Flowers has a bit of a style advantage here as a crowding fighter but as a southpaw fighting a guy with a huge right hand who could be knocked I don't think this works out for him well. Is this fight at MW? Hearns mid-late KO at JMW, hard to say above that.
161 recorded profesional fights. Against mostly full-blown middles and light-heavys. And 10 losses inside-the-distance. Towards the end of his career, in the last two years when he won the title, he went about 50 fights without being stopped. Jack Delaney knocked him out twice in 1925, and before that there was a string of about 40 fights without being stopped. I think most of his stoppages losses happened when he was still learning his trade, and hadn't yet broken into the big time. 10 stoppages losses in 161 fights isn't a lot anyway. The equivalent of 3 stoppage losses is 49 fights.
I don't think that ratio pans out as fighters with more fights tend to have more fluff with taxi driver/journeymen types You maybe right but he was still stopped in his prime and about him learning his craft when he was getting stopped allot, but it still brings up chin questions and maybe he would have been stopped by those men anyway. And Hearns is a hell of a puncher even at 160lbs and with his right hand being the foil for a southpaw and reach advantages, stylistically it looks good for Hearns, would be better to judge with Flowers some footage mind you
i'd say the styles favor flowers actually, good crowding fighter of a hagleresque size that right hand would probably **** him up though
I don't know if that's true of Flowers though. And the matter of finding the "average standard" for the ratios and proportions, and the cut-off "bum point" for the quality of opposition, is too complicated to get into. Well, I think Hearns' power is devastating at middleweight, and I don't assume Flowers would be immune to it at all. I believe Flowers was a great middleweight though, and a really tough fighter, and Hearns' record against middles and light-heavies is patchy (although that might be because he's passed his prime). Maybe I've overlooked the southpaw thing. Outside of Hagler, I forget which southpaws Hearns fought.
I think that Flowers boxed in rushes, he was like a proto-type pressure-boxer. That's me guess. That being the case, he's made for Hearns in terms of style, being neither one thing nor the other for the purposes of such a fight. I think Flowers was tougher and smarter, but as he showed versus Leonard, Hearns can out-box such men for spells just by controlling distance, as he would here. Mobility and boxing make Flowers look a bit amaturish early before Flowers starts to find range and realise what is neccessary and he starts to win those rounds. But Hearns is also the puncher in this fight - I like Hearns to eek it out on points if he doesn't win by stoppage, which I think is a real possibility.
Flowers had a weak chin and an average punch ... that is a very bad match up against Thomas Hearns ...
Flowers. Flowers was described as a "Black, left-handed version of Harry Greb" though with more power. Never stopped coming forward, would fire all these punches from all these different angles for 3 minutes a round, and had a good chin to boot. Hearns would not be able to keep Flowers off him and would be bludgeoned.
