I love watching Brown so relaxed in there, at age 30 with over 40 fights to his credit he had matured skill wise at this point and on this night put on a final great performance against a P4P talent whom was tearing through his opposition. Never running but moving intelligently when he needed to, sometimes languishing for a moment against the ropes to goad Norris into throwing hard rips to his head and body that he diffused with great blocking, riding and rolling of the punches, chin tucked behind his shoulder. He counter punches beautifully and has great punch placement, catching Norris high on the head and on the tip of the chin with his punches. The fight ending punch is surgically placed, landing high on the head almost exactly on the temple and laying Norris out on the canvas for several minutes. It's a punch Brown throws after Norris lands something like 3 flush shots to his face, penetrating Brown's defense but putting himself out of position for the fight ending right hand. Brown stays calm and fires back every step of the way. Then in the third he suddenly adopts a completely different style/look to even further confuse Norris, going from relaxed counter puncher to a jabbing straight shooter with the right hand. In the fourth he again flips the script and comes out as a south paw throwing hard shots to a backed against the ropes Norris! I've seen some people dismiss this as a one off, or just being due to Terry's relatively weak chin. But what I see watching this fight is a slightly past his physical best but very mature skill wise fighter in Brown taking out an over anxious but prodigiously talented younger fighter. Brown had to deal with plenty of heat coming his way that no one else in that time period showed capable of doing and I feel that he deserves a little more credit for it. Brown was among the very last fighters to ever have to dig deep for those championship 13th and 14th rounds, and his accumulated experience really shows in this match. Good stuff. This content is protected
I remember this fight very well. I was telling a friend of mine how good Norris was and had clocked that highlights of the fight with Brown were being shown on TV. I didn't know the result (pre-Internet days) so watched the fight unfold with my mouth open. I was shocked how badly Norris was shaken. That was pretty much the bubble bursting for him as one of the elite p4p fighters. No more talk of Norris v Chavez at Welterweight (or even Norris v Jones at Middleweight). I think that's why Brown didn't get the credit. All the attention was on what had gone wrong for Norris not what had gone right for Brown.
Brown was so brutal when he smelled blood. Love his fight with Trice. Trice pushed him back though. Right out of the pocket. Then Brown just re-ups.
Ol' Bobby used to call em' "shotgun jabs". I think I remember Larry Holmes putting Ossie Ocassio down with a jab. Maybe Leon Spinks as well. I can't think of other examples right now but I've seen jabs right on the lower side of the jawline hurt guys plenty of times. Just one of those things, if you really want to stick someone with the jab and can find the range it's basically a poor mans right hand. Still more than enough power to really rock you.
