roy jones is training Eubank jr

A lot. That performance against Benn was as close to perfect as you could wish for. Benn's showing against Watson was like nothing you ever saw - I have never seen a fighter tee off with combinations quite like that at such a berserk pace, putting everything into every punch and throwing from all angles like that; the power, speed and ferocity was off the page, those natural punching leverages of Benn something to behold. (On the strength of the performance Bob Arum signed Nigel the next day, the fight was live on NBC in America and they were desperate to see more of him!) You'd have to be Stevie ****ing Wonder not to see this. And Watson put in a near-perfect, if not perfect, performance. I didn't see him put a foot wrong.

He opened his gloves to wrap his fingers around his forehead which blocked EVERYTHING, even the body shots because his elbows were automatically lower. He timed his own shots between Benn's combinations and power shots as Benn was resetting, never throwing a punch more than he had to or giving Benn quite enough room to get total force.

Study the 2nd round of the fight closely, and, offensively, you see an almost flawless exhibition of boxing from Watson. He is literally punch-****ing-perfect - along with Benn's fists swirling round his guard, we see Watson hit him with every shot in the book in this round.
(This was still only the 2nd round!)
Not just jabs, though plenty of them; lead straight right hands, lead right uppercuts and baby Barrera-style left hook/uppercuts, uppercut-jab 1-2's, lead right-left hook 1-2's, digging body shots, the absolute works... in his quite methodical way Watson hits him with the kitchen sink. Benn lands maybe twice cleanly in the whole round. I never saw anything from Groves to impress me like this, and that's just one round of Watson's promising career, and not even the best technical performance of his promising career: that, was the Eubank second fight.

 

The rope a dope didn't impress me a great deal.

 

I'm more impressed by Watson against Benn than I am Calzaghe against Lacy, or even Toney against Barkley. That's saying something. It's become a bit of a forgotten masterclass in just how good Watson really was that night.

And of course the second Eubank fight isn't revisited for obvious reasons. But that was the most dominant performance against a top guy that I've seen at super middle, for 10.95 rounds at least. And Chris was in great shape.

 

Yes, quite conceivably. Furthermore, he could have walked him down and fought him with pressure if he'd wished, which George absolutely could not do. (For the record, Groves got off to the best possible start in his first bout with Froch and was ahead at the time of the stoppage, but the rematch with the less sluggish and complacent version of Carl was 67-66 either way going into the 8th, neither man was clearly ahead in that one.)

Watson wasn't just more durable than Groves with a much better engine and equal (or greater) heart and determination, he was a far more rounded technician, less reliant on explosive speed and pure reflexes than George and possessed sounder footwork/balance and defense, slipped and parried punches very well in addition to his intelligent, adjustable blocking (he indirectly taught Junior's dad how to defend against Nigel Benn's onslaught), was capable at all ranges, be it boxing long (jabbing with snap and variety), rumbling in close (with tremendous physical strength and short, chopping punches) or mixing it in mid-range, he was a tough read, would offset opponents' timing by the wrinkles in his body language, alternately twitching and rolling his shoulders and ticing with his gloves (which were rarely still when not punching, or being cupped tightly to his head in certain instances), could slip and counter sharply, was adept at catch-and-shoot and punctuating opponents' volleys with counters, mixed his body/head attacks much more fluently than George. He kept steadily improving with his experience of world level, too, took a lot away from his defeat to the Bodysnatcher, which can't really be said for the post-Froch Groves, whose 'world champion' status was a result of picking off a pretty weak beltholder.

Watson just had a lot more to his game than Groves, and he put it all together very well.

 

Competitive jab battles and a certain % of missed jabs can be expected between two very good jabbers with significant defensive capability, as Mike and Chris were. Watson had his share of success with the jab in the first Eubank fight, and was using it to more than just point-scoring intent besides, to shepherd and maneuver his man and set up opportunities – I certainly don't see Groves having as much success with the jab in a fantasy matchup with Chris as he did against his son.

 

Eubank had that eery defensive radar where jabs would miss by a millimeter. His timing and reflexes were oddly unique. He could actually counter punch without blocking or slipping first, very very few fighters could do this. Watson didn't realise how gifted Eubank was in this respect going into the first first.

You had Roy Jones who had great speed and reflexes, but when shots came at him he turned away and closed his eyes (!) - Eubank remained a poker face and would be right on the edge of range and moving his head just a fraction of an inch to evade. That was more impressive to me. And we saw it at its best in the first Watson fight at a slow pace.

 

He's athletic in so much as he's got a solid engine and some handspeed. Otherwise, he's heavy-footed and stiff. He did a funny dime-store Roy/Naz against sub-.500 Lithuanians and Latvians, but that's about as far as his razzle-dazzle goes. He's a rugged, wear-you-down lunch pail labourer, but he doesn't want to realize it, which is why he hasn't been able to cut his coat according to his cloth.

 

Oddly, Eubank Sr would evade and not counter. Yet counter without evading! It gave him two pillars of scoring. He used tremendous reflexes and natural timing wisely. Then he'd stay out of range or slow the pace after scoring. Mike McCallum gives Vegas fighters tapes of Eubank Sr to study and tells them to look at the ring generalship, saying that there are very few, if none, who mastered it better. McCallum, ringside for Eubank-Watson I, says between rounds on ITV: 'the only way to beat Eubanks is to jump all over him'. He told Watson this after the fight and Watson did just that in the return at Spurs.

 

He's really not very good, other than being very strong and very fit for a middle, with above average combo speed and way above average output against a subpar or shot flat footed opponent. He's jerky and stop-start. He kind of takes a big step into range and just stays there in a squat position to be tagged with a smirk on his face!?

 

@Bulldog24's posts re. Watson and Eubank Sr. are excellent, the type of material I ideally come here to enjoy.

If not for Mark, you wouldn't have been motivated to make the best posts in the thread. He catches a lot of flack on the forum, but, if he can provoke response of that quality, whether intentionally (which I don't rule out) or unwittingly, he's a worthwhile force here.

 

Fair point. It can only be intentional trolling realistically, but he does invoke responses to correct him.

 

He does seem to consume a lot of analysis (I can't vouch for the quality of it because I haven't watched a lot of YouTuber 'film study' videos), and I recall noticing in the past that he was open to having his mind changed by anyone able to put things in a different light for him or introduce some nuances he hadn't considered. I tend to think he's just an enthusiastic guy challenging people to contradict him in detail so that he can soak up whatever he finds compelling. He absorbs abuse pretty well and keeps on asking questions, anyway.

 

I don't think he can think or see for himself, he uses kind of rigid systemic opinion he's come up with and will exaggerate too (Bowe was a far better counter puncher than Holmes but had an awful defense... )

It's all very odd. Random off topic posts sprinkled in a lot too with the 'he's better p4p than him at this' stuff out of the blue and stated as fact.

 

I see this. And I've noted the tendency toward overstatement and non sequitur, his reasoning and his rebuttals can suffer from an abence of due perspective. Invoking the technical ability of a veteran Duran (who also happens to be a consensus Top 5 ATG) to dismiss the threat posed by a savage young Benn and downplay a relatively green Watson's creditable feat of bomb disposal, for example – we're discussing whether Senior's nemeses would struggle much with a painfully flawed Junior, after all, not pondering how a raw, early Benn would do against a mythical natural middleweight incarnation of a championship-tested 1980 Leonard.

He's more prone to authoritative pronouncements than I vaguely recall him being before my lengthy hiatus, which I guess is the result of greater belief in his knowledge of the sport after two years of enthusiastic collating. Maybe that's the point of his study, to absorb all the stylistic data, crunch it and become a kind of human boxing mega-computer which can dispense the ultimate wisdom on a given matchup and school a fool at will.

I find him inoffensive, though. If people use his posts as an impetus for thoughtful counters, (as you did, in defiance of your own advice), we can get good stuff to read. Not to say that it's incumbent on everybody to go point for point with him for pages on end, of course.


You mind us subjecting your style to this study, @mark ant?