Styles make fighters - What if Hamed had been a fundamentally sound boxer?

Could would shoulda. What if Ali had crushing power, what if Julian Jackson was awesome defensively.........

 

Hamed success wouldn't have been the same without his weird style, because that made him unpredictable, he archived a lot with that style, Barrera had his number, no matter the type of style he used.

 

He would have had more losses

 

He would have been average at best.

He was trained in a way that was deliberately unorthodox, meant to take advantage of the way 95% of other fighters were training. Hamed best asset was his insanely strong legs that he used to jump or leap into his punches, It's where that insane punching power came from. Without exploiting this natural asset quite as thoroughly he wouldn't have gotten as far as he did.

It's why the lead uppercut worked so well for him, it's probably why he could lean back so far away from punches to evade them, It's why he could switch stances so quickly and hit with power from both. Brendan Ingle saw his natural assets and molded a style to maximize them as any good trainer should.

 

I've always thought of stuff like that, for instance how would Mike Tyson's career have faired had he used the same style as James Toney at heavyweight? He would have still had that speed and power no matter what.

I suppose with Hamed being very short the style that he adopted benefited him as a fighter, he would have struggled more being orthodox imo....

 

I disagree with your first point Wass. I think a lot of Tyson's power was generated by forward momentum and in his prime he built speed exponentially as he got into a rhythm. He generated power by swift forward thrusts which he needed room to do. Toney's crafty defence and shoulder rolls made him harder to hit than Mike but had Mike used those moves, he'd have been denied room for leverage and subsequent power. Look how ineffective he was on the inside even in prime years.

 

He was ineffective mostly because he was lazy on the inside and let fighters tie him up not because of any technical weakness.

 

This really makes no sense to me.
No offense intended

 

Absolutely. My point was that he needed movement to generate his power and speed. The more flatfooted Toney approach would have denied him that so, while he would have still had power and speed in his locker, doing a Toney would prevent him being able to fully call upon them.

 

He would have been getting plenty of movement in the counter right hand after the shoulder roll. Tyson also had a wicked uppercut thrown from the spot.