Surprised no one said Hearns. I think Hearns, for all his great power and offense, had a pretty average defense overall. His offense was his defense.
I agree, if you read alot of "The best I've ever fought" from some of the heavy weights you'd be surprised of how many listed Holyfield as the best Defensive fighters they ever fought.
Movement, slipping, leaning back, upper body movement, anticipation, reflexes and the likes are all defense tho. Ali pre-exile was one of the harder to hit people in history, particularly as a heavyweight. Sure his defense was much less effective as he aged due to being quite reflex based but at his best his defense was anything but "poor". The guy was brilliant in the 60's. This content is protected
I mean, does being so fast that you're able to dodge whatever punches are thrown at you count as good defense? If he was defensively sound he wouldn't have taken so much damage once his natural speed was gone.
Surely it does. Hit and don't get hit. If someone is almost impossible to hit cleanly surely their defense is solid and perhaps even ridiculously good. Roy Jones was another master of it. It's completely accepted that once Ali lost a certain degree of speed and reflex his defense was no-where near as good. That was the nature of the beast in his case. He also didn't give that much of a damn later on in his career with regards to being caught. Apparently he even thought the more he got hit the more he acclimatized to taking punches. I'm not trying to call you out or anything - just trying to put some perspective forward. during his best years Ali was a a bit of a will o' the wisp. If not for exile he would have had another few years of being so.
I see names like Ali, Robinson, Arguello , Frazier etc, not having great defense by some posters.. But what must be considered is the competition they were facing. It's much easier to look like a defensive savant against 2nd and 3rd rate fighters than atg's. Also consider, the best way to control what's coming from your opponent is to hurt/or stop them, that means setting your feet, and fighting aggressive, when doing that, it's more likely a fighter will get hit. A great example is R.Leonard . Early in his career he sometimes fought over aggressive, got hit. But watch his fight against Benitez, he was defensively brilliant in that fight, he also was great against Hearns when considering whom he was fighting and his overwhelming advantages of height and reach. Yet against Kalule, a tricky fighter, but nowhere near as good as as Benitez or Hearns he was probably hit more solidly by. Sometimes a strategy factors in, the opponents talent,( or lack of,sometimes atg's took sub-par opponents less serious.) etc. Robinson, Leonard, Ali, and others had the ability to fight like Mayweather Jr. That's From a almost completely defensive mindset but choose to fight aggressively. It's was key in some of their best wins. To say certain great fighters were poor defensively without looking at their entire career, and especially whom they fought, did they hang around too long ,etc can be very deceiving.
Ali got caught way too much after the layoff. His best defense pre-layoff were his legs and reflexes. His legs were never the same in his comeback, and his reflexes were a bit diminished. For a Boxer, he took far too many shots.
There are no great fighters, with a poor defense. A great fighter is one that never suffered a cut. Ali was called out on his cut eye. He answered, I got that cut over my eye when I fell off bike when I was a kid." Look at me, I am beautiful." Take a good look at all the so called greats, there isn't one that can say, he was never cut. I know of one!