the what fights did you watch today\scorecard thread.

Before the draw with Woods, he beat Harding, after it he beat Woods, Roy Jones and Antonio Tarver, a run that arguably makes him the most accomplished LHW between Jones and Kovalev. That's not bad. After that, he loses the rematch with Tarver, the rematch with Woods, beats Griffin by stoppage.

I agree with you that he was not a great talent, but he did interesting things with what he had. I'm working through his losses at 175 and personally have not scored him a loss yet. Be interesting to see what Tarver II and Woods III kick up.

 

ANTONIO TARVER UD12 GLEN JOHNSON

I suppose you have to give Johnson a ****py first round based upon the aggression, but it's really nice to see Tarver do his thing in the following rounds. Tarver was good when he was on and I like watching him. After a cracking rally from Johnson in the fifth, where he beats Tarvers body like drum, the sixth seemed of real significance to me and indeed it was a closely contested, interesting round. I thought Tarver shoe-shined his way to a 4-2 lead at the half-way point. But he needs to throw punches to stay safe. The minute he stops throwing Johnson hits his body.

They are very well balanced these two through 7,8 and 9, Tarver is throwing more and landing more, but Johnson is landing the harder punches. It really becomes a question of what you like, and although I like Tarver's quick, skiffing punches mixed with the occasional fire******* in round 7, I preferred Johnson's milling, winging punches in 8 and 9. Nine though, is arguable and could easily have gone the other way. I would have liked to have scored it even. Either way, on my card the tenth assumes the same significance as the sixth - once again, Tarver shows the right instinct for this type of inflection point, and takes the round. I now have a tired Johnson needing 11 and 12 for a draw.

Larry Merchant called round eleven "one of the best rounds you'll ever see two light-heavyweights fight" and it is a great, great round. It looks like Tarver is just putting it to bed with more strict boxing, but never quite gets away from Johnson whose eyes vanish into his head for a crazy last minute rally. He beats the ****ing **** out of Tarver for a whole minute. Crazy, inspired stuff.

But the twelfth was an anti-climax. Tarver shoe-shined his way through the first thirty seconds and then pot-shoted and held, but Johnson didn't really resist him.

7-5 Tarver

TARVER:2,3,4,6,7,10,12
JOHNSON:1,5,8,9,11

Tarver came in great shape with a fight plan and he stuck to it to gain a narrow victory and hand him what was, by my cards at least, the first legitimate loss of Johnson's LHW career.

 

CLINTON WOODS SD12 GLEN JOHNSON

Johnson has some quality entrances man. For Woods III they are booing him into the ring all the way and he gets in and starts blowing kisses to the crowd, that's quality.

Woods does well for the first 50 seconds though, before Johnson starts to come with those hard punches. There's something vulnerable about Woods. It's not that he's soft, because he's not, you just fear for him when you see them go in in a way you don't for Tarver. Maybe because Tarver has options and dimensions and Woods doesn't - he just going to get hit and that's all he has. He wins a genuinely thrilling second round though, and he fancies himself a bit by the end of it. He got hit a lot though in the course of winning it.

Really, really good fight. Woods fight what I would argue is the round of his career in the fourth, pity he couldn't rouse this kind of effort versus Tarver or Jones. Johnson makes him pay in the fourth; this is withering stuff - it's a cliché, but how does it go the distance?

Woods looks a bit sickened at the end of a very hurtful fifth. Johnson is the tougher of the two men. The way he grunts out each punch is hideous. He also has a handy lead going into the second half of the fight, 4-2.

Seven is a real heartbreaker for Woods. Johnson just spookily walks in with his hands high for the first minute and lets Woods work, but at 1:40 he starts punching and takes over. Given that Woods wins this fight, it's almost impossible to imagine that the judges didn't score him this round. It's not justifiable to give Woods this round. He gets hit more, it's that simple, he gets hit harder, that simple. Johnson's guard and sliding upper-body movement represents a very decent defence, and one that is much, much better than Clinton's. That's the difference here.

The eighth was close though, and Woods showed wonderful heart in perhaps just nicking it, Johnson looked tired and seemed to want to hold on a bit. He kicked the **** out of Woods in the ninth though, arguable 10-8 round though Woods showed ***** of steel to fire back and spare himself that I think.

"Everything Glen Johnson is throwing is hurting Clinton Woods and that's the difference," is how Duke Mackenzie puts it at the beginning of ten but he still infuriatingly agrees every time John Rawling bellows "there's only about a round in it!" Woods wins the first forty seconds of ten, but when Johnson starts to motor there's really only one fighter in it.

God knows what Woods is made of though, because I gave him the eleventh and I also thought he dominated the sloppy twelfth.

Great, great fight. 7-5 Johnson.

WOODS:2,3,8,11,12
JOHNSON:1,4,5,6,7,9,10,

Robbery? Naw. This kind of margin is never a robbery. Johnson faded in 11 and 12, and if he'd won just one of those rounds I think you could have said robbery - but I do think it's interesting that it wouldn't have been enough for him to win the fight on the judges scorecards. The scorecards were dirt (115-112? wtf).

Johnson deserved the victory here.

 

Or Tarver with Johnson, Harding, Griffin, narrow loss to Jones, beats Jones.

But Johnson beats Tarver right at the end of that run and sort of draws the divisional threads together.

Also - Shumenov, Cloud, Pascal don't really mean that much to me. The only one of those who might be better than Harding is Pascal, who beat Dawson so fair enough.

 

Harold Johnson UD15 Doug Jones

God bless the internet.

Johnson is slower, I think, than he was against Machen and Charles, his other great filmed performances, but it doesn't seem to matter. He's even more smooth, he places Jones's trailing hand under firm control and whenever he does get hit with a serious punch, he knows just where to put them to give them back. That lovely tiny footwork that he uses to draw his guy onto a jab is in full formation, and although I didn't see him draw Cotton into jabbing range with head movement like I think I saw him do against Moore, he shows a lot of those tricks. It's just keeping it simple, isn't it? Accuracy, good volume, a conservative commitment to balance that makes mongos call him boring.

He's not boring in the third, looks almost abandoned knocking Jones about, hurts him a bit. The fourth, too, is fought at pace, some of it on the inside, then Johnson just pops out and lands a triple jab when he feels like it.

Jones seems to be getting squarer in order that his right might become a factor, but he just getting hit. And he wants to stop coming inside, too.

I got them confused at the beginning of the sixth and was like "oooo Jones is winning one" but he wasn't. My man is slipping some jabs. Maybe Jones nicked the seventh though, he looked involved and landed some good punches, but if he won it was by a shade.

The film quality is bad in the ninth, and there are two short sections missing, so i'll score that even for the purposes of this card. Johnson wins the tenth, and his lead is by now unassailable. He was actually asked once why, when he had the fight all sewn up, he didn't press his man for the stoppage. He answered that he would feel foolish getting dropped in the final round. I wonder how much money his striving for perfection cost him.

Eleven is exciting. Johnson is aggressive and lands a lot of punches and has Jones in trouble at the bell, which they don't hear. But at one point Johnson was pinned in his own corner and got hit a couple of times by a wild Jones. Johnson is kind of looking over his shoulder at his corner like "wtf is this kid on"

In the end, I managed to find two rounds for Jones (7 and 14) and they were both arguable. It's was a boxing masteclass, it was a technical mis-match, it was all that. It was man against boy really.

Ten months later, Jones was matched with HW prospect Cassius Clay. I wonder how different things would have been if Johnson had got the call instead.

JONES:7,14
JOHNSON:1,2,3,4,5,6,8,10,11,12,13,15
EVEN:9,

 

Gonna do it after the England-New Zealand highlights. What a delight that was.

Yeah, it's not just that Johnson was clearly three levels above Jones, it's that he took away the left hand of the supposedly best left-handed stylist in the HW division twice, once against Charles, once against Machen. I mean that fight is no joke for young Ali.

 

I agree. It's a living, ludicrous nightmare that Johnson had Moore to contend with. And he was obsessed wit him. Even after he won the title he demanded Moore again. He even said he wouldn't feel a champion until he'd beaten him, wtf.

 

WILLIE PASTRANO SD 15 HAROLD JOHNSON

Not much really happening through four, Johnson looks like he can't slip Pastrano's jab though, it's a crafty sneaky up-jab and it's fast, and it's only interested in being fast, he's not messing around trying to land combos behind it, or sting with it, just land it. Johnson can't slip it and it's messing him up. He still wins any rounds anything actually happens in though.

After 8 I have it 5-3 Johnson. Some of Pastrano's jabs actually do snap and I could see how ringsiders could score them. I still feel he needs to do something more, for example I gave him the eighth partly because he managed a weird slapping right hook to go with those jabs, it somehow comforted me against Johnson's bodywork. I'm not sure you can win a fight just doing what Pastrano is doing. Still, it's just over half way and only two rounds in it. Plus, Pastrano was only able to land that weird scythe on account of he is sleepwalking Johnson on a bit.

After 12 I have it 7-5 Johnson. I do admire more and more tiny moves Pastrano uses to keep Johnson, if not quite of balance, then concentrating on range. It's a less economical way of doing what Johnson normally does, moving his many onto punches. But Pastrano don't throw many punches. Still, the jabs he lands they are starting more and more to impress and when he adds another punch at some point, I find myself asking if Johnson can now win the round rather than vice-versa. Intriguing if rather uninspiring contests.


PASTRANO:1,3,8,10,12,
JOHNSON:2,4,5,6,7,9,11,13,14,15.


In the end though, he never got near for me. 10-5 Johnson. It could be that these jabs, especially early, that look like cream puffs on film could be as snappy as some of the jabs appear to be late. That happens sometimes in fights and it's usually the jab that gets under-rated on film.

But gun to my head, robbery.