Behind Jofre, these are my two favorite bantamweights of all time. Both should be in the HOF. Who wins?
Love these 2 and I also think they should be in the IBHOF. At their best they were hard to outbox because of their quickness. I think Rose was a bit sharper with his punches and Lora did have that tendency to be overly defensive just to show off. I would take Rose to decision Lora in a close chess match. Kind of interesting because I always thought Rose reminded me somewhat of SRR stylistically but without the power while Lora had some elements of SRL with his flashy style.
I genuinely spit on the HOF for Rose not being in it. Snort it back, yak it up and let it go like a hillbilly sniper right in their dingbat faces. Oh, I'd pick him to win too, probably. Sharper off the draw and a physical unit at the weight.
I do love Happy though, he was a special talent for a bit and about as natural a punch slipper in the pocket and at mid range as you're likely to see.
My problem is that they put Zaragoza's average ass in the Hall and Lora beat the tar outta Zaragoza. Also has clear wins over Vasquez, Davila, and Avalar on top of beating Zaragoza. That's better wins than a lot of HOFmers. I mean, all due respect to a solid guy like Brian Mitchell, but his scalps don't compare to Lora's.
Yeah, his list of wins is really good tbf, better like you say than some hofers. I think too had he not been drained that he might have scraped by Jibaro too and that would've been a top, top win.
I'm not certain who would win, but Lora was an excellent defensive, boxer/counter puncher and i think it would take an extremely special BW with that style to beat the Rose who outboxed Harada. Lora was very good, but I'm not sure he was that good. Rose is clearly the greater BW, imo.
