The most important factor, above all others. And the determining factor. Basically fights where endurance has been the most key factor, in comparison making everything else neglible. Leonard vs. Hearns I comes to mind, where Hearns had a decent lead until his asthma and other things caught up to him. Marciano/Walcott I. McCall/Akinwande comes to mind for some reason.
Marciano Charles 1 can be added. Had Marciano been in any less condition for that fight, he could have lost imo.
Antuofermo-Hagler I. Vito actually wore Marv down late to save his title with a draw. He had Mauricio Aldana panting like a dog in the final rounds. He didn't generate a great deal of punching power, so many of the stoppages he did register against his opponents were induced by exhaustion. Bobby Chacon was wiped out by the end of his first match with Cornelius Boza Edwards. It looked like his career was over. But with advancing wear and tear taking it's toll, Schoolboy obtained the services of a trainer who knew how to get him into shape, and turned his career around with an incredible title winning and stunning career ending surge. He no longer had the tremendous talent, legs and reflexes of his early career, but became a hall of famer with sheer conditioning. While Mike Spinks did repel the challenge of Eddie Davis, he came closer to beating Mike than any other light heavyweight ever did because of dramatically improved conditioning. Where Qawi had dropped Eddie and nearly took him in the first round, then did succeed with an eleventh round stoppage after an impressive rally by Davis in an earlier match, he took everything Spinks could dish out, entirely because of getting into excellent physical condition. If that bout had been for 15 rounds, he might have prevailed. Ideally, conditioning and fatigue should never be a decisive factor in a contest of 15 rounds or less. Both participants ought to be in sufficient shape to negotiate these distances so that skill, not conditioning, is the key factor. We hardly live in an ideal world though. Holmes was in high spirits going into the Witherspoon fight. At that stage of his career, he was finally enjoying full acceptance as Champion, and was coming off back-to-back shutout wins over Cobb and Rodriguez (Lucien in a "coming home" title defense which Holmes, not Don King, actually promoted in Scranton.) But Larry, as pure a boxer as has ever held the title, was accustomed to stopping most of his challengers, and wanted to get Witherspoon out, not settle for a decision. He stepped up his training in order to do this, and incredibly enough, managed to overtrain himself in the process. He barely held on to his title, and never overtrained again. Late in his career, Bruce Curry became a conditioning fanatic, and managed to win a title when the window of opportunity for doing that should have been past him. Sal Sanchez is classic of course. But Sal also possessed good handspeed, resistance to cuts, and a good chin. Aside from an armored jaw, Vito did it all with conditioning, and the heart, will and commitment which are the hallmarks of hard, disciplined work. Floyd Patterson was dropped frequently, but he was never coldcocked the way he put out Johansson in regaining the title, or the way Liston was put out by Leotis Martin. Keeping in great shape was the key factor there. One thing that gets overlooked in Floyd's time at the top is that none of his eight unsuccessful challengers was able to go the distance with him. He was 37 years old when he decisioned Bonavena.
As always, I feel like I'm reading exerts from a good book when I read your posts, Duodenum. Speaking of Holme's and his training... Do you have any idea what his training consisted of? Same for Patterson and Antofurmo. I'm kind of curious how their relative performances stack up to how much work they put into their regimes. I've also heard the first Vito/Hagler fight shouldn't of been a draw. Any truth to that?
Man, several Michael Grant victories...his superior conditioning was probably his greatest asset. He racked up quite a few TKOs by outlasting his opponent and being able to still throw dozens of punches in the later rounds while they were exhausted. See Grant-Wooden, Grant-Sullivan and Grant-Savarese for three examples...
Fair call on Vito, i was shocked he finished stronger than Marvin. I'll give Vito one thing, the man was a warrior.
I was much impressed, first time i really got a top look at him. To be honest i really thought Douglas was going to close out the winner in this one.
It's not exactly how I speak in person, but I've done a significant amount of reading on the subject, and that certainly influences how I compose my posts sometimes. (But while I can do a reasonable good job spelling correctly, my pronounciation can be atrocious!) Larry has gone into detail about that on his own website. But it's been my understanding that he developed his jab when his right hand was out of commission for over six months, after busting it against Roy Williams. Rather than be a couch potato, he apparently just pounded away at a heavy bag with his jab for the better part of a year, and unveiled his newly cultivated weapon against Tom Prater. (I haven't compared the footage of his performance against Williams to that against Prater, but it might be very interesting to observe how the delivery and use of his jab changed from one match to the next.) It's my understanding that Larry ran around eight hilly miles a day while champ, but again, his own message board might be the place to check that out. Concerning Antuofermo, I'm rather curious myself. It may be that his regimen has already been published in a book on how champion boxers trained, or that he has revealed it somewhere on-line. One thing I can tell you about Vito is that he ran five miles every day, whether he was training for a match or not. The impression I have is that this is extremely unusual behaviour for a championship caliber boxer, as many tend to let themselves go, and let their weight balloon between contests. Saoul Mamby was another one who would quietly skip rope in a gym for hours on end, and by virtue of keeping in shape and controlling his weight, he sustained a professional career into his late 50's. (Sweet Saoul was so respected by his fellow professionals that Larry Holmes obtained Mamby's services as his trainer for the latter stages of his career, a career which had a vastly different conclusion than what Louis and Ali experienced.) Patterson never had an issue with excess weight, and continued a competitive fitness regimen even after his career ended, including spending a lot of time running on beach sand in Miami. After Ingo took up marathon running in the late 1970's, Floyd also started running marathons. In marathons they ran in Sweden, Floyd would finish far ahead of Ingo, even though Johansson had taken up the hobby first. (Like many ex-fighters, Ingo had gotten rather chubby in retirement, and was probably tuning into the running craze of the 1970's to do something about it.) Like Duran, I suspect that skipping rope was more an integral part of Patterson's training than roadwork. (Ditto SRR.) Veteran writer Bob Waters reviewed it on tape, and said Antuofermo won 11 of the 15 rounds, largely on the strength of his defensive skill and aggression in neutralizing Hagler's offense. Hagler looked good, and was expected to dethrone Vito, but Marv tired late, and certainly didn't dominate Antuofermo. After the final round was over (or near the end of it) Howard Cosell mentioned that in the event of a draw, Vito would retain the title. So the announcer who was broadcasting the event live acknowledged before the scoring was revealed that a draw was a real possibility. After reading the reframe of the action Bob Waters came out with, I carefully viewed a replay showing the entire match. Looking at it from the perspective of Waters, I could understand why he gave 11 of the 15 rounds to Vito. Antuofermo had a battered looking face, and he bled incessantly from butt induced cuts. But he was an extremely underrated defensive fighter, who eluded the full impact of punches with subtle head movements as he closed in. Punches which looked at first looked like they connected on him were either grazing blows, or punches that actually went past his head as he canted his chin from side to side, on a second, closer examination of the footage. He took very few punches flush on the head. Most people who saw their draw argue that Hagler should have gotten the decision over Vito, but Antuofermo was the one who usually fought as if he was the challenger in his MW title fights. (Minter II was really the exception here. Alan manhandled him like a rag doll, dominating Vito physically as nobody else ever did.) That Antuofermo/Hagler I was a draw was hardly a case of highway robbery one way or the other. All three middleweight title fights during Vito's championship run could have gone any way, depending on who was judging. However, I don't think Antuofermo was in the best position to complain about how others would butt his head, when he was trying to use his own head as a weapon himself. Don Curry sustained a gash from a headbutt once, and took responsibility for it afterwards, saying, "My head was available to be butted, so I have to take steps to prevent it from happening again." Against Jim Flynn, this is exactly what Jack Johnson was able to effectively prevent, until the referee disqualified Flynn to the cheers of the crowd. (Yes, Jack Johnson actually heard cheers in San Francisco when he defended his title from Flynn.) If somebody can skip rope for a half hour nonstop, without opening the mouth to take a breath, then they could probably condition themselves to do anything aerobically. In the past, I progressed from walking up long steep hills, to jogging, then sprinting up them (more exertion, but much less pounding on the body when going uphill), and eventually skipping rope in place of the bone jarring impact of running. A jump rope is the best way to build and maintain good wind when exercising indoors.
I was surprised myself, JT, but Hagler seemed to build up a substantial oxygen debt in some of his other matches, occasionally taking in big gulps of air. With Vito, it would be kind of hard to get winded with a pair of lungs the size of beer kegs inside a rib cage the size of a barrel.