Edwin Rosario_How good was he?

He was heavy handed and could obviously punch, but I would not rank him as a "great".
A puncher who had his moments, but did not really have much of a style, and his chin wasn't all that great.

 

He did, he seemed to float around the ring, kind of similar to Gomez.

 

I will be the contrarian here.

I have never liked the elbows out guys defensively. Whatsover. Probably the best of that style was Gomez. But they do end up meeting someone that exploits that defense & do so rather easily.

But guys like Tszyu and Rosario and so on..........man I do not like that right hand up high and way way out to the side. Very effective for offense but they do meet opponents that exploit that arm placement. And they get hit clean. Going to have to have some Duran type boxing radar to not get hit with clean right hands. And we are talking clean right hands. And just how many guys have great radar anyway? I just think boxing radar is a necessity for hand placement like that.

Everyone liked that blowout of Bramble. But just how good was Bramble anyway? Anyone really think He was going to have like 3 successful title defenses? The win over Mancini was really nice but that was another guy that was never going to have a bunch of title defenses himself. But Bramble was going to lose that title before 2 years were up and if it wasn't Rosario, someone else would have. But a nice result nevertheless & funny how in boxing people play connect the dots and have the guy as a division great---in a fantasticly talented division---based on that Bramble destruction.

 

Totally agree with the dislike of the elbow-out style. I also disagree with some here who praised his footwork. Rosario seemed to me to be wasting a lot of energy by continually bouncing on his toes, dancing around in semi-circles as he did it. It served little purpose. Didn’t seem to affect his gas tank much, but it was annoying to watch.

still, loved his fights with Ramirez (both of them), Davis, Randall (their first fight is excellent, if you haven’t seen it), and he was responsible for making a Hector Camacho fight compelling to watch. Not an easy thing to do.

 

Agreed.

That was the frustrating thing though---the pedigree was there. The other skills were there. Just hated that right hand way way out there. Too tough of a division to be giving up something like that. He was leaving automatic openings & opponents had the opening from the first minute of the fight & did not have to work for it. Geez----make the opponent work for openings. Way too much talent in the lower weight divisions for this. At least to me.

 

He has great balance to go with it. Short steps his feet were always in sync and in the proper place and position.

 

Definitely. He managed to perfect both having power and movement in a way few others have.

 

I have Rosario as my hardest hitting 135 ever. There's maybe an argument for the odd other fighter but Rosario's punching record is immense. The way he pole axed the "coconut" headed Livingstone Bramble was immense. He single handedly changed the course of Hector Camacho's career even tho he didn't stop him. Camacho was immensely durable as borne out by his overall career. The power he showed in a losing effort in the rematch against the iron chinned Jose Luis Ramirez was incredible. Edwin Viruet went 25 rounds with peak Roberto Duran without faltering as well as 10 with Esteban Dejesus. He was past his best when Rosario pole axed but his chin had shown no signs of creakage from memory.

Even as an over the hill fighter his power got him past Kronks Anthony Jones for Chavez's vacated title he won off Rosario and two years later his power, about the only thing left, overwhelmed Loreto Garza at 140 for another title again. I'm sure he was the underdog vs Garza. Everyone knew Rosario was cactus. Even Chavez, who smothered Rosario and put a whooping on him said he was the hardest puncher he ever faced and that youth got him thru the fight.

There's some freakish punchers out there (whose record belied their immense power) that may have hit the hardest, guys like Andy Ganigan and Norman Goins, but Rosario has plenty of runs on the board and against top level chins as well.

Someone said to me in here a while like, i think it was Robbie U, that Rosario had drug problems for quite a bit of his career. He was a pretty talented fighter.