Greater/Better: Tszyu or Hamed

So your argument is that Zab Judah is better than Tom Johnson in your opinion, therefore you forget that Hamed beat a bunch of guys at that level whereas Kostya beat a one legged Sharmba Mitchell.

 

Is there somewhere online that has an archive of where fighters were ranked by the different organisations when they got their title shots?

Just a general question.

 

No. The Ring rankings are archived online though.

 

No. It isn't.

So far, my questions/opinions in this thread have been:

- Was Hamed past prime when he met Barrera or was he just undisciplined? (I think it's the latter.)

- Tszyu is both better and greater than Hamed, in my opinion.

- Hamed's flair was more than just a little laced with carelessness. Tszyu, on the other hand, was the antithesis of poor discipline and, pound-for-pound, he demonstrated much more in terms of craft.

- I also prefer Tszyu's ledger.

- Central to the initial comment from me to yourself was the amount of bias you manage to cram into one sentence. I refer specifically to this...

- My argument against your take here is that, while the relative strength/depth of Tzsyu's and Hamed's respective ledgers can be reasonably debated, your perspective on the Tzsyu/Judah bout is simplistic to the extreme.

Beyond this:

- I find it noteworthy that Hamed left a talent-rich 122 division to pursue a title at 126 and run with the WBO.

- In general, I would suggest that Hamed's best wins were against aging, on the slide fighters.

- Hamed ducked Marquez. That's just a fact.

- I also think Hamed's decision to retire at 28 years old, not long after being outclassed by Barrera, lacked character and greatness - especially, when there was an emerging pool of high-end Featherweights entering the division.

- I think that, if we declare Tom Johnson as the best Featherweight in the division at the time, then we aren't setting an extremely high bar for the era. Indeed, I think this indicates a relatively weak Featherweight era.

- I don't find the number of belts won/number of defenses in a multi-belt era with fragmented titles and diluted competition to be a particularly reliable metric for measuring quality.


That is about as far as my thoughts on this have gotten so far. But I might also add that Tzsyu having become the Undisputed Champ of his division (in contrast to Hamed in his) is something I favor.

 

You continously avoid the actual specifics of their resumes. If you dislike Tom Johnson so much, you can have Bungu who had a better title reign than Barerra at 122 and beat Kennedy McKinney twice to Barerra's once. If you dislike Bungu, you can have Vazquez who had two long title reigns and beat Canizales.

Hamed fought after Barerra (8-4 loss w low punch output by both) and retired because he had bad hands and a lot of money. He trained for Calvo as far as I know and looked like crap because he was past it.

And LOL at you typing all of that while skipping Vince Phillips' demolition of Zoo while fresh off an ass kicking at the hands of Quartey and not mentioning a SINGLE NAME who Zoo beat.

 

Zab had great offense and no defense, he had speed, power but no fight IQ.

 

A bunch of guys rated no.1 at featherweight like Tom Johnson, who? As soon as Hamed faced a world class fighter he got exposed, Barrera would have toyed with every fighter Hamed beat.

 

For starters, Medina won five different championships.

 

Tom Johnson was a hell of a boxer and the reason why he held that title for as long as he did was because Johnson was a world class boxer.
And believe me Johnson had trouble landing big fights because of the risk to reward ratio associated with fighting him.
Steve Robinson went on a hell of a run literally cleaning out some of the UKs best talent in back to back fights and Naz TOYED with him.
Medina wasn't world-class? Kevin Kelly wasn't world class? Paul Ingle didn't perform on the world level?
Didn't I see Billy Hardy giving Orlando Canizales so many problems that they had a rematch?
You act like Naz got knocked out in 30 seconds against Marco Antonio Barrera or he got battered for pillar to post and stopped when that was not the case at all.
And this is coming from a fan of Tom Johnson who was mad when Naz beat Johnson.

 

I never understand this as an excuse.

That’s a flaw, same as having a weak chin or poor defense or being a bleeder or powder-puff power. A professional fighter’s literal job is to prepare to fight so he can do so as best he is able. Someone who fails to grasp this is showing an inferiority. It was a big fight. No excuses.

But what happened after someone finally stood up to the ‘bully’ is most telling — he ran home, had an easy set-up farewell fight and quit.

Being unprofessional (as in not preparing well enough to do his best, especially for a big fight) and quitting the first time he was put in his place tell me he never had the character to be great.

 

It's not avoidance. I just don't need to give you specifics.

I never raised the issue of who was better or greater with you. All I highlighted to you was your extreme bias.

It's not a matter of like/dislike and I'm not all that interested in what boxers achieved at 122 when discussing the quality of the Featherweight division.

Bungu did next to nothing at 126 and Vázquez, while still a half-decent watch, was considerably past his best and had limited success there. Neither of them went anywhere after Hamed.

Whatever you need to tell yourself.

Well, I'm aware of the Phillips loss and still stated I prefer Tszyu's ledger. So, why would I mention him? It already figured into my viewpoint.

By the way, "typing all of that" was actually a 'copy-and-paste' recap of all the points I have made in this thread so far, because it seems you can't keep up with the discussion.

 

Another long post, another zero names from Kostya's win column discussed. You're getting destroyed even worse than normally here.

 

I like Tzsyu's technique better..

 

Tszyu.

 

What's hard to understand about it? Of course it's a weakness. Fighters aren't robots, plenty throughout history have at some stage stopped being as disciplined as they should be in their training and that info usually spreads, becomes more widely known,/verified to an extent. As well as often becoming obvious during the fights themselves if you've been following the fighter for long enough. It's just a fact of many fighters careers, of all levels. it can be abused and overblown by someone with an agenda, same as plenty of other things...." he only lost because he was out of shape, blah blah"...usually there is more going on than just that if it's a fight between two world class boxers, but there's no point in dismissing that it happens quite often throughout history, or that it might actually mean there is genuine cause to wonder if things might have been different a few years earlier/later, etc.

Usually when folks outright dismiss stuff like this, and have the "no excuses" attitude about the time when fighters fought each other as possibly being relevant (vis a vis injuries, dedication issues...plain getting old and past prime) they're doing that because they're often promoting an agenda/bias as well. Like not being able to handle it's well known that their favourite beat X or Y when many feel they were in decline/had well documented issues with injuries, drugs, whatever...

That said, I agree with you on Hamed overall. He did prove himself distinctly lacking in character with the half-assed, fearful way he fought that bout and with his choice to retire after it...beyond any debate we can have of his dedication and training habits by then. maybe issues with his hands meant he wouldn't have had that long a prime left as a puncher anyway, but it was never said to be quite that bad. He wasn't an old fighter with a lot of wear and tear from wars - if he wanted to get back in shape and try and avenge the loss, he would have, but he didn't fancy it.