Stunning performance by Billy Joe Saunders!

Elite already means the best of the best. So there is no upper elite. I would say elite fighters are the best of the tier A fighters. Elite fighters make other A level fighters look ordinary. Very few elites: loma, pacquiao, mayweather, ggg, ward.

 

That was just wow. I always thought Saunders was just talk. I would be interested in seeing him against GGG. I doubt that fight happens anytime soon. Maybe after Canelo-Alvarez II.

 

Their are multiple school of thoughts, their are the great theorists on this forum...who consider fighters they don't like (Bums), then there is real life, where governing bodies, boxing handlers invest & only rate the 1% of the pugilistic population. The Top 15 in each division (more or less), those are the actual elite class in boxing.

That said its illogical to claim that Mayweather, GGG & Lomachenko are in the same class as Amir Khan, Murray & Walters

Mayweather, GGG & Lomachenko are clearly Upper Elite
Maidana, Murray & Walters were clearly Elite at the time of the fight

Maidana, Murray & Walters are not peasants or anything near normal, maybe average for TV, but they are the elite of boxing.

 

Couldn’t cut the ring off.

 

How would this version of BJS do against Froch at 168lbs? Like, do you think BJS is better than Taylor, who was beating Froch's arse until the final bell.

 

Lemieux's trainer also trains Alvarez and Beterbeiv. Don't blame his trainer Lemieux proved he isnt strong enough mentally

 

Alvarez & Beterbiev have the same trainer?

both are hungry, top-10, undefeated LHW--seems a fight between the two is at least foreseeable, if not likely sometime in the next few years

 

Saunders will school GGG, worse than fury schooled wlad. Said it for years

 

outstanding performance from BJS 2.0 indeed

still i wonder how much your current perception of BJS is affected by your expectations going into the fight with Lemieux. Reality exceeded expectation (for most boxing fans anyway) by an outrageous margin, and that can skew judgment

about two years ago, GGG fought Martin Murray

MM is a better fighter than Lemieux--less power, but bigger, taller, more reach, more chin, and more boxing skill. GGG won that fight by TKO in the 11th, but had won each of the 10 rounds up to that point; what's more, some of those rounds were 10-8 because GGG knocked MM down twice in rd 4 (i think) and once in rd 10

in any event, a dominant performance. It was the first time, a GGG fight had lasted beyond 10 rounds; it was also the first time in ~ 30 fights that MM had lost by KO

so that victory by GGG is a reasonably close comparison to BJS vs Lemieux; if anything, GGG's is more impressive (given how he won 10 consecutive rounds, then got the KO, plus MM is a better fighter than DL)

but after the MM fight, on this Site, i recall seeing entire Threads critical of GGG--eg, that he's over-hyped because it took him 10+ rounds to do what he had been doing in four or five

GGG's performance was outstanding, but it didn't exceed anyone's expectations; in that case, reality ~ expectation

 

Yes it was excellent. The only boring thing i will say is when you have a top notch Boxer and a top notch Brawler go at it the brawler tends to end up looking a bit silly. The thing that excited me the most on Saturday was his stamina. A fully fit and fully focused BJS should look like that against Lemieux.

 

I agree. I'm a fan of billy joe but he won't be able to do what he did to Lemieux to ggg.
GGG cuts the ring off so well that billy joe is going to have to trade with ggg at some point and I don't think it ends well. billy joe doesn't have the power to deter ggg like Canelo or Jacobs so I think ggg will go to work on his body, which he was reluctant to do against Canelo in fear of leaving himself open.