I'm interested in watching some good footage of orthdox fighters who masterfully handle southpaw fighters. Help me out, you clever ****s.
Start with Arguello, who beat southpaw champions Watt, Ganigan, Ramirez (albeit closely, and wanted a rematch badly, but Mancini derailed Ramirez), Limon, Navarrete and Boza Edwards. Busceme and Tam were among his other southpaw victims in title defenses. Check out Ali's progress from Mildenberger to Dunn. Incredibly, Muhammad may have been the first HW champion of the Queensbury era to defend against southpaws. (I haven't been able to identify an earlier southpaw challenger than Mildenberger.) Worried too much and worked too hard to accommodate Mildenberger's southpaw style in 1966, circling right and even hooking to the body from time to time. Ten years later, he just went directly to his lead right in dealing with Dunn when he got down to business (carrying Dunn a little to make good on the prediction of a fifth round knockout).
Right hand oriented guys, a la Tszyu and co., tend to be the best at dealing with southpaws. Pretty obvious, really.
JMM is the southpaw slayer. Marquez has beat: Pacquaiox3, Casamayor, Gainer, Polo, Jaca, Kokietgym. He beat quite a few other SPs. Some thought he beat Norwood, also a SP. Marquez has the best footwork and positioning against SPs. Hopkins also has fought about 10 SPs and has very good positioning against them (this is key)
Cuevas, within his limitations, was a very smart slugger. Known primarily for his left hook, he largely shelved it and winged lead right bombs at the head of former southpaw champion Billy Backus from the opening bell, one of which fractured Billy's orbital bone and ended his career after a single round of action. Matthew Saad Muhammad applied a different approach to dealing with his early May 1980 defense against Cameroon southpaw Louis Pergaud in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Now Matt certainly had plenty of experience dealing with championship caliber southpaws by this time. Mate Parlov 2X ( This content is protected - This content is protected - This content is protected ), Marvin Camel 2X ( This content is protected - This content is protected - This content is protected ), and Marvin Johnson 2X ( This content is protected - This content is protected - This content is protected ) had been among his previous opponents in extended bouts with varying degrees of success. (Marvin Johnson nearly killed him twice.) By Pergaud though, he was confident he'd figured out the puzzle, although admittedly against a less than top tier challenger, and immediately undertook the execution of his plan. "The way to get a southpaw is with left hooks to the body!," is how he authoritatively explained his second consecutive easy knockout win to the television audience in his ringside post fight interview. Off hand, I don't even remember him attempting any other punch. Even the knockout blow was a hook aimed for the body which happened to glance off and ricochet onto Pergaud's chin. This may have been Matthew's most focused performance, and one of the few times this notoriously slow starter won all the opening rounds with conviction. A CW rubber match challenge for Camel's WBC Title late in the summer of 1980 would have been an interesting showdown, but we got stuck with some dud known as Saad Muhammad-Yaqui II in July.
kalambay's first fight with Herol Graham is worth watching if you want to see how to effectively work an orthodox jab against a southpaw.
Hopkins VS Tarver, Barrera VS Hamed are also pretty great displays of tactical domination over pretty good southpaws.
Jack Roper was a switch hitter (I zigged when I should have zagged). Jim Jeffries appears to have adopted a southpaw stance, in the second Sharkey fight, due to an injury to his left arm. This is a borderline and questionable case, but it has to be thrown in none the less.
