Footwork - the best ever?

Jersey Joe Walcott. He INVENTED moves. That is how good he was. He did moves in the ring no other fighter in history is capapble of replicating.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCQYrAwn-Fs[/ame]

 

he sure as hell did..can't have a list of best footwork, or clever moves, period...without Jersey Joe figuring in the top 5 or so.

 

A prime Foreman was excellent at cutting off the ring. Plus, I think he had superior balance.

 

Ali, Leonard, Davis, Hayes.

 

Tunney took footwork to a new level. Then Walcott did the same later on.

In the last 10 years Hopkins has been a master of distance.

 

Pep

 

Chang, Olivares and peak Duran for unorthodox but incredibly effective footwork are worth a mention.Few better at closing the gap without getting hit.


Harada and Ebihara for more textbook aggressive method.

Whitaker for turning people and regaining ring centre with his pivots.

Monzon for freakish distance control.

Napoles,Gomez, Canizales, Ortiz, Laguna, Rodriguez, Kalule, Arbachakov for integrating it seamlessly into their offense and counterpunching, always maintaining a proper mid-range distance to punch, with tiny shifts and subtle angles.Hagler too in his prime, when he still had his legs.

I agree with Watanabe for general footwork as well.I think him letting Ballas in range a lot was more out of laziness and disdain than anything else.A vastly arrogant fighter imo.

Buchanan for effortless changes in direction.He combines textbook stuff and his own unorthodox moves more than most stylists in this area.

Famechon and McGowan similar, but more orthodox.use the ring perimeter better than most fighters.

Winstone, Ohba, harold Johnson,Lionel Rose, Conteh for more textbook jabbing stylist footwork..ie keeping an optimum jabbing range while circling at ringcentre and turning opponents, though they all have slightly different approaches.Ricardo Lopez too is great at this, but stays a bit further back, using his physical advantages to stay just out of punching range, then moves in and out effortlessly once he has found the range for his combinatons.

 

Behold, the perfect post in the context of the thread.

 

Of course I'm a well established member of that Dempsey Mafia. Dempsey critic Frank Lotierzo wrote that Dempsey got an awful lot of mileage out of the opening portion of the first round with Willard, but that this did not make him a boxing stylist. Well, the fact is that there is never any suggestion in any of Marciano's footage that Rocky was able move like that at all. (Fortunately for him, Marciano never needed to. I do credit Liston for his effectiveness while moving backwards against Scrap Iron Johnson. Sonny didn't have fast feet, but he could retreat and move in and out a bit.) That minute and a half in Toledo (a little more than the single minute Lotierzo credits him with), tells me Jack was capable of doing what nobody expected Tommy Morrison to be able do for 12 rounds against Foreman. (And this in a situation where Kearns had just told Dempsey he bet everything on a first round knockout win!) The ability was there, and Dempsey displayed it on film in the most important match of his life.

(Lotierzo also claims that Dempsey's power never lifted anybody off his feet on film like Foreman's uppercut did to Frazier in Kingston. First of all, Lotierzo is referring to the final knockdown where Joe left both his feet to drop to a knee, but Smoke didn't go airborne until nearly a second had elapsed after the impact of that punch. It is something of a delayed reaction, somewhat slower than what might be expected from the upward force of concussive impact alone. In contrast to this, Dempsey does lift the much heavier Jess skyward late in the third round, near Willard's corner, with a left hook buried into the ribs. If you look closely, you can see Jack's hook instantly hop Jess upward by some inches at 6:26 of the following low quality clip. There is no delayed reaction here, and I've sometimes wondered if the damage caused to the ribs by this punch was the immediate cause of the corner retirement after the round.)
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKvOvpGNT4s&feature=fvw[/ame]


For my money though, the most consistently versatile footwork by any heavyweight champion was by Dempsey's eventual conqueror, Tunney. Looking at his films, I see evidence of an ability to circle left or right, for both offensive and defensive purposes. Against Gibbons, he moves backwards then forward, and in and out very well. He shifts gears with instant subtlety. Walcott, like Johnson, mainly used a reverse gear, although he could work on the front foot, as he did with Ten Hoff, and Ali was effective doing this with Bugner, Mac Foster (almost exclusively making that fight over the first five rounds), and Blue Lewis. But I think that Tunney and then Charles had the most consistently versatile footwork among the champions in this division.

 

Nice analysis,

But I can't agree with Tunney and Charles having better footwork than Walcott. Walcott did things with his feet tunney and charles could never do.

 

Walcott is better in that area for sure imo. Tunney's mobility was great, but this topic by definition is Walcott territory. Charles had great generalship and quality footwork, but Walcott's footwork was better.

It's his forte

 

For me, it was a tough call. Now, if you were to ask me who had the best legs of any heavyweight champion, I'd definitely go with Jersey Joe. Over 15 rounds, he could go the equivalent of a marathon distance in reverse with his backpedaling and knee bending exertions. I'm trying to factor in other considerations though. For example, Foreman was brilliant at cutting off the ring. Frazier closed distance with speed comparable to what Dempsey was capable off, and Joe showed against Chuvalo, Stander and in the Foreman rematch that he could move around the ring against physically stronger opposition when necessary. Patterson also displayed good lateral movement with Chuvalo.

Walcott did things with his feet which sometimes made him look like he was gliding on a slide board. But I do not believe he was as consistently versatile at moving in all directions both offensively and defensively as Tunney and Charles. There have been times though when I have rated Walcott at the top of the heap. A case can certainly be made that he used his legs more than any other heavyweight champion of any style. When he's stationary, he's almost always bending his knees.

As has already been mentioned, there was nothing lacking in the footwork Louis displayed against Max Baer. Louis originally started out as more of a mover, and this was in evidence during what he described as his peak performance.

 

No one has mentioned Duran or Young yet, so I will.