Fighters who became lethal when badly hurt

Re-watching Rafael Marquez in the second installment of the Vazquez trilogy made me think about this. That could have ended four rounds earlier had Marquez not regained a modicum of respect with the controlled desperation of his impeccably timed right hands. Not only did he stave off the inevitable long after the first time he got severely buzzed, he nearly shredded Izzy's face enough to net a TKO or technical decision.

How many guys have shared this characteristic of growing more dangerous while under serious duress?

Maybe Leonard? Frazier?

 

I guess the major prerequisites here are

1) you need to have some power and ferocity to begin with. No featherfisted artful dodger who responds to adversity by putting on a cautious clinic on their toes is going to qualify.

2) you need to have heart. Regardless of whether in a winning or losing effort, the key element here is going balls-out when the chips are down.

3) you need to have the physical strength and stamina to back up that heart. Like I said, even in losing efforts, prolonging the inevitable and forcibly turning the tables enough to make an indelible, eye-popping impression would qualify one.

4) you need to be in real jeopardy, so the quality of opposition has got to be fairly high to push and strain your limits.

Lots of fighters can fall under the umbrella of the "punches back automatically on instinct when stunned" or "takes 2 to give 1" cliches, but capacity for spine-chilling displays of violent, unforgiving defiance of the sort Marquez put up as described above is going to be a bit rarer.


That said, I'm liking the choices so far.