Was having fun reading an hypothetical prime Chavez sr. vs prime Floyd Mayweather jr. thread and some user pointed out how Chavez could have won by cutting the ring and not letting him one sec. to breathe. Hell, Oscar had some moderate success by using a very similar match plan and cornering TBE, Castillo was Julio's sparring partner and caused some issues early in the rematch too so I think if anyone could apply it to Mayweather it would be the mexican legend. Also, despite obviously havin' a different style, Cotto chose to stalk Money with a high guard, mostly unsucessfully with rare bursts of nice chops until he broke his nose. Now, if the Winky Wright match happened, could Winky, a way more experienced defensive high guard user snatch Pretty Boy's zero or he would have been dismantled like Cotto? Another similar and interesting discussion that I read here (which personally I disagree with), would be that Holmes had the correct gameplan to outsmart Tyson but simply couldn't deal with him because he was outta of his peak. You could argue that it was the blueprint for the infamous Douglas upset years later in Tokyo tho. Any other examples of this?
Lewis-Tyson-smother him until he was gassed from having a giant draped over you and then beat the Hell our of him.
This is a great thread but I feel like, unfortunately, we don´t have acess to the gameplans really to give a good answer to this. Maidana proved that overhand rights can do well against Floyd, which is a reason I believe Chavez would beat Floyd (Floyd getting hit by overhand has nothing to do with him being past prime, it is a punch for which he had no defense). Maybe Hatton could have done it more ? But could he ?
This doesn’t necessarily fit the thread, but it reminds me of when Andre Berto attempted to use the half guard / Philly shell for a fight or two…. I’m not sure what he was thinking, but it made him look like he forgot how to fight.
You wanted to "be Mayweather," I think. You know, the same approach that ultimately sunk Broner's career as well.
