any floyd fight can be classified as winning with intelligence. bhop fights.... ward fights... rigondeaux fights....
Only because I scored it for Murray but I thought Martin Murray who was slower, less experienced, less powerful fought as smart a fight as you could get he came out early with his guard held up high and observed Martinez's stuff and eventually found openings and holes in Martinez's game and then began to carefully exploit them while dealing with the superior athlete and fighter Canelo vs Trout springs to mind, essentially any fight where the role gets reversed and it works
you asked... What are some examples of ring intelligence being the difference in a fight? mayweather, bhop, ward and rigondeaux imo have the most ring intelligence in the game today...so if u take any of their fights(wins in particular) into consideration...it's their intelligence that made the difference. was it not intelligence that got mayweather his wins? he didn't over power anyone. he didn't out will anyone. he used his superior intelligence. bhop did the same against pascal and pavlik. ward did the same against dawson and froch... rigondeaux did the same against donaire.
I think Ali's 'rope-a-dope' would be a better sign of ring intelligence if he actually had a choice. When he fought Foreman he wasn't as agile any more and all he could do was to lay on the ropes. So, smart tactic? Yeah, kinda. Sorta.
As for the Duran vs Leonard II fight. The battle was won before they even stepped through the ropes. Leonard said he purposely noted that Duran really balloned up between fights and didn't train as much. SRL used that knowledge to quickly get that fight knowing that Duran would be undertrained. SRL has mentioned this in interviews. The in-the-ring stuff might have had some effect on Duran but I really don't think Duran gives much of a **** about these kinda things. The lack of preparation time before the fight had already made all the difference. Smart? Absolutely. And a win is a win, but I would have liked to have seen the fight on more equal terms.
A combination of Ali's genius and George's lack of a plan B, AndrewA! I haven't seen the fight, but what about Griffith beating Tiger? Might youtube it, now!
When Leonard became aggressive after being out jabbed/ boxed for the majority of the fight by hearns.
"When Leonard became aggressive after being out jabbed/ boxed for the majority of the fight by hearns" That was a great mid-fight adjustment.
I know this will be a controversial choice,but I was astounded by the style Cotto adopted in the first fight with Margarito.It was a rare time when I wanted Cotto to lose but I couldn't believe the versatility he was showing. Then,it's all very well to slate Margarito but the fact he was able to slow Cotto down by going to the body and cutting off what had been up to the fifth, fabulous lateral movement by Cotto means that subsequent events rather overshadowed what was a fabulous fight of two halves from either guy. Cotto was amazing early on,and Tony did well to slow him down.