Ezzard Charles vs Artur Beterbiev 175lbs primes

Charles beats the breaks off him

 

I think it’d be a great fight, look at how well a 40 year old Beterbiev with washed knees did against Bivol even if you think he lost. I think he’d do well in any era at his peak, though I think Charles is too well rounded, durable and mobile for him. He wouldn’t leave the ring unscathed.

 

obviously the best version of charles wasn't at hw and obviously beterbiev can't make 175 under day of weigh ins.

 

At first glance I thought picking Charles was a no brainer.

But then I thought about how Marciano broke Charles down and I consider Beterbiev to be a far more advanced fighter than Marciano. I've often thought that Beterbiev's ability to generate power from ridiculously short arm punches evoked comparisons to Marciano. This ability to deliver crippling punches with very little distance makes countering Beterbiev difficult and dangerous. It inhibits any thought of counterpunching in the pocket when you get clipped by those freakishly powerful 12 inch punches. We see this repeatedly in his fights. Bivol was doing very well until round 6 when Beterbiev nailed him with a counter right and after that we saw another Bivol in that ring - one who did not want anything to do with exchanging in the pocket with Beterbiev again.

Other than Marciano's superior chin, I'm not sure you can say Beterbiev is not at the very least comparable to Marciano skill wise in nearly every way, and frankly I think Beterbiev is superior in most departments other than chin.

Charles countered Marciano well in the early rounds of their fights but the relentless aggression and power of Marciano overwhelmed him and Charles took terrible beatings in those fights. After the first Marciano fight he was never the same again.

A 32-34 year old Beterbiev would be a Baba Yaga for most 175 pounders in history. I'd favor RJJ strongly over Beterbiev, but other than him or a prime Archie Moore whose power, defense, and ring savvy would make him a favorite I'm not sure I could make any other 175 lb fighter a strong favorite over prime Beterbiev.

So I'm going to go against the grain and based on styles pick Beterbiev here.

 

It doesn’t matter if Artur is more technically skilled than Rocky.

It’s the styles.

Artur doesn’t have Rocky’s style.

Artur is content to box throughout each fight. Similar to GGG. He can apply pressure and cut off the ring, but he’ll box as well as pressuring a guy and fighting them.

Rocky didn’t do that. Rocky was just ferocious and in your face, all throughout the fight, without taking a backwards step. He didn’t box. He just swarmed you with power punches at every single opportunity. He wasn’t greatly skilled. But he just kept driving forwards with endless stamina.

So he may have been a lesser fighter technically, but one which was far harder to handle than what Beterbiev would have been. He was just absolutely relentless.

Do you think Bivol could have outmanoeuvred Rocky? Or do you think that he’d eventually have been swallowed up?

 

I'll concede that Marciano rarely took a backwards step, but saying Marciano was "far harder to handle" is hard to swallow when Beterbiev is 21/0 with 20 knockouts against on the whole better competition than Marciano.

Could Bivol have outmaneuvered Marciano? I wouldn't bet on it - but Bivol's footwork and distance management is among the best in boxing, so I wouldn't dismiss his chances at going the distance. I also think that Beterbiev was not fully recovered from his leg injury in the Bivol fight and he was not as mobile as might have been. I suspect we will see a slightly more aggressively mobile Beterbiev in the Bivol rematch.

But my main point in invoking the Marciano comparison is that Beterbiev is going to touch Charles. Maybe not as aggressively as Marciano did, but when he gets in range, those 12 inch death touches are going to hurt Charles.

 

I understand.

I agree.

I’m just saying that he’d have been harder to have handled style wise, as he wouldn’t relent for a minute.

Unless you could stop him, he would just relentlessly attack you at every second.

In a bout with Charles, there’d have been periods where Artur would have boxed with him.

But nobody could box with Rocky. Because he never gave anybody any time or space. He only had one style.

 

An amateur like Artur with like 20 fights… against one of the most professional fighters of all time? Artur ain’t Marciano lol about half the boxer seriously, not being funny - Artur is a big punching Olympian getting paid to fight. Archie Moore would’ve beat up both Bivol and Betiebev (spellin?) in 3 months or so back in the 40s today Charles would run the table till he stopped putting in the work and for a long time after that today at 175lbs… this is arguably the greatest boxer of all time we are talking about here.

 

The reference to Marciano was an analogous one to discuss a hypothetical matchup between Beterbiev and Charles, not a proposed fight between Beterbiev and Marciano.

Reducing Beterbiev to a "big punching Olympian" is a disservice. He beat Kovalev and Usyk in the amateurs, two future Hall of Famers. At 39 he unified all four belts after a seven year stretch as champion.

And while Marciano's professionalism is legendary for a good reason, so is Beterbiev's. His strength workouts have to be seen to be believed. Check out on YouTube his workouts with 40 lb barbells spinning them one handed to develop wrist strength.

 

You don’t get to the level of Ezzard Charles (arguably, maybe P4P 1) with hundreds of amateur bouts and 20 pro fights against guys in similar boats - I don’t really care much about how much he can wrist spin? It’s not boxing, boxing is boxing Marciano was professional in how he was was trained, not worked out that’s not what I meant - how he fought compare say… Meldrick Taylor to JCC Snr - one was a pro stylistically, one was an amateur fighting for money if that makes sense… What AB achieved as an amateur is great, but it doesn’t mean anything other then he was a good amateur… he hasn’t developed much, much like Meldrick Taylor he didn’t change much (to my best telling) from the amateurs, Arthur is too old, too set in stone and he doesn’t have the environment or times to get to the level of those old timers.

 

Threads like this are why I pound the pavement raising awareness about Lloyd Marshall.

 

then charles would be tiny and would get smashed.

is the reason charles didn't win the lhw belt because he wasn't good enough?

 

I think we should all realise by now that Beterbiev has too big of a giant, throbbing ankle spanker to lose to anyone smaller than Lennox Lewis.

I'm at the point now without any hint of irony or exaggeration where if someone told me to my face one more time how much a white Eastern European can bench press (while spinning a dumbbell on their helmet) as an indicator of functional in ring strength and infighting ability, I'd f*cking genuinely murder them with a cheese grater.

Marciano wasn't Pep in there by any stretch of the imagination, but to say that he was inferior to Beterbiev in every aspect other than chin is slightly divorced from all common sense and functional optic nerves imo.

Seriously though, joking aside, I think if Beterbiev earlier in his career had cleanly beaten without too much controversy (and the odd genuine thorough battering) a handful of historically solid/good fighters with a slight mix of styles outside the typical polite modern stand up, high guard, take-turns type stylists, a conversation can be had. A little medley of victims akin to the likes of Tarver, Hill, Bettina etc, or a clear step above them with a couple of Kates, Ahumada, old Hopkins, Yaqui Lopez level of victims, and you can then imo entertain the possibility of him doing well against the likes of Pastrano, Conteh, Saad, Qawi, EMM, Galindez, Harold Johnson etc.

If he can beat one or two of that last group and then acquit himself well and not be embarrassed, that imo is when you can talk about him being a serious threat in a real time scenario gauntlet run with the likes of Moore, Bivins, John Henry Lewis, RJJ, Tommy Gibbons, Tunney, Foster etc. And finally Langford, Charles and Greb.

the problem is that we only have him visible against one of the first/second group depending on how you rate Bivol, that fight having come years too late and being a close, controversial decision. This on it's own with his other filmed fights and being able to wrist spin a dumbbell shouldn't be elevating him to some sort of mythical h2h beast status. Even if he had crushed Bivol a few years earlier, I'd still want a bigger sample size against fighters the likes of who he hasn't really come across. Then there's the size/same day weigh in aspect.