his fight with jarvis was just shown on the tv, pretty easy fight for him. i've seen his fights with benn, but thats about all. the only other thing i know about him is that he's a nutter. but a generous nutter. " In 1994 he took over a prime site in the city, which he called 'Buckingham Place'. He knocked down the interior whilst keeping the grade II façade intact and built 69 flats for the homeless, using £1,250,000 of his own money. The building was leased to the charity Sanctuary Housing Association with the lowest rents in the country." was he one of the greats of british boxing?
You know something Dunk? I got half way through a post saying the same thing but couldn't be arsed. Its also worth pointing out that Eubank-Jarvis was on terrestrial TV so if anyones to blame for turning viewers away from the sport....
I know one thing, if he fought today, a lot of the people who now hold him up as a "true warrior" would be ripping him to bits for portions of that WBO super middleweight reign.
Its true though mate, some people think boxing was a bed of roses "back in the day", it wasn't a great deal different. You have to take the rough with the smooth.
In my mind he was always underrated by the Americans, overrated by the Brit fans. A very good fighter who had some great wins, but lets not forget the dubious opponents he fought, or the fact that if some decisions were fairer to the other man, Eubank could have several more loses on his record. I rate Nigel Benn quite a bit higher than I rate Eubank. Ability wise, I think he was somewhat one dimensional, he had an iron chin, bucketloads of heart and good power, but his boxing ability wasnt excellent overall. He often had the tendency to just not do enough in a fight, and several times couldnt adapt in fights to win.
A lot of opponents put in great performances immediately after Eubank beat them quite easily. Like Malinga against Benn (robbed), Rocchigiani against Maske (robbed) and Michalczewski (robbed), Thornton against Toney, Wharton against Galvano and Nardiello. So I think he's grossly underrated. The performance against Watson in their first fight is very overlooked, he was absolutely dangerously tight at the weight and was making Watson look ordinary before his legs went and still went 12. He won both Watson fights fair and square and Watson was the man who looked unbeatable outside the McCallum fight (when he had 11 months of ring rust), just look what he did to Don Lee.
There is a certain element of rose tinted specs when it comes to the past, I suppose it's true with most things, TV, Government, general way of life not just boxing. Most people will hold fond memories of "times gone by", so I do agree with you that this does distort their judgement somewhat. I can't find the article now, but it was basically outlining all the things wrong with boxing and most would agree with every point - then you realise that the piece was written decades ago and precious little has changesd. (If someone know the article I'm talking about, could you please post?)
How did Thornton put in a great performance against Toney? I just watched the fight a couple of days ago and I had Toney winning 118-110. Sure Thorton put in a good effort and gave it his all, but it was no close affair. Toney beat him far clearer than Chris did.
Considering Toney was considered the best fighter in the world at the time, lb4lb, and looked better than just about anything we'd seen against Barkley previous time out, Thornton did very very well to make every round close and competitive.
Technically quite average. He was a good boxer that found awkward things that worked for him i.e. the lunging jab, short uppercut, slapping hook, the in out steps, the posing etc He had an incredible chin and class him as unknockoutable. His heart was awesome as shown against Watson and Benn who were themselves top class operators. He had sneaky power, when he connected right then you knew about it but all too often he was inaccurate, not committing or just technically incorrect.
