Speed is what beats fighters we say are unbeatable. Even Buster Douglas showed good speed when he beat Tyson. I am not impressed with him, but his right that day was sharp.
What is handspeed? Is it consistently getting off your punch before your opponent sees the opening? Is it your fist traveling from stance position to target? Is it the speed of a repetition of punches in a combo? Because these things are not all the same. I would say that the first is the most important. And that has much less to do with the speed of the punch, than being balanced, in position and Ring IQ coupled with being a fearless initiator. It's not a speed analogous to a footrace. Because here jumping the gun is most of the art.
Is there any footage out there of him? I can't find any, and you've got me curious after mentioning the Erbito fight.
Kuniaki Shibata had blazing, explosive hand-speed at 126 and 130, alongside his great movement. Saldivar couldn't even react properly.
It would have taken more than speed to beat a prime Tyson because he himself had some of the fastest combo`s ever for a heavyweight.
Rough, believe me, I have looked too and found nothing, despite the fact that he fought on some big Forum cards. They do have some of the fights from those cards on youtube such as the second Napoles-Backus fight and the second Herrera-Castillo bout, but the undercard didn't make it. Such a pity. I saw him fight Felix Marquez, Sallavarria and Fernando Cabanela and thought he was incredible. But that speed was really counter-productive in the world of longevity because he did a fast burn-out. By the end of '72 he was done. I recall back in the day when they were televising Boxing from the Olympic, that they were going to show the Superfly Sandoval v Halmi Gutierrez fight. I refused to watch it. I knew Sandoval was hotter than Sofia Vergara at the time and Gutierrez was fodder by this time. And I simply didn't wish to see a once great fighter used to fatten a record.
These are the fighters boxing kingdom put forwards: Lomachenko Mayweather De La Hoya Calderon Pernell Whittaker Sugar Ray Robinson Ali Jack Johnson Gary Russell Jr Carl Froch Manny Pacquiao. What do you think of their list? Did Froch have faster hands than Ward? lol!
the fighter whom ESPN Fight Night featured many times, an American Black fighter, round about Welterweight in the 80s or 90s, he was known as Grease Lightning and the kid was FAST for sure. can't remember his name, think he held some sort of Belt or two.
Roy Jones used to regularly have me replaying his KO wins in slow motion to work out just what order a 5 punch combination had landed in.
That list isn't controversial at all though, except for maybe Froch, who wasn't slow. Johnson was fast but had a low workrate. They could've put better names though.
