Just watched clips of Papp's fight with Peter Muller,I dont remember the Hungarian hitting that hard ,he drops the German multiple times knocking him out of the ring in one round ,in another he hits him so hard he does a backward somersault ala Mildenberger v Ali. Papp looked very dangerous boxing from a southpaw stance ,using a continental guard ,exploding with quick hard flurries,pity he didnt get to take on the top middles in the States.Also caught the Cotto Gomez highlights ,a mismatch ,but Cotto certainly can whack.The Torres Cotton LH title fight is on You Tube ,it was fight of the year as I recall ,must be worth a look.
Speaking of Cotton/Torres, I had Eddie the winner by the fights end by three points... for a guy going into his 75th professional fight at 39 years of age that was some performance he put up. He really took the steam out of Chegui by the later rounds with all that body work he invested in heavily in the early going. Torres was a very good body puncher himself and ususally invested heavily to the body in all his fights, but in this fight the roles were reversed as it was Cotton who did most of the work downstairs and had Jose covering up to protect his midsection. Jose was headhunting much more in this fight than in most of his other bouts, but Cotton had a good chin and was never noticeably hurt at any point in the fight whereas Jose was clearly hurt by some of the body blows at several points during the fight. Lots of folks say how impressed they are at how Hopkins is capable of being competitive at his age (mind you with a terribly boring style and minimal punch output), but they ought to check out this fight if they really want to be impressed at how a ol` pro can still fight at a high pace and take the fight to his younger foe unlike Hopkins.
As for Papp it is indeed a shame he never got that shot at the title, but to be honest he wasn`t going to win it anyways. While he was in line for the title both Joey G. and Tiger became champ, and Papp would not have beaten either man on his best day. Joey was too good of a boxer and held significant advantages in height and reach over him and would have outboxed him to a decision, and Tiger would have been far too strong on the inside for Papp and would have busted him up en route to a TKO win, possibly on cuts as Laci was a bleeder. Nevertheless, he earned the right tomfight for the title and should have been allowed to do so, but with Hungary under communist rule at the time it just wasn`t going to happen.
Like you I think Giardello and Tiger would have been too much for Papp,but he deserved a shot,politics got in the way .Eddie Cotton could make some noise if he were fighting today don't you think?
