how do you rate his win over napoles? shutting out the reigning welterweight champ definitely adds a nice gem to his resume, but napoles weighed somewhere between 150-154 for that fight if i'm not mistaken. do you rate this win better than hagler's over duran? or hopkins's over dlh? i like monzon btw, and i'd like to get an opinion from a napoles fan
Well, as game as Napoles was,(and he was early on, I had him winning the first round) the size difference was so apparent in that fight. Hagler's size edge over Duran was not as obvious, though he was facing the smaller fighter. However, Monzon dominated Napoles for the last few rounds moreso than Hopkins did DLH, and especially Hagler did Duran. Napoles's great chin kept him in it, but the fight had to be stopped. Far too many flush shots. Good win for Monzon, though not as highly regarded because Napoles was so much smaller and had not accomplished anything at MW(and was past his prime). Still a more dominating win than any of the other top MW>WW wins, and Napoles looked better at MW than De La Hoya did for sure.
You think he is just a top 5 middleweight?:huh Kindly put up your top 5 160 pounders please. Monzon is god.
monzon was great. i reckon he had the style to beat hagler as well. shame marvin never got a crack in the mid 70's at carlos.
A hagler Monzon fight would be fantastic, I can't think of another middelweight fight in history that would beat it in terms of spectacle. Carlos would have to dig deep and graft like he did in the second Valdez fight, but he would weather an early storm in my opinion and win over 12. If it was 15 I could see Monzon having a 14th/15th round stoppage.
Most superficial boxing 'experts" don't appreciate Monzon's style, for one thing, and the fact that he was so unemotional in the ring for another. They prefer the flashy, exciting guys whose gifts burn out eventually and get their asses handed to them by guys that they would have blown out in their better days. Subtlety is lost on them, and I consider them to to be "know-nothings" about real greatness, even self-appointed 'sages" like Bert Sugar. Angelo Dindee, who knows something about great fighters, was Jose Napoles' conerman and trainer for the Monzon bout in '74, said after the fight that Monzon was one of the best he had ever seen, and referred to him as a "super-champion".
My apologies for my typo's. That's "Dundee", not Dindee. Anyway, it was the prevaing wisdom among the great minds in boxing at the time that Napoles would have outsped and outclassed Monzon as though he was just standing still. Even the crusty old ******* Mark Kram of Sports Illustrated totally shocked at how easily Monzon dominated Napoles, and it was pointed out that Monzon only began opening up on Jose with his right as late as the 6th round, and was in no hurry at all, and that he fought in a "regal" manner, just gradually beginning to bring out his big guns on Jose. It must be remembered that Napoles was seen as a very formidable fighter, so dominant as a welter king that he would have no trouble at all with the "slow" and "stiff" Monzon.