How in hell is Montiel P4P #7 before this fight?

I don't think Montiel deserved to be in the top ten and thought so long before last night. He is a quality fighter, no doubt, but he has one significant win (Hasegawa) in the past 4 years. Had it not been for favorable officiating and a fortuitous decision, Montiel would have losses on his record right now to Alejandro Valdez (by TKO) and Z Gorres both.

 

The thing about boxing is that sometimes guys with only "good" solid technical skills are gifted with a wonderful equalizer: a great KO punch. Trinidad was a very very good boxer but what made him catapult to the top of the pound for pound lists was his ability to destroy and KO even solid competitors. Then all of a sudden when he couldn't KO them, we saw that he really didn't make a lot of adjustments, that he wasn't really ever adapting to anything, and he seemed one dimensional.

I feel the signs were always there that Montiel was not the greatest technical boxer and may have gotten "lucky" at times, but his power made him competitive and maybe even sometimes dominant on the elite level. I'm not sure if guys with super deadly punches and a lackluster style (Ponce De Leon, maybe Montiel) really belong on the top of the pound for pound lists, because eventually they will fight a guy they can't hurt, but they still win in a lot of head to head against superior technical fighters. But then they do tend to occasionally destroy opponents in amazing fashion.

This is why its so easy to put guys like Sweet Pea on top of the lists: he isn't going to get knocked out, and he's going to hit the other guy when he wants to. With the nature of this knockout, I'm sure Donaire was going to outclass Montiel, but the early spectacularity of it was something of a fluke. And, yeah, every once in a while a guy like Trinidad will actually beat a guy like Sweet Pea.

 

:deal