Did Monzon deliberately foul Napoles?

Agree 100%. Excellent thread. Napoles was making Monzon look like an amateur at times until the cut appeared.

 

If you watch the 5th round, near the start, Monzon hits Napoles with a right hand almost side on that lands around the eye socket. That could have been what caused the damage.

 

Monzon picked up the pace in the 5th, then the fight began to resemble this...


[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8n0mgkaEGQc[/ame]

 

Monzon always enjoyed the swooping shots where the inside of the glove was exposed. It's easy to see how an accident like that could happen, but Napoles was getting cut-up also.

Jose did well in the early goings but he was fighting an unnatural fight, jumping out of his skin to get at the lanky Monzon; he could not have kept that up. Thumb or no thumb, Monzon would have continued to exact his physical superiority as the rounds went by.

 

Watch pretty much any Monzon fight and you'll see that this was around the time he started to find the timing. The early rounds were more or less to get a gauge and feel for his man's rhythm. I only scored the first round to Napoles last time I watched it, although I thought he did well enough throughout the first 4. At no time in the fight was he schooling Monzon.

 

Monzon had no need to deliberately foul Napoles to win. He was slowly. as usual and majestically just warming up to the task of stopping Napoles when Mantequilla retired wisely after the 6th. Monzon was a surprisingly fair fighter, his cruel nature considered..and was supremely arrogant and sure of his superiority over his opposition. I doubt that he intentionally fouled Jose..he would have scored a brutal and emphatic ko if they let the fight go on, thats for sure. This fight is often cited by modern day revisionists, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight as a case of the winning fighter being waaay too big for the other guy..but that's not the way it was looked at before that fight...many "experts" and that included the boxing media of course, thought that Napoles would be too fast and slick for the "slow, mechanical" Monzon...20/20 hindsight, like when the "experts" thought that Jeff Lacy would "crush" Joe Calzaghe...

 

Monzon did have a tendency not to care about where his right hands landed, whether it was flush on the chin or the back of the head. He took every target.

 

Apparently he kicked Napoles in the balls early in a clinch, but it is edited out of the films. How else would the overrated Monzon beat Napoles?

 

napoles just didn't have the firepower at this weight and Monzon was always a slow, measured starter(something i suppose could be argued might cost him in close fights with some other middleweight greats)who as bujia says picks up the pace around the 5th, where he usually starts letting the right go with greater frequency.

Napoles is always going to look really good defensively and land punches on you, but it looked to me like he had decided to go flat out from the start to have the success he did, while Monzon was taking it slow as usual, seemingly unconcerned with any offense Jose had.

I'd put the fight in a similar category to the Bogs defence or something like McCallum vs Kalule.In that one you have a dead at the weight kalule opting to go flat out and pressure, slipping tons of punches in a Napoles-esque manner and landing a good rate of what he throws, but the pucnhes have little on them...and Mccallum is taking it easy, using his physical advantages ala monzon, while looking to dial in the right hand and just cut loose with powershots, rather than using finesse where it isn't needed.Monzon basically did the same thing, and despite Napoles' extreme toughness it was starting to work horrifically well.

 

Thumbing opponents is an art form

 

What caused it was getting punched in the face.

Dundee is an old bull**** artist with a vested interest here.napoles was perfectly capable and experienced in fighting with different cuts.Maybe he did catch a freakish punch that harmed his sight directly, but it's tough to prove anything one way or the other.

 

Monzon wasn't a slow starter, XZarate is a slow starter if you want to watch pmes/

Zarate o for instance takes a while to adjust to the oppojent's output and to sit down on the power shots, justified or not. Monzon just fighttds boring the whole way through and maybe pounces on an opponent who would otherwise have jumped off a bridge around that time thus giving the impression that he was having mercy for the first few rounds.

In reality Napoles was a Lightweight througha nd through, never really a Wleter let alone a Middle. This is a lesser version of Durna/Hagler in terms of the outcome - the MW greats winning the fight but their P4P4 betters winning the event. Napoles made Monzon look like an idiot at times and that's what counts!