Least Intelligent Fighters?

Immediately after the win in his first fight with Tommy Hearns, Sugar Ray Leonard was interviewed on ESPN by Sal Marciano. The very first thing Ray said about Tommy was that he was wrong when he accused Hearns of lacking intelligence during the buildup to their WW unification epic. SRL acknowledged that Tommy demonstrated the intelligence necessary to outmanuever him, and that this underestimation of ring smarts caused Ray to spot Hearns an insurmountable lead on the scorecards.

Hearns was very shrewd in his performance against Benitez, and exhibited resourceful experience in jiving and juking his way to a later career decision win over Virgil Hill, himself a master boxer. The comments about Hearns being "dense" don't ring true when considering all his ring exploits. If Sugar Ray Leonard says that Hearns had ring smarts, I surely won't characterize him otherwise.

The critical comments regarding Foreman also seem off-base to me. Greg Peralta gave him ten rounds of hell the first time around, but George dominated him handily in the rematch before taking him out in the final minutes. He carried out the shove and uppercut strategy to perfection in taking the title from Frazier, successfully combining the uppercut approach earlier attempted by Ramos with the forward advance tried by Stander.

Ali gave away to Foreman the left side of his body, and got pounded with massive rights that should have crumbled his ribs to dust. To me, it's astounding that Ali had enough left to take George out after that downstairs attack. But contrary to popular opinion, I don't believe Foreman fought a stupid fight in Zaire. He took the free bodyshots Ali allowed him. How reasonable was it to expect that Ali would not succumb? But George cut off the ring brilliantly in that one, forcing Ali into immobility, leaving him no choice but to win with his toughness. (Contrast that with how Holmes suckered Mercer into the corners and gave him a boxing lesson. The 42 year old version of Holmes might have completely shut out the 25 year old Foreman of Zaire. It's no coincidence that when Holmes himself was dethroned, it was by the most intelligent of his 21 challengers.)

Foreman evolved his approach so completely during his second coming that Larry Holmes openly admitted to adopting those tactics from him in staging his own successful return to the ring. It needs to be remembered that George only used Dundee as a silent second, keeping his own counsel during his title win knockout over Moorer. Most members of the boxing press agreed that Foreman did enough to deserve decision wins in all four of his 12 rounders after regaining the title, hardly an indicator of low ring intelligence. (Especially if we define intelligence as the ability to learn.)


On the other hand, I think Ali has gotten much more credit for ring intelligence than he deserves, particularly in instances where toughness was more of a factor in his achievements. But repeatedly trying the rope-a-dope tactic against Frazier was hardly a sign of ring smarts. He caught lightning in a bottle with it in taking out Foreman, then kept returning to it when all his challengers knew full well what he was trying to do. 1975 was one of the greatest single calendar years any defending heavyweight champion has ever had, but unpredictability was clearly not a hallmark of his second reign. In ending it, Leon Spinks exploited his one trick rope-a-dope show perfectly, pounding his biceps, and ripping uppercuts through his peek-a-boo guard. (By virtue of Leon's flawless implementation of Sam Solomon's strategy, I wouldn't earmark him for a least intelligent branding in a ringwise context either.)

The morning after Leon's upset of Ali, Howard Cosell was interviewed about it on GMA, as he was before that match took place. (Remember, that Spinks/Ali I was on CBS, not Cosell's ABC.) In the first interview, Cosell predicted that Ali had too many smarts to lose to Spinks. During his post-fight analysis, he expressed surprise and dismay at the foolish manner in which Ali squandered away his title, a championship which then remained splintered until Tyson finally squared away all competing claims.

Muhammad Ali is a man I believe to have always possessed a certain level of intrinsic wiseness. But he wasn't nearly as smart against Foreman as Peralta was in their first meeting, or Jimmy Young, or Frazier in his second fight with George. (Even though Joe did lose again, he took nothing like the kind of punishment from Foreman Ali withstood.) Nor was Ali as smart against Foreman as Tommy Morrison eventually became. (Has everybody forgotten how Morrison called George for boxing advice after getting his clock cleaned by Mercer? If both Morrison, who actually wound up turning Foreman's own wise counsel against him, and a comebacking Larry Holmes each consider him to have been smart enough to adopt his tactics for themselves, then I fail to understand how George could be considered as lacking in this area.)

While Ali had amazing physical gifts, he wouldn't have spotted an early lead to Folley if he had the ring smarts of a Holmes or a Tunney. Nor do I expect that he would have been trailing to Lyle, or had the close call he did against Young, or the difficulties he did in dealing with Norton (who Holmes later dominated over the first ten rounds, when Ken had much more experience, and was coming off his decision over Young).


Juan Laporte was as tough as anybody of his era. But after his spectacular single shot clubbing of Rocky Lockridge, it seemed as if he forever after went looking for that one big shot again, forfeiting points losses in his pursuit of crowd pleasing knockouts.

Hagler was a dedicated athlete with a titanium cranium, but there were instances where he was confused and outsmarted. This is a troubling deficit for a southpaw switch hitter of his class. Outside the ring, he's a pretty intelligent character, who remembers the names of people he's met only once, and has learned Italian at a relatively advanced age, well enough to star in movies speaking that language. But in his final four distance contests, with Antuofermo, Geraldo, Duran and Leonard, the outcome of the scoring was in doubt. Could he have decisioned most all-time greats who stayed on their feet over 15 rounds?

 

I doubt it. Tyson is no dummy but he is of average intelliegence at best. He is a mimic more than anything else.

 

A well-crafted post.

Hearns has been punch drunk for years now, and people project backwards based on what they see now. Hearns was an exceptionally bright ring strategist. His KO of Duran is an example of intelligence as much as it looks like sheer, unadulterated aggression. He had a mental burb when he tried the same against the larger, stronger Hagler but it is understandable why he did.

I heartily agree that Foreman was an intelligent brute... however it is clear that he got his psyche toyed with by Ali. Ali played Hannibal Lector in Zaire during the fight. He enraged the beast by attacking his ghetto insecurities and it worked. Foreman trained like Paul Bunyon, for power, but did not train for endurance. He pounded away but he failed to pick his shots, thus he was the dope for all eternity in the "Rope-a-Dope."

Excellent work here! I don't completely agree, but it is interesting at least.

Laporte is a representative man of many hundreds of fighters who were one-hit wonders and stayed that way because of a failure to adapt to circumstances.

fair enough.

 

Great points. The Hearns/Steward strategy against the favoured Benitez was utterly brilliant. Leonard and Dundee had also done similar.

A fine observer will notice that for perhaps the only time ever Hearns holds his left hand high in defence against Hill. Many thought Hill would win the jabbing contest with his excellent left hand but Tommy made pre fight adjustments and more than held his own, as well as assuming slight control by hooking off the jab later.

I have been saying this for AGES. Hagler's adaptability and ability to assimilate during the course of a fight for someone of his level was terrible. His greatness is forged on sheer assets far above and beyond his ring smarts.

 

I am going with 'Hurricane' Peter McNeely who is now a spokesman for TNA (total nonstop action wrestling). When he was nearing his considerable peak they matchup him up with Mike Tyson. Tyson was just getting out of a 3+ years jail setence as we remember. So you would think he might be rusty. In the first round 'Hurricane' takes it right to 'Iron' Mike and tremendous blows are exchanged immediately. There is a flash knockdown. McNeely gets right up (ala Marciano-Walcott) and again takes right to Tyson. For some reason that we'll never exacty know - McNeely's mobbed-up manager jumps into the ring and stops the fight. So we denied seeing possibly another Marciano-Walcott type of drawn out brawl. A shame huh? Anyway, McNeely should have tried to maybe outbox Tyson instead. Maybe he could have taken him into deep waters and taken him out late in the fight IMO.

 

No I think there is misused inteligence at work there. In any given situation he seems to follow some sort of creative impulse whether it is pigeon breeding or studying boxing history.

There is some sort of weel turning there even if it turns in the wrong direction.

 

I agree, he has a very complex mind. He has a good wheel in his head when it is working, it just goes very slowly and is fragile.

 

...I don't deny that Tyson is able to absorb what he hears and reads, but that is about it from I can see. He does very little with it except for regurgitate it.

In any event, even if there was/is more intellectual potential it is buried under a mountain of issues. He is an emotional adolescent. Now in his 40s, he is still the "Manchild" that he was in the mid 80s.

 

Good example. Who remembers the "caccoon of horror"??

McNeely's manager isn't mobbed up, there is no organized crime organization in Massachusetts worthy of the name, he was simply attached to the kid and didn't want him to get hurt.

McNeely got hooked on crack soon after that, and a year or so after the Tyson fight got arrested for assaulting an asian man half his size in a nightclub. I understand that he assaulted the man with a bottle. Last year he was arrested for driving the getaway car after a robbery of a 7-11 store in Stoughton.

He is a nice person underneath this stuff, and I hope that does alright from here on.

 

His voice hasn't matured either, can you imagine what it was at age 6?

 

Marvin Hagler probably deserves a mention. His tactics rather than ability caused him problems against Vito, Roberto and Leonard. Hagler's main weakness was an inabilty to adapt to change in a fight.

But he could learn from his mistakes as he showed againsts Watts, The Worm and Vito.

 

Without doubt there can only be one winner for lowest IQ ..... Herbie Hide. That guy is one thick *******.

 

I would include Muhammad Ali in this category. A lot of people consider him a genius in the ring, but without his pheonomenal speed, toughness, heart, and agility, he would have not achieved a tenth of what he achieved in the ring.

Outside of the ring, Ali was a funny and clever man, but people forget that many of the jokes he said he had already thought of and written down before he said them. Not to mention that Bundini Brown helped coin some of the greatest phrases normally attributed to Ali, including "float like a butterfly, sting like a bee" and "rope-a-dope".

Like many child prodigies, Ali was sort of naive and sheltered. He thought Herbert Muhammad could phase through walls, and that crazy man Elijah Muhammad was actually a genius.

Arturo Gatti is one of the "dumbest" when it comes to ring intelligence, but he made millions with his "glutton for punishment" style so perhaps he's not so dumb after all.