Herol Graham

Undeniably great reflexes ,fundamentals were flawed imo,typical Ingle fighter all reflexes and legs, hands down and chin up in the air,bored the **** out of me,as did Johnny Nelson.Was skating it against Jackson ,but that chin was up there to be hit and Julian finally found it.

 

Sadly he will always be rembered by the more casual boxing fan as the guy who got KOed by Jackson,that clip of the KO on youtube by the way is one of the most seen sports ones they have on there,thats really sad considering he was winning that fight,but then again you got to last the whole fight so thats just the way it is.

They had a interview with him in the boxing news a few weeks back,he is training youngsters if i read it right somewhere,still comes across as a real nice guy,and was a awesome fighter who sadly never seemed to have much luck at times.

 

His nickname was most unsuitable. There is a reason why people don't talk about Iron Marcus Rhode or Zuri "The Sandman" Lawrence.

 

Cause they're ****?

 

I only ever saw Herol fight twice, once against Mike McCallum and also in that fateful fight against Jackson.

From what I saw (and once again I'm basing my obserations off the back of only two fights) Graham was one of those guys a fighter's manager would like to avoid.
He was a tough, awkward fighter with little to moderate power, and he could make you look bad, because of his style. His fight with McCallum was a bit of a stinker, with both men looking clumsy and awkward. One could see that McCallum was very frustrated by Graham's unorthodox, mauling style. McCallum edged home on a SD, but it was an ugly, boring fight.

I guess Graham just didn't have the kind of style that put bums in seats, although it was quite effective.

 

His nickname was perfect, it rolls off the tongue... Bomber Graham; of course he nicked it off of Bombardier Billy Wells; but it was so good for him, Bomber Bruno had to change his name!

He is highly rated (rightly) in the British Forum, and for a fighter who never even won a piece of alphabet crap, he gets enough Kudos here as well; an exceptional natural talent.

 

Because Rhode's weakness is his glass jaw and Lawrence's weakness is that he can't punch harder than a light breeze (no KOs in all of his wins). If Graham had really been a bomber, rather than a light hitter, he'd be almost impossible to beat in my opinion.

 

if he kept his hands up he'd be in the HOF

 

No, he would not of been the same fighter. Most Geniuses are floored; I mean flawed; and I think Bomber probably was a borderline genius.

 

Sure he would have.Graham was not like Hamed after all;it was only on the defensive upper-body movement side where he was particularly unorthodox.

his best performances were always where he fought in a more technically correct manner.

A better jab and some more textbook defensive skills would have improved him immensely.

 

Ingle messes up fighters basics so bad, if they do not keep to that crazy style then they mess up. It Happened to Graham when he walked out on Ingle, ditto Naseem; both having different variations of the Ingle style, that suited each fighter.

 

I agree with that where Naz is concerned.

Graham didn't seem to benefit from the loose entirely reflex based stuff though.He had great technical footwork for instance, beatiful stuff...where Hamed was an atrocious mover with little real skill.

 

Ouch, very harsh!!!

Naseem when motivated was a thing of beauty, look at the Badilllo or Vazquez fights...

I know Naseem was very, very, very, very, very, very, etc, hard to like (as a person), but he had it pretty much all, although he rarely showed it (and that was Ingles fault, perhaps more than Naseems).

I think of Naseem as the ski jumper when you are a 10 year old, and you are saying: He is going to fall: He is going to fall: He is going to fall... Sooner or later you will turn around and say to your Mum and Dad; I told you he would fall...