I've began tracking down some of Michael Moorer's fights as he was making a name for himself at Light Heavyweight. Just saw his professional debut, and now about to watch his fight with Frankie Swindle. What can people tell me about Double M? Did he really look the business at 175lbs, or did he benefit from fighting low level competition?
His competition wasn't all low level. Hassan was still a good fighter when he ushered in Moorer's reign; he'd deserved a bit better than the virtual shutout two judges scored against him in favor of Virgil Hill. It's a damn shame he and Spinks were about a decade out of alignment at their mutual premium weight. That would have been a sweet blend of styles. Of course, Michael would have won it.
I tend to think Spinks would land his jinx at one point or another, and Moorer doesn't have the punch resistance required to wade through it. That said, even if Moorer surprises us by taking a lot of punishment, I think Spinks has a better jab and would win most of his rounds on activity. Spinks punched with his opponents, whereas Moorer preferred to cover up and wait his turn.
His chin wasnt bad at LH. He had a lot of power and speed at that weight. He would have done well against a lot of LH's regardless of his comp. His chin and footwork were never sutied for heavyweight, but he still became a two time champ, not bad for a LH that didnt belong at heavy.
I´d love to see him a bit more at lhw. 5-6 years longer there and we could have seen him against Hill, Maske, Rocchigiani, Michaelchewski, perhaps even Jones Jr.
I was never impressed by him. Very limited offensively and porous defensively. Lacking in adaptability and physical strength in close. Better as a Heavyweight for my money, although he was never a truly elite fighter in my book. Too flawed.
Limited offensively? He had an excellent jab, could hook off his jab and had a wide variety of punches in his arsenal. His non limited offense is what often got him into trouble as much as his poor defense.
From what I've seen, Moorer was very simplistic with his offense in the sense that it mainly consisted of a right jab, straight left hand. Rarely hooked to the body, and I don't remember seeing him throwing to many uppercuts either. I came to these conclusions watching his professional debut, and his fights against Franke Swindle and Leslie Stewart. He seemed like a much better fighter as a Heavyweight with some in-fighting ability.
He had a stunner of a jab, but hardly a varied one. He needed the right kind of fighter (i.e. poor) to get it working against as well. He wasn't a master of controlling/creating the range with it, although that isn't a real fault, as it's one of the most difficult to master concepts in the sport, in my opinion. Outside of that, as Addie said, he mostly relied on the straight left down the pike as his money punch, rarely letting his hands loose unless he had an opponent hurt.
The Stewart fight shows a decent range of punches by Moorer. Swindel was a fat short guy who stayed outside very difficult to mix in much more especially a lead hook. Moorer often used his lead hand to hook. He fought very similarly as he did at heavy, maybe mixed in more uppercuts. Not much on youtube really. His defense did always suck [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkmyZhVXd_M&feature=related[/ame]
I'm not My2Sense. He has an account which he regularly posts with to this day if I'm not mistaken. What would be the point of dual accounts? Moorer had a fine jab, he just had a very basic set-up with little depth to his style, which could and would be exposed by the higher level fighters as it almost was on multiple occasions against the low level opposition he did face.
I think he looked largely like **** in the Stewart fight. That one above all really exposed his limitations, in my opinion.
