Fighters getting prime beat out of them.

Rios vs. Acosta

 

Cotto after the first Margarito fight.

 

Jennings this Saturday

 

^ easily the biggest achievement of Bam-Bam's career (unless you want to call going twelve with Pacquiao employing the "Margarito defense" as some kind of achievement).

Very underrated win, not because of what Acosta went on to do (which is usually how victories appreciate value), but precisely the opposite: because of how badly Rios utterly ruineda guy that was then creeping into spitting distance of p4p lists.

Aguacerito has been utter garbage ever since, compared with before.

 

Garcia - Khan

 

Tito tearing up Vargas in that war .

..But Tito was getting his ass kicked too in that fight lol

 

This, along with Lacy Zaggers

 

Yeah. I suppose whether they collaterally ruined each other (like Rafa & Magnifico, for instance) boils down to how impressed you are with stopping William Joppy in 2001. :think

From there it was pretty much all downhill for Tito - but did Hopkins start the ruination process or just pick up where Vargas, even as the loser, had left off?

 

Khan has looked better since?

 

Other than that W against Matthysse .

Danny has really been looking mediocre ever since .

The Herrera robbery and the Peterson beatdown are really starting to open up peoples eyes .

 

Well, Tarver pretty much beat RJJ out of his prime with one clean punch.

 

Kovalev beat the prime out of Cleverly
and maybe Agnew, i dont know yet.

 

Yeah, Cleverly and Agnew are high-profile elite level fighters... or, eh.. they were.. atsch

 

Odd case, though, because he came back and found near-prime form afterward even though he was unanimously written off as irreparably damaged goods for a while after that.

Same happened with Morales after the Pac rubber match. He was meant to be done - and then he unexpectedly gives Maidana all he can handle and upsets Cano.

Exact same thing with Arce, too - he got "Lacy'ed" by Mijares, then pulverized by Darchinyan, and then lost to a light-hitting South African grandpa with a quarter his experience in Nongqayi. The consensus was, rightfully, given the available data, that Arce was done, fork stuck in and everything. Then he does stuff a shot fighter has absolutely business doing: twice dominating Angkotta, blitzing Castillo, stopping the unbeaten and hyped Wilfredo Vazquez Jr., and knocking out Nongqayi and Parra in rematches. Except for WV2 none of those are incredibly special feats, but they are well beyond what Arce was supposed to have left at that point. In between Nongqayi I and Rojas, he really turned back the clock.



Of course those Cotto/Morales/Arce examples are rare, definitely the exception and not the rule.


Usually when someone cops a devastating loss they don't recover, let alone thrive for any measure of time.

But then, all three of the aforementioned fighters have that championship mettle that can't be taught (leaving aside Cotto's few moments of indiscretion, and in spite of his recent diva image makeover, he is by and large a warrior in sum career retrospective) and every one is probably a lock for HOF on their first eligible ballot.