More skilled: Hagler or Archie Moore?

Close but Archie Moore gets my vote. Ring IQ, better resume , longer career, more traps. Seems like Archie Moore was the more well rounded boxer and had more tricks up his sleeve for me.
Not to take anything away from Hagler's in shape and weight discipline. P4P Its Moore. more skilled? its the old debate weight climbers vs dominate in one weight class. Moore went 4 - 1 vs prime Harold Johnson being 14 years his senior enough said. Hagler doesn't have that claim, no where close

 

Very good question. I think it's a case of what you like. Hagler could fight in more ways but Moore had a deeper bag of tricks.

Hagler, to me, is probably the most well rounded fighter ever. He can virtually do everything from a tactical standpoint. He can fight with pretty much any style between his stance switching, ability to clinch, and his approach to all manners of ringcraft.

It's actually quite hard to talk about Hagler holistically, simply because he was good at basically everything. When he goes in the front foot and pressures, he's one of my absolute favourites; when he boxes on the back foot, he's probably the quintessential Boxer-Puncher. A great, heavy jab although if I was being a critic (and naturally, I am), he kinda had the Holmes thing where the jab itself was the weapon. He could vary it - usually by coming inside the guard, almost like a long, straight arm hook; he could come over the guard from the outside in the same manner; he could fire it as an up jab from his belly and of course, he could shuffle up and jump into it for huge damage to drive people back. Hagler's uppercuts were always brutal and his long lefts/rights were also great, his hooks would soul shattering and he mastered that slip and shift style of hooking that's so awesome.

Hagler's also interesting because he had an incredibly clever style, which required at the very minimum a thorough understanding of open and closed stances, which shots he was in position to throw from either and the ability to keep track of these while they were constantly changing. When a switch hitter changes stance, it's usually automatic and done out of either necessity or habit - and it usually takes at least some degree of time for the brain to catch up to what the body is doing. Hagler, though, he'd switch mid exchange and use the switch perfectly. He'd hide his switches; use them for better positions or to land punches which weren't available moments earlier. It's remarkable how good he was at it and is without question the best switch hitter I've ever seen. All this said, I'd argue that his biggest short coming is his ring IQ, particularly with Duran and Leonard. I won't make direct comparisons to any of Moore's fights because it's not really fair, as we can't see a younger Moore get 10-0d by Charles and Burley.

Immediately, Moore definitely does some things better. He's got a better defence; is a better counter puncher, he's probably the best ever at landing the right hand; he has his own brutal leaping lead hook. As a counter-puncher, you want to look at how he takes apart a fighter looking to jab. He'll come under it with long right hooks to the body, over the top with straights and overhands; he'll slip inside and counter jab or split it with his left hook. He'll use the jab to get the clinch and skip the mid range - and even worse, he's probably at his best when transitioning between the range where you need to step in to jab - and that no mans land where both fighters can land anything.

His defence is beautiful, a mixture of a bob and a weave, a shoulder roll, various guards with the most known being the cross guard and rock solid positional defence.He'll go a step further than just defending tho, and use his torso movement to invite specific shots at manufactured openings, to escape out the side door, get the clinch or just to blindside his opponent to the trap he's setting in the moment.

Up close, he's simply a level above Hagler imo. He's better at getting there, by using the 1-2, a jab and dip, a weave into left hook, or rolling into a right hook - and he'll hide headbutts while he's at it. He'll use his cross guard to create space, use his head control posture and his shoulders to offset balance, sometimes all the same time. He's great at pivoting off to new angles while remaining in the clinch; he'll widen his stance to cut off exits, he pummels his hands in or out to set up hooks or uppercuts; he'll throw rear hooks to the body to set up lead uppercuts. I like how he squares up for right and left hooks, throws them and immediately goes back to controlling the biceps. Against Valdes, there's a few moments where Moore circles while inside, obtaining a position where he can use both hands and Valdes can only use one. All the while, Moore is getting Valdes to walk and turn into shots.

Moore overall is a better ring general, better at adapting to opponents, higher ring IQ and clearly harder to hit imo. On top of all this, he's also one of the craftiesy trap setters ever.

The way I'd compare them is to say that Moore has a deeper toolbox, but Hagler has five or six spare toolboxes in the back of the van that he occasionally needs to route through before he gets the job done. Of all the skills which I find the most impressive generally, Moore does more of them than Hagler does. So in short, Moore was much more skilled and Hagler was a brute compared to him.

 

Yeah it's insane to me. I watched it some months ago and scored it 11-4 for Hagler. And that was by still giving Duran the 1st round which in reality should be scored even, and another one I don't remember due to some higher landing percentages form Duran.

Even if you can't take your mouth off Duran's baloney pony, I don't see how you can score it closer than 9-6 by giving Duran rounds for landing shots that bounced off Hagler while still getting outworked and beaten to the punch, or by trying to pretend Hagler isn't hurting Duran or catching him clean.

 

We never saw Marvin truly out of his comfort zone.

At different weights etc.

Well into his advanced years.

 

Marvin was not a level above Archie Moore.

What nonsense.


Archie was a genius.

He also fought at multiple weights, and well into his advancing years.


He fought much better opposition.


He was left short against Patterson and Rocky?

When??

When he was in his 40's, at HW, after 150-200 fights.


Marvin struggled with Duran and Leonard.

He had a hard fight against a B level Mugabi.

He blew the fight against Leonard, with his poor tactics. And when he was in his early 30's, against a version of Ray who'd never fought at MW, and who'd not fought in 3 years.


Marvin was great.

He had every tool in the box.

But he never left MW, and he retired much earlier, with less fights, where he fought much lesser opposition.


So as great as he was, we have no idea how versatile he'd have been against Archie's opposition, and at multiple weights at an advanced age.


Archie's skills were more proven.

 

Outstanding post, with much needed context.

 

Outstanding post as always Georgie.


I love both of those guys.


However, the questions are:

Could Marvin have been as great/versatile against better opposition?

At multiple weights?

Into his advanced years?


I don't think so.


Archie was more proven against better opposition, at various stages of his career.

 

Archie, but Hagler was marvelous technician himself. Some outstanding answers in this thread.

 

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You called it.

Obviously implying nostagia again.

Yet you absolutely can’t refute any of it.

 

Why would I refute something I agree with it?

 

Then that’s okay.

But it’s always difficult to tell with you, as you almost always preface your opinions, where you imply that there will be bias within the thread.

So it reads as though you called it, as George had said what you had prefaced in your opening post.

You are defensive.

Not everyone is biased.

Just pick out the intelligent posters and ignore the idiots/trolls.

 

I made a joke he played along at the end of his post (least I think he did) and I made a funny reference out of it that I hope he recognized. It is the perfect example of zoomer interaction.

 

Pick a B level come forward fighter and Hagler looks better, but Moore is overall more skilled.

Also Duran didn’t in my opinion get favourable scoring in the Hagler fight, it was a difficult fight to score, from memory there were as many as 5 or 6 rounds where barely any meaningful punches landed, but Duran landed the best of them in nearly all those rounds.
It’s been a while since I watched it though, In terms of rounds won it was very close from what I remember