We move on to voting for the best Round 8 of all time. You can check the results of Round 1-7 voting on the master thread and nominate Rounds 9-15 here: https://www.boxingforum24.com/threads/let’s-create-the-perfect-fight-round-by-round.648592/ Ground rules: This fight is going the distance, so each nominated round has to go the full three minutes — so something like the 12th round of Chavez-Taylor I is not eligible. All weight divisions are eligible. And in rounds where the participants faced each other more than once, please specific which fight. Gloved era only. And importantly, this should be about the best rounds not the most historically significant. Voting will be set to stay open for three days. Here are our nominees: Matthew Saad Muhammad-Yaqui Lopez II (fast forward to 3:05) This content is protected Matthew Saad Muhammad-Yaqui Lopez I (fast forward to 30:55) This content is protected Kelvin Seabrooks-Thierry Jacob (fast forward to 29:35) This content is protected Alejandro Gonzalez-Kevin Kelley (fast forward to 35:00) This content is protected Joey Giardello-Gil Turner (fast forward to 21:50) This content is protected Juan Manuel Marquez vs. Juan Diaz I (fast forward to 38:10) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lWBt_ILC2Js Roberto Duran-Iran Barkley (fast forward to 20:55) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cUBgpVySyxQ
Saad looked like a quiker more sturdy version of Frank Bruno in his respective weight class, very basic and his fight with Lopez just looked like a scrappy brawl.
Saad was far more durable than Bruno with far greater hard and he never froze. Both had nice physiques but I don’t see the resemblance otherwise. I don’t see Saad as ‘basic’ — he threw left uppercuts and hooked off them, for a small for instance. Better in-fighter too.
Love the Franklin-Lopez 1 mentino Sainpat. People always remember the second one (which I picked), but the 1st 8th round was also epic. It's funny too, Saad had two more legendary eighth round with Marvin Johnson.
This content is protected The quintessential 8th round. Everyone knows this one, and rightly so. They both took like 1000 punches and seesawed who got to beat the **** outta eachother. This content is protected Very similar to the rematch, but nowhere near as good IMO. This content is protected All out war! Literally 3 minutes of straight punching, both men hurt, both men landing at frightening rates and this whole fight was virtually the BW Muhammad-Johnson. I can actually see this as my #1. This content is protected Awesome little mix-up here. Gonzalez puts it on him, then gets blasted into the corner. Some good action, good drama and an awesome round. This content is protected Good round, decent action but too much holding IMO. Worse of the group for me. This content is protected By no means a bad round, but by this point in the fight Diaz had stopped attacking with no fear of counters. Marquez was in control for 90% of it and because Diaz didn't attack so much, he didn't throw as much either. I preferred the 4th. This content is protected Very good round. Durán's skills are sooooooo good. Awesome infighting, would be right up there if not for bouts of holding. Rankings: #7. Giardello-Turner #6. Marquez-Diaz I #5. Duran-Barkley #4. Gonzalez-Kelley #3. Muhammad-Lopez I #2. Seabrooks-Jacob #1. Muhammad-Lopez II Not really hard to pick here. I only had issues picking the order of my top 2.
I’ve seen all of these at one time or another but I’ll give them a fair shake and rewatch them all even though I already have a (pretty obvious) leader in the clubhouse. Please keep posting your assessments and rankings. Those have made these threads so much more than just a voting poll.
Isn’t that the fight where Coetzee gassed and kept holding and then leaning on Weaver to the point that three or four times he almost sent him over the ropes (with no admonition fro the South African referee btw)? Horrible fight, horribly embarrassing performance from Coetzee.
Now that's weird - something I've never noticed before about Saad-Lopez 2 round 8 before. In the first 25-30 seconds or so of the round, the camera angle changes in really jarring ways, almost like the fight has been through some post-production editing. I went back to the full uninterrupted version and yep, same thing. It only happens within the first 30 seconds and then it stops jumping around but I'd never noticed it till now. It's definitely the full 3 minutes though so looks like it was just some funky switching of camera angles. But the Duran-Barkley round does come up short by about 15 seconds. I went back to the version of the fight I have saved in my own playlist and that definitely has the full three minutes.
