John Conteh vs Virgil Hill

You are a Gent and an elite poster, Mike! Always have been, always will be. Cheers!

 

He just knew it wasn’t there by then.
No one knows more than the fighter.

 

Yet it was just a little over six months since he had given Saad all he could handle.

Makes me think Matthew broke him late in that fight.

 

Agree to disagree my friend

 

And he had a very cool mean streak

 

He didn’t break him at all.
Conteh knew by then he was an alcoholic, the first fight was basically his last stand he knew he was a mere shell of a fighter by the return.
A year later he admitted himself to a rehab clinic for alcoholism.

 

That doesn’t quite track, does it? I mean, he didn’t start drinking heavily after the first fight and become an alcoholic in six months did he?

 

Conteh earned himself the rematch seven months later back in Atlantic City but was stopped in the fourth round. He hit the headlines the day after, but for the wrong reasons after wrecking his hotel room. “I was fighting emotions at that point. To retain and regain ground I’d lost. Trying to get back to where I was when I was twenty and giving it everything I had, but I didn’t have it anymore. My external life, with the drink, was catching up on me. I was an alcoholic. It was either one was too many, or a hundred wasn’t enough. Everything had taken its toll, mentally and physically.” While sipping on his double espresso and not looking far off the light-heavyweight limit, Conteh was proud to say, ‘I’ve been sober for over thirty years.’”

 

I’m happy for his sobriety but looking back 30 years may not give an accurate picture.

I mean, I just can’t buy that he was a finely honed machine in their first match and a wreck 7 months later. Well, he was, but not just because he was drinking.

I think he went into it knowing he had given his all vs. Saad the first time and Matthew withstood everything and then broke him in the end. He went through the motions second time around but knew he couldn’t do better than the first time and was shattered … so upon facing this monster again he knew he couldn’t slay the dragon.

To put it differently, who really believes if Conteh had avoided the late knockdowns in their first meeting and won a decision that he would step in the ring 7 months later completely shot because of drinking in the interim between beating Saad and his next fight? I think it’s pretty clear he was already drinking alcoholically before the first match and this wasn’t a new problem that cropped up.

 

This would be a boring jabfest could go either way.

 

That is a reasonable stance to take.

 

Have you seen Conteh fight pre hand injury?

 

I am a fan of John's. Now I am even a bigger fan.

 

The first fight just showed how good he was.
He was well past prime he broke his hand in an ill advised non title fight against Willie Taylor then busted it up again when he crashed his Rolls Royce while drunk and could hardly make a fist in his right hand.
All things considered his performance in the first fight was heroic against a champion who proved to be a monster.
Like I’ve said if they hadn’t cheated with the cut his resume would include a win against an all time great fighter, his legacy would be looked upon somewhat differently.

 

Conteh had looked like shyte and a faded force imo going into the first Saad fight and was really lucky just a few months earlier to get the nod against Jesse Burnett. Even against Parlov despite being very hard done by it was clear he was slipping and his life was in a bit of turmoil by that point. It's should be considered a surprise really that he managed to roll the clock back and be so sharp through the first two thirds of the initial Saad fight before his lack of legs and 15 round conditioning (coupled with Saad being an unhaltable late rounds monster) caught up with him.

Anyone who understands alcoholism (and the interior turmoil often associated with it) and it's effects shouldn't be surprised by how quickly it can make a person nosedive in a short span of time when they recently might have looked highly functional both physically and mentally. It's alarming. I watched it happen to my older brother. Carlos Ortiz looked awesome in the third Laguna fight and a few months later against Teo Cruz looked finished. It happens.

I don't know either that Hill would've been easily the best fighter that Conteh beat as was suggested previous. Though being a long-running titleist, I don't know that I'd hold his best form being superior to that of Ahumada or Lopez tbh. Even Finnegan. It's always tricky comparing a fighter like Hill who had a long, steady reign against mostly very mediocre comp and lost to the best he faced, to fighters who had less glossy records but fought in a much tougher era and didn't have luck or backing on their side.

Conteh is hard to pin down in a certain sense. At his best he was a more talented, skilled and multi -dimensional fighter than Hill imo and beat better fighters. Ahumada, Bennett, Finnegan twice, Hutchins, Rondon, Yaqui Lopez, Schmidtke on top of the fine effort first time out against Saad when far past his best and the highly questionable Parlov verdict is actually quite a strong list of wins for a man who underachieved.

Like mcvey said, very two handed and aggressive prior to the Taylor fight ****ing up his right hand. That injury happened while he was evolving as a fighter and entering what should have been his prime, but forced him to alter his approach afterwards. He became more rounded and less raw than the version who beat Ahumada and Bennett but lost the ability to slip and counter over the top or follow up the jab with heavy rights. So that along with his other well documented problems meant imo that we never really saw a peak version of him.I

I was thinking that the Bennett fight is a possible line for comparison. Lonnie was a very slick long range fighter with a languid but fast and accurate jab. He had real success timing Contehs head movement at mid to long range while John was trying to hold ring centre and probe from the outside with his own jab that hadn't evolved into the weapon that he dominated Lopez with. So Conteh basically just changed tack sharpish and waded in and under somewhat thuggishly but with an undercurrent of finesse not dissimilar to Duran and Napoles and just bullied Bennett up close with strong, mugging infighting with both hands and his head. Cut Bennett up and hurt him and would've imo stopped him had the doctor not pulled Bennett out when he did.

Hill might do well for stretches vs that pre-injury version of Conteh if Conteh opted to try and trade jabs for too long, slipping and fencing at range. But with momentum shifting significantly as soon as Conteh started weaving in leading and countering with both hands at mid to close range with meaner intent. I figure he'd outpoint Virgil handily, who was nowhere near as flaky as Bennett or lacking toughness.

The more fluid, technical but one -handed approach that Conteh used against Lopez might suit Hill a bit better in some aspects, but I'd still back Conteh with reasonable confidence. Hill was a very good/excellent fighter, though nowhere near the titan that his record would suggest on the surface, so as with any fight I wouldn't be agog if he sprung a narrow points grab. I wouldn't favour it though.