Two gifted offensive technicians with fast hands who put together dazzling combinations but with a jaw made of porcelain. Both have a very similar looking record and have fought at 126 and 130 although Linares managed to win a title at 135 in his third weight class. Who would you favor here? An interesting mesh of styles where you have a nice chess match mixed with aggressive exchanges followed by someone most likely getting stopped. This content is protected This content is protected
Hard to say,Linares was a fine technician and certainly better than Shibata who could be outboxed by Ernesto Marcel.. But Shibata was more aggressive and mixes in his pressure good with his counterpunching,similar to some Harada/Tyson mix I'd say..(bad chin though.) Still,I'm picking Shibata..as he has the more meaningful wins, outboxing the past prime,but still game Vicente Saldivar and evading the hard shots of Ben Villaflor.
Shibata himself was a great technical fighter who showed some good defense and movement. He was rarely outboxed other than Ernesto Marcel and even then that fight was also fought very competitively and although I had Marcel winning it was by no means a whitewash. It was a well fought fight that was close. I'd say Linares was more physically gifted while Shibata was the better technician. Although I'm still on the fence with who wins here since you just never know if either of them were gonna get knocked out in a flash.
Both have somewhat similar stylistic tendencies, but Shibata was proven against high level fighters like Saldivar and Villaflor. Shibata's ability to constantly move in and out, explode and counter even when squat and crouched would be an absolute nightmare for Jorge. The closest he's faced to that is from Loma and we know how that ended. This would also be one of the few match ups where Linares does not have the overall speed advantage. Linares would have to come out like a man possessed looking for the early KO imo. Shibata's one problem was he could sometimes be caught cold, although it was usually by savage punchers. Once Shibata warmed up and got into a groove he was very, very, very hard to outbox or even get to (only one who did over time was ATG Marcel). Shibata clear decision. I wouldn't even be surprised if he stopped Linares on a similar shot as Loma did.
