Sweet Pea vs Chavez

He wasn't green at lightweight. You could say that every fighter gains more experience the more they are in the ring. Ali was more experienced for his fight with Spinks in 1978 than he was for Sonny Liston. But his physical tools and speed had evaporated severely. He was a shell of the athletic prime fighter of the mid 60's.

Whitaker was a damn fine welterweight. But he clearly wasn't at his best at that weight. His prime/peak whatever you wish to call it, was at lightweight. He struggled to do the same things at WW. IMO, his footspeed wasn't the same, along with his handspeed.

I actually wasn't overly impressed by Whitaker's handspeed against Chavez. Simply not anywhere near Mayweather's handspeed at the same weight.

 

Although Chavez always made it competitive, Pea was beating him on the inside so that tells you all you need to know.

I had it Pea 9-3.

 

That's fair enough but I take these things into account when watching a fight anyway, sometimes I have scored a fight without sound, helps a bit but personally I find I can view a fight with the sound on and block out the bias if I'm trying to score a particularly controversial fight.

 

Likewise.

 

It is a good competitive matchup and I think some people forget this. However in the rounds Pea did more than enough to win most of them clearly. I think a similar result would occur in a prime for prime 135lb matchup but in a fight with more frantic exchanges and with Chavez getting closer. 8-4 type decision, Pea would be faster also, I feel his best work was done at 135lbs.

 

A travesty in that not only was it wrongly a draw, but the fact that Pernell never got a rematch.

 

Yes why was there never a rematch? Just trying to keep the Chavez bandwagon going?