Fighters whose skills/style you admire but whose persona you dislike, and vice-versa?

Watt has a pretty solid run, dosen't he?

I'd say Calzaghe is at least equal with Froch

 

Tysons one of my favorites as a fighter, but I don't like the way he conducts himself outside of the ring.

 

Yeh they shat all over Jones and Manfredo and completly disregarded Bika who has been a stalwart in the division, a proper old school contender.

 

Overall, you are right. Abraham´s style never was the right one to succeed at the top. But I don´t think it was about skill, there were similar "unskilled" fighters who did well, Barkley for example, but because it was too passive. I followwed Abraham before he came to the big stage, when he still was an undercard fighter. And he improved tremendously since then. He never was destined to be really skilled. He had not much amateur experience, started a bit late with boxing - before he was a pretty good cyclist, probably good enough to turn pro - and just doesn´t have the mindset for a good technician.
There was a reason for his passive style, or more like three. One, he had stamina issues. Not because he didn´t train - Wegener had him do plenty of roadwork, Abraham always complained about that - but because he shed so much weight. Naturally Abraham walks around at around 180 pounds. And he is not fat but solid. Even outside of training camp he does his roadwork, I know because he lived only a few blocks from my apartment and I saw him plenty of times doing this back then. Getting rid of 20 pounds of largely muscles to fight at 160 takes its toll. And a big one. Two, tactics. Wegener´s and Abraham´s tactics was always to feel out the opponent in the beginning, make him wary with some big shots, make him afraid to engage and to land hard to the body. Discourage him early, take over ine the midrounds and beat him up in the late ones. He didn´t need to knock out his opponents necessarily because he would sweep the last rounds and win most of the midrounds anyway. This works against most contenders around today but is dangerous against the better man. Because if you can´t discourage them, you got a problem. But it worked. Three, power. He had a low workrate because every punch of his was thrown with the intention to knock you out. There were no feel out, range finding punches. They were all thrown for one reason only: to put you on your arse.
But for it to work you need some abilities. Patience is very important, Abraham has that in abunance, perhaps too much. And the other one is to deliver the power he undoubtful has. And pre-Taylor he could. He would stalk you behind his guard and put pressure on you. He wasn´t very good at cutting of the ring but he put constant pressure on you. Mostly mental. He forced you to make mistakes, to engage when you didn´t want to and then he would land and it would hurt. He had a decent jab, used some upperbody movement to avoid jabs and of course his shell. He would throw flurrys of wide haymakers to the body and finish them with a short, crisp straight right to the head. He would discourage you, tire you out. And when in the last rounds your feet are tired and you aren´t as fast anymore, your hands would drop, your concentration fail now and then, he would be there and land. This was enough quite often. But like said before. He stopped doing all this. Against Dirrell some of it was still there but most not. Against Froch ... he would just stumble after Froch not doing anything to deliver his power. Just waiting for a possibility to land. Not creating the possibility, not forcing Froch to make mistakes but just waiting for it to come. Too passive to succeed at the top. Wegener saw all this even before Taylor, in some fights you can see him saying exactly this to Abraham, that he is abondoning what he is good at. But Abraham bought in his myth too far and then his confidence was broken. I think he is finished now. He can knock Ward out, he has the power and tools for that, Ward is not like Dirrell or even Froch that he would box him from the outside. But he won´t. He will be in there discouraged, bewildered, afraid to get beaten and embarrassed and Ward will toy with him. This perhaps will look worse than the Froch fight.
Btw. of course Dirrell´s and Froch´s class had something to do with the way Abraham looked in there but not as much as him abondoning that brought him there. Sadly. I liked Abraham, not beeing a fan but I thought he was an interesting fighter with his patient, confident style and big knockouts.

 

Barkley pre-benn was like a master boxer compared to Abraham.

 

I've never believed that tale myself,but I suppose it does give you a good idea of the mentality of Duran's apologists to laud such an act.


Alex Wallau once told how Duran randomly picked a cat up by it's tail and threw it against a wall - justifying his cruelty by claiming them to be "bad luck".



I also read somewhere that Duran actually spat at one of Leonard's younger sisters.

 

This is believable.