Fighting Harada, The Thread.

If you let Akihide know the minutes you want translated him sure he would.

 

good thinking Chris, cheers

 

Yeah,his talent was on par with the three crows because he's the most well rounded,fast and had a mighty chin,he just never had a specific,single and powerful special ko punch like his partners.

 

And he actually didn't really slug down Fammo straight up,he firstly blocked his jabs using an active guard and pounded him on the inside.

 

Bump.

 

Olivares is the 1 fighter out of the 1s listed above that I would conclusively favor over Harada.

I can envision inside counterpunchers like Zarate, Canizales, or Chandler(not listed above) potentially beating him, but I would be less confident than I would in picking Olivares.

I would favor Harada over Castillo, Herrera, & Pintor.

 

I love Harada not just a great boxer but a great man, a warrior who would give all them great fights and run for their money.

 

This was a really cool thread.

Harada at Flyweight is an interesting one. I get why it might be hard to stomach, but I do tend to agree that the one from the Pone fights is a head to head threat to anyone there, even if it is in large part by brute force compared to the more rounded later version...and the one that fought Kingpetch was hardly unskilled - the effortless nature of his right hand leads was young Duran'ish in that fight. He might have had lessons to learn up at Bantamweight in among bigger men, but you can count one one hand the amount of top "decent amount of footage" era Flyweights since that bring enough of a combo of offensive class, raw power and athleticism/standout physical traits for the weightclass to the table to be able to exploit those flaws. I wouldn't make any Flyweight since him a clear favourite, especially almost all of the top ones had fights where they showed that only having 20-odd fights and a light resume going in was no obstacle to giving them very competitive fights...or even sometimes defeating them. I get balking at comparing an inexperienced fighter banking on great talent to pre-war fighters that fought so extensively they had well over 60 fights and were matched tougher, but not to a modern (as in wba/wbc/ibf/wbo) alphabet soup era champ with 30-40 odd fights and a small number of opponents likely to be good enough to avoid losing one-sidedly against someone as good as Harada already was.

Kingpetch being sold a bit short too there McGrain, imo. The guy had his flaws (not fast, not the best defensive reflexes, not a puncher, sometimes overly methodical) but I don't see evidence of him being so fragile or made for Harada - he was only stopped twice in his prime and it took a shellacking from Harada to do it...a huge, rangy standup boxer with sophisticated boxing skills that throws a good volume of high quality long textbook punches, including having one of the divisions greatest jabs and is very calm in the ring is not an ideal matchup for a smaller swarmer with apparently a lot still to learn...unless we concede the swarmer is already excellent/great in a good amount of ways. Pone was a very good fighter that fought an excellent level of competition at a really intense rate by the usual standards of the the post-war division.

Incidentally, he's not a fighter I was ever interested to do any reading on beyond some things directly related to his fights, but after having a look through his record again earlier I got curious about why he was out of the ring for fifteen months between the Ebihara rematch and losing the title to Burruni...did some digging through some translated articles for info (which some may already know) and it seems he basically did a Benny Lynch and was descending into alcoholism while champion. This is why there were often such long breaks between his title defences...nine months between Perez rematch and Seki defence, with only one ten rounder journeyman fight in between...eleven months between Seki and Noguchi with only another solitary tune-up in between... after regaining the title against Harada he has a booze fuelled eight months that cause the scheduled Ebihara fight to be postponed multiple times. His long time trainer/manager has enough, leaves him and he does the smart thing by appointing his brother instead, which then culminates in the first round knockout loss when the Ebihara fight finally takes place. After the final effort to rise from humiliation and regain the title in the controversial rematch he then goes on the fifteen month session that culminates in the Burruni loss...then the wheels come off entirely in a ten rounder against fringe contender Baby Larona after another ten months out. Some lad. You can't trust some stuff isn't being exaggerated in these Thai accounts, but it does put his career and performances in a slightly different perspective to me.

There was also an interesting bit about being in a very bad car crash where he plowed his car into the back of a truck after his February '59 fight with Manuel Armenteros. That's why there was an eleven month gap between that fight and his 4th-round KO of journeyman Baby Ross, whereafter he goes straight into the Pascual Perez fight two and a half months later without any further tuneup. That's pretty damn impressive imo - Perez was getting old and no doubt past his best, but he still looked a very good fighter in that first bout between them. He just got PwNeD.

Sorry.

 

Does anyone else think there should be some kind of archiving for certain older threads? There's some great information on here that's not really being protected in any way that I'm aware of.