggles with Park. Of course, I've never seen Canto in his prime against a really speedy fighter to tell whether it was just a style thing or an age thing, but I do know that he was starting to look a bit shopworn so early as the Vargas bout and looked quite a bit slower against Park than he had in the performances against Gonzalez, for example.

With Zapata against Bassa, I still felt Zapata was rather sharp, relatively speaking, as can be evinced by the highlight clip I supplied above.

Chang would be a difficult proposition for sure, but I would like to see a bit more of Canto in against a similar type in his prime before I write off his chances completely. He did handle pressure fighters very well in his prime on the whole from what I've seen, though I haven't seen him in with any speedy explosive ones with the radar of a Chang obviously.

That's true about Laciar being closer to Chang than Canto, but Laciar's lack of height certainly didn't appear much of a hindrance to him in the Zapata fight to me. It was his bull rushes that compensated for that of course, but I think Canto, though in a slightly different way, could close the distance on Zapata with his own good defensive movement and go to work on Zapata on the inside.

On Zapata Torres, don't get me wrong, it was a dominant display, I said that myself, by far the most convincing performance I've seen of Zapata's, but he still was getting hit in the second half of the fight with some good clean body and head shots.

I think Zapata is very good at dodging punches, that's obviously true, but he is so passive at times that others just can freely unload on him in rapid fire wthout fear of the consequences, and though they'll miss 5 or 6 punches, they'll land one or two.

It's his passivity more than anything that makes him get hit. He doesn't make the other man respect him enough wiht his offense, and often gets outworked and oulanded in fights. That's certainly been the trend I've seen in watching his fights with Bassa, Laciar and Chang, all of which I've felt he's come up short in.

He is a very skilful fighter and can throw some beautiful punches too, it's just that he rarely does it enough from what I've seen, and gives less talented guys like Laciar and Bassa cahnces to steal fights.

 

Good stuff sweet:good.

i don't think we are all that far away really in our opinion on him(i've likely taken your criticism as harsher than it was intended), though i did think he beat Laciar and id enough to take the Bassa rematch.No argument he should have lost to Chang.

I think his flaws are quite similar to Locche and starling in the way he will focus on defence too often.Starling was the worst at it, losing\making close a number of fights he should have won comfortably.

Canto at his best would probaly beat park more often than not, as Chan-hee always fades after about ten rounds.Park is the kind of fighter that wil always be good for the odd spectacular performance though, as Guty espadas will attest to.

 

:good

I don't deny Zapata has oodles of talent Mantequilla. If he had a bit more **** in him, like a Pedroza, he would have been a great, great fighter. I felt his passivity cost him in some fights, but all the same he does have an argument for beating Laciar and Bassa, and that in itself speaks volumes for how talented he is, if he could match such aggressive fighters with minimal offense.