Cuevas vs. Napoles

napoles by stoppage around the 10th round

 

How can you be dominant without fighting the no.1?

 

The Ring's Welterweight Rankings:

1977:
WWC: Carlos Palomino
#1: Pipino Cuevas
#2: Pete Ranzany
#3: Randy Shields

1978:
WWC: Carlos Palomino
#1: Pipino Cuevas
#2: Clyde Gray
#3: Ray Leonard

1979:
WWC: Ray Leonard
#1: Wilfred Benitez
#2: Pipino Cuevas
#3: Roberto Duran
#4: Thomas Hearns

1980:
WWC: Ray Leonard
#1: Thomas Hearns
#2: Wilfred Benitez
#3: Pipino Cuevas
#4: Roberto Duran

1981:
WWC: Ray Leonard
#1: Thomas Hearns
#2: Roger Stafford
#3: Pipino Cuevas
#4: Roberto Duran

 

I find it very amusing that Leonard managed to beat Benitez in November of '79, lose the title in June '80 and take it back in November that year thereby denying them both the opportunity to be rated as champion for the year-end ratings. Just winning every damn thing.. If he'd waited until '83 to announce his retirement, he wouldve also been recognized as champion for the previous year, which he certainly was anyway. Reads vacated.

So, over the course of 22 months Leonard beat three hall of famers and a fourth lineal champ in a higher weight class with a combined record of 178-1-1.

Marvin needed that so much more, and SRL even stole that.

 

I favor Cuevas to KO or TKO anyone south of 147 that he can hit.

But he can't hit Napoles, at least not enough...

Nap here by UD or late TKO

 

Cuevas would be painfully outclassed..no contest.

 

I've been reevaluating cuevas this past week in some detail actually and i've concluded he never was as good as palomino.

He was rightly ranked behind him in each of their professional years because I don't see a time when the converse could be true.

There was a spell when carlos had a 9 month absence and depending on your view of that depends on whether you think cuevas overtook him in the final year of their championship reign.

So my final conclusion on him is he was never ever the best ww although that man rose from his ashes in tommy hearns imo.

Napoles was undoubtedly the top ww of his time and was it not for his paper skin he'd have been the top lww for a longer period of time also.

On a p4p scale these two are eons apart. The only advantage pipino has is maybe the fear factor because he was quite a scary force in his prime. Still napoles was a class above and whilst he wouldn't bomb him out as hearns did, he would have outclassed him imo.

A palomino- cuevas showdown would be much more interesting imo.

 

Palomino-Cuevas is something that I always wanted to see, and would have sprung the cash to travel and see it live.

I'd always favoured Palomino though, and I think Napoles was even classier with his skills than Carlos.

He quite easily outclasses Pipino, who never had much real skill, just a great punch and the mad aggression to go out and land it. Power like that, mixed with an attitude like that, and you can beat a whole lot of guys out there, and maybe score a flukey win or two because of them, but agains the top shelf fighters, you'll find yourself beaten easily.

I learned that lesson personally as an amateur. I beat everybody but the other guys who beat everybody. And they usually handed me my ass. Pipino is the same way.

 

Amen to that!!

 

Most would probably say Cuevas never overtook him, as it was Palomino who took the lineal title from Stracey. He was still one of the top welterweights in a talent stacked division though, never falling lower than #3 through 1981.

 

The lineal title is a different concept from deciding who the best is at a given point in time and one of the prime examples of that is arguello and his phenomenal run at sfw.

He might not have dropped below number 3 but he was never number 1 and there's something special about a fighter who can turn around and say confidently "i am the best in the world"

A good ww, just not a great one in my books. Maybe one of the very best good ww's though.

 

Fair enough.