Fighters With An Underrated Defense

J.C. Chavez's defense tends to get underrated at times. He was effective at slipping shots and rolling with them as well.

 

yeah guess you're right on that was kinda thinkin that as i was typing aswell atsch

 

neither of you are wrong but Herol Graham was actually renowned for his defensive abilities so I guess it's not really a right pick for this thread as this thread is for people who have under rated defenses - I remember seeing Herol Graham on the news back in the day and he was somewhere in his home town and they had a ring set up and were challenging anyone in the street to get in with him and try to just land one punch on him

 

Well you could have.

As a serious reply, i'd say a lot of the argentinian greats are underestimated defensively.Galindez, Ahumada, Accavallo, Laciar etc were all deceptively tough to catch flush.

To a lesser extent a lot of the mexican greats as well, due to the vast majority being so schooled fundamentally.

Mid-distance aggressive minded boxer-punchers in the Napoles old generally don't get their due either, because you will get hit fighting like that, especially those willing to eat jabs.Napoles, Gato Gonzalez, Canizales, Wilfredo Gomez, Conteh, Dejesus, Pedroza, etc... to varying extents all had very efficient rates of slipping and countering.Duran was the best of them all.These guys rarely got hit twice in a row.


and of course Tony Sibson.

 

marvin hagler was good at rolling with punches himself

 

Yeah, his parrying and head movement was pretty solid.

 

In my haste i forgot Sibbo, very underated defense, nothing flash, just good.

 

That was herol's charity fund raising party piece, he'd have his hands tied behind his back in the ring & you had 1 minute to try & land a punch on him, absolutely incredible, will "o" the wisp,

All Breden Ingle fighters where schooled in defence 1st everything else will come by your opponants mistakes, Naz/Nelson were all drilled this way. It all went tit's up for graham when he became frustrated at waiting for his shot at the World Title & with some neg press about his un-aggresive style telling him the yanks won't pay ect unless you become more assertive, he fell out with ingle & changed his style & it all blew up for him against Kalamba if i recall:-(

 

Dwight Braxton
Harold Weston jr.

 

Vito Antuofermo wasn't hit flush often. He had a way of turning his head so that punches brushed past it rather than connecting solidly.

Max Baer's defense was a key factor in his win over Schmeling.

 

He popped into my mind as well! He seems to have been labled a slugger as well as a prototypical tough Mexican boxer, and lost in that is that he was not as easy to find or as hit as say a Tony "The Tiger" Lopez....Good call with JCC

Howard Winstone- I don't know if he really qualifies, as underrated....since I hear his name very seldom (or not at all outside of the Saldivar loses), he may better qualify as forgotten or disregarded??? But I think Winstone had solid technical skills that have grown even more on me over the last year and a half!

Brian Mitchell- Another forgotten fav! He was noted various times as being rather ordinary....After his fight Jim McDonnell, Jim said "Brian really does not do anything great, but he does everything very good and that equals greatness"...He was always in peak condition and great shape, and sometimes that was the factor that enabled to him be so good/great....I am sure he had a good chin as I have seen many of his fights (Thanks renofan), but high output combined with great conditioning and a solid chin was not the only tool of the trade he carried. He could adjust to warrior mentality and trade away..If he felt that would bve benificial to him...but he could counter and parry brilliantly (ala Lopez), and was seldom hit flush...

Not sure if these 3 qualify, but were the 3 that popped into my head

 

Chavez definitely gets underrated as a defensive boxer. That there are posts floating around claiming he wasn't much of one is evidence enough of that. It just shows how little of Chavez people have seen and how often they "fill in the blanks" with supposition.

 

id would add paulie ayala,

he hid behind a catchers mit like defense and its what gave him the decisions against bredahl, the first adams fight and tapia.

 

One I have been noticing for a while now is Joe Frazier. It seems that on every H2H thread people just assume he's going to have to walk through a load of leather to get any work done and that anybody with the slightest edge in power over Ali would just lay him out. The laughable "Lewis KO2 Frazier" picks on the other thread are testament to this. Frazier's head movement was exceedingly difficult to time for all but the very top end of HW punchers with proven ability in that regard, and on the inside he was as difficult to find as any fighter once he found his rhythm - adept at picking off shots, rolling with and possessing a very efficient guard which saw most punches that looked like they were landing actually glancing off or being blocked entirely. Definitely an under-rated defence.