Favorite Light-Heavyweight fights?

The vintage hearns right against roldan (the fight AFTER andries) was pretty awesome tbooze...

 

Yes that was not bad and I suppose you could mention the Maynard fight some years after that as well.

 

As i'd been waiting to

 

and what a fight it was. Raw, rugged, punishing and a test of the strength of the intestinal fortitude of the two combatants. Perhaps the most watchable fight to the finish since Ali/Frazier 3.

 

Dick Tiger vs Frankie De Paula. Especially, the first few rounds. Both down.

 

Yeah, the casual mastery Eddie displayed that night was new to me. I knew he was a big puncher, and I had seen him lose a decision to Victor Galindez prior to that, so I was really impressed and somewhat surprised by his performance against Johnson, who wasn't a bad fighter at all, and had ko'ed that same Galindez to win the title for the second time. One of the best boxer/puncher performances I've ever seen, and I'm sorry that Eddie lacked that one little spark as a fighter that would have made all the difference in the world in his standing among the alltime greats. What he lacked sure as hell wasn't brilliance or a chin.

 

I saw both Tiger-Torres fights on tv in the mid 60's, and I enjoyed and appreciated them for what they were....they were clinics by Mr. Tiger in how to win 15 round decisions. Tiger forsook his power a bit in his later years to fight disciplined, body-punching clinics in going for points in those 15 rounders, even after being narrowly outpointed by Emile Griffith in '66, he knew that style and focus was the trick to twice outpoint Jose Torres.

 

I`ve been told that the first five rounds of that fight are among the most exciting one could hope to see, after that though the tempo slowed down as both men were battered and bloodied from the early bombarment they unleashed on one another. ESPN has this fight in their vault yet have never shown it, and most likely never will, what a travesty this is. Anyway, some other fights that ought to get a mention would be Yaqui Lopez vs Mike Rossman and the return between Jake LaMotta and Irish Bob Murphy.

Yaqui and Mike were fighting on even terms for the first five rounds and there were some very heated exchanges throughout that had the crowd roaring and on their feet, and in the 6th round Yaqui connected with some very heavy shots that had Mike on ***** street and stgumbling around like a drunk. At some point when it looked like Rossman was just about to go down the ref stepped in and for a momen it looked like he was gonna give him a standing 8 count, but instead he just stood and looked at Yaqui for a few seconds before letting the fight go on.

Well, Yaqui goes right back in there and starts beating Mike`s head in with his two fisted attack and a few seconds later the ref steps in again and does the same thing, seperates the fighters without administering a count and this time Yaqui is pissed off as is the crowd and the boos are coming in loud and clear and only then does the referee start giving him an 8 count, this after a good 6-7 seconds had alreayd elapsed.

Anyway for the remainder of the round Yaqui beats the **** out of Mike who couldn`t come out for the 7th round, very good fight this one was. As for the LaMotta/Murphy rematch it was one rough and bruising affair, toe to toe almost all the way and Jake showed just what kind of cagey fighter he was. He was as old as dust by this time but he outsmarted his younger, bigger and stronger foe and even had the iron chinned Murphy on wobbly legs in the last two rounds and rung his bell but good several times, goes to show Jake had some pop in them fists after all for those who say otherwise if he can stagger a durable guy like Bob.

The first Galindez/Kates fight was a doozy as well, never did Victor look better than on this night in my opinion, he was on fire that night and Kates was a very capable fighter too, he would be a champ today for sure. Willy Pastrano vs Al Andrews was a great boxing display by Pastrano as well, every round was fiercely contested and featured severa torrid exchanges but Pastrano showed his class by winning most of the rounds clearly.

The first Harold Johnson vs Paul Andrews fight was a good one as well, Harold was dropped hard in the first or second round by a sweeping left hook from Andrews, and found it hard to get back into the fight until the late rounds but by then it was too late as Paul had won most of the early and mid-rounds and pulled out the win.