Overrated Fights

Evander Holyfield-Mike Tyson I: Great event, pretty good fight with some quality exchanges and a lot of clinching. The Ring called this the 1996 fight of the year. It wasn't even a top 5 fight of 1996 nor was it the best heavyweight fight in the last two months of 1996.

Oscar De La Hoya-Ike Quartey: I've heard people (like Jim Lampley and Larry Merchant) describe this as a great, tremendous fight. Apparently people only remember 2 rounds and the remaining 10 when both guys spent mostly staring at each other. Posefests are not great. It was suspenseful enough to get you into it when you saw it live, but the action level for most of it sucked.

Arturo Gatti-Micky Ward II and III: The first fight was great (although Gatti-Robinson I was better). The 2nd fight was alright, but a shutout. The 3rd fight was good, but not FOTY material, and still too one-sided. Ward won two rounds against Gatti, who had a broken hand. One when Gatti broke his hand and the other Ward took in the last 5 seconds of the round. HBO overhyped this trilogy. Gatti-Ward 3 was the 2nd best fight of the trilogy, and wouldn't make my top 5 Gatti fights or top 5 Ward fights.

Roberto Duran-Ray Lampkin: Actually I don't know if anyone says it's good, I just decided to throw it on there. The first 12 rounds were putrid. Up until the knockout, this was Holyfield-Ruiz 3 type material. Duran was so good that guys would hold him incessantly and the fights would be ugly.

 

In terms of pure action, yeah, it wasn't too special. Quite a number of tactical rounds without much action.

On the other hand, the skill level was terrific as were the shifts in momentum and strategy.

 

It's hard to imagine that at one point, Shannon Briggs was actually involved in a pretty exciting heavyweight title fight and that people would be applauding his effort.

 

A great fight should have action. 10 rounds of it, in terms of action, STUNK.

Most big fights to me, while they happen live, don't bore me, because of the suspense value. The suspense value of DLH-Quartey kept me very intrigued when I saw it live, but even then, I could see there wasn't much action.

Now watching it again, knowing the outcome, is different. You really realize how crappy 10 of the 12 rounds were in terms of action.