It seems to me that in just about every fight I've ever seen, even the ones that develop into a brawl or those involving two dominant sluggers, the fighters never openly fight for control of the centre of the ring, they always revert to the natural roles of one guy holding the centre, the other circling the outside - at least in non-heavyweight fights this appears to invariably be the case. Have there been fights where 2 guys accustomed to holding the centre of the ring have basically came out of their corners and went toe-to-toe both determined to force the other onto the outside????
Good question. The first one that came to my mind was Foreman-Frazier, but of course that didn't last very long. Barney Ross and Jimmy McLarnin did quite a lot of ring centre boxing, but not slugging. I suppose the best example I can come up with is Armstrong-Garcia. Garcia was bigger than Armstrong and could resist being forced back too much so they ended up trading in the centre of the ring a fair bit.
Yes, the fight between Hagler and Mugabi. If memory serves, in the first five rounds or so they battle pretty much happened in the centre of the ring, or at least trying to keep the dominance of the centre. There was a moment where actually the commentator pointed out that both fighters wanted to dominate the centre of the ring..... I remember when the camera showed Mugabi's left foot and Hagler's right foot almost touching "toe with toe". It was a great fight, specially the 6th round, I think.
The first fight between Meldrick Taylor-JCC was a brutal war almost exclusively fought off the ropes, if I remember correctly. Much of McClellan-Benn wasn't fought on the ropes; there were brief and dramatic moments, but it was mostly in the centre of the ring.
First, control of the center is not as important in boxing as in chess! The important thing is to impose your style and skill on your opponent, but ring center per se is rarely strategically vital, thus not as coveted as you have sought it to be. Semantics may make this confusing, because a boxer will be said to seek the center of the ring, but, as you say, he is actually circling around and conceding the center to his opponent. I would say a guy seeking the center is one snorting for a slugfest, and there are plenty of examples of two fighters emerging at the opening bell with such an attitude, and thus the fireworks begin. In this case, seeking the center says, I can take you right here under the lights, footwork and ropes be damned! Tyson opponents Berbick, Tubbs and Ruddock learned the folly of it. Graciano and Zale went at it as did Morales and Barrera, to name a very few. Curiously, I seem to remember Holmes and Ali coming out for Round 1 and engaging in a probably psychological-edge struggle for the center, a technical "brawl".
