I have seen a few of his fights and his highlight reels and find him very exciting to watch. His skillset was very impressive, shame his chin was not. I have just ordered his career set for christmas and was wondering what people thought of his resume. I recognise plenty of names on it but people often say they were bloated 147 pounders who were well past there best. I wanted to look back at this see what you guys feel. This is a post I found on exactly the same topic posed by PowerPuncher. Norris is severely underrated, hes a far better boxer than Benitez, Trinidad, Delahoya and Winky Wright at 154 all in all. 25 world title fights, won 19 of them, proved to be the premier 154lber from 90-97 and was probably dodged by a few big name WWs Yes some of his opponents were past-prime but nearly every great champ has their fair share of that and you can only beat the man in front of you. Why isn't Norris A Class then? Is it because he was only a champion spanning 7years? IS it because he was ko'd near prime (not at his absolute best)? Because Hearns was too (3times), so was Tyson, so was Barrera...... So what of these past prime fighters: Mugabi - current WBC champ with 11 consequtive KO wins, ko'd in 1, what more do you want? Jaquot - ex WBC champ who had beat Curry, completely dominated Curry - ex P4Per, boxing prodigy, at home at 154, a big threat, dominated and ko'd in 8. Leonard - ex P4P no1, coming off a shutout over Duran who'd just beat MW titlist Barkley, a draw with Hearns, a LHW title win and ofcourse a win over Hagler. Completely dominated. Leonard was past his best but would have beat a lesser champ on that day Taylor - current WW champ, arguably should have had a win over Chavez, arguably should be undefeated. KO'd in 4 Castro - future MW titlist Daniels - undefeated challenger who'd go on to be a challenger/contender for 10 more years Blocker - current WW titlist Brown/Santana - beats the 2 men who beat him How good do you believe these wins to be? As i say I recognise plenty of them but how much did they have to offer at this time? I just wanted to gain a bit of background knowledge of his opposition before I got to see him in action.
Power has shown a lot of those wins in as positive a light as possible, the Curry description especially. You could go the other way and make most of them look really bad, maybe worse than they were. I can't be bothered to give my take on all of them right now, i'll just say i'd put Castro and Mugabi as the best victories. Castro was the stronger fighter and as sharp as he would ever be, and while i think Mugabi did go into rapid decline following the Hagler bout, he still had a potentially troubling equaliser for Norris' glass jaw.
I thought his best wins were Taylor and Leonard from a standpoint of most guys did not do that to those guys so dominantly. He was a fast fighter who was great. His weakness was he stood in front of guys too much and wanted to fight even thought he had a questionable chin.
Better boxer than Benitez, PP says? I'm sorry, that is an argument that simply cannot be supported in any way. Silly thing to say. That aside, he could do it all, but he had this mindset where he would either box OR slug, but never seemed to mix the two. He was a brawler in mindset, but if he had it in his mind to box, he was terrific. He made Simon Brown look like a clubfighter in their rematch. He was headstrong, however, and showed little ability to adjust mid-fight. It wasn't really his chin that was bad, either, it was his temples. If you hit him anywhere near the temples, he just short-circuited.
