Tony Ayala Jr. vs Charlie Weir

Ayala by TKO 5-7.

 

This fight would have been bombs-away. They could both crack, but what Ayala had that Weir didn't was a good chin. Ayala in 3.

 

Man I loved Weir. He had ok boxing skills and big power. If you look at his build, those very wide square shoulders and developed upper body you automatically get the idea that this guy could bang. Unfortunately his chin wasn't quite on par with his bombs away approach, and his tendency to sometimes reach for his opponent could leave him open. Ayala iirc was a tough guy with a punch and you'd have to lean towards him as more proven at high level. That said, you wouldn't write Weir off under any circumstance because he could switch guys off in a second. Here's a doccy I ran across

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Good topic and thanks for posting this video, hadn’t seen this fight in forever.

Ayala vs Weir (maybe he should have been called Charlie Weird with that spot of white/silver hair, haha) is a fight that could have happened had not Ayala been an absolute predator/******.

And it would have been all Ayala imo. I remember reading about Weir as he rose up the ranks and seemed to be fighting monthly as he went through a lot of B-level opponents who were usually pretty sturdy and mostly had his way with them.

Then along came Davey Moore to expose him, and Ayala would have been a similar mismatch.

Charlie was prone to do what Gil Clancy liked to call ‘waiting for the receipt’ … he’d punch and stand there admiring his handiwork and was very careless about things like bringing his hand back to responsible defensive position after a punch, or keeping one hand up when he threw the other. He also didn’t have a slick bone in his body and seemed to know only one way to fight — plodding forward and unloading his (usually singular) bombs.

Ayala would find an opening for a counter early and wouldn’t let Charlie off the hook. I’ll say Torito by KO 3.

 

They did fight a bunch of the same fringe/journeyman opponents and Weir plowed through them all easier.

Weir also showed that he could go rounds and win fights with mobile/cute middles like Colbert and Finnegan without being drowned after the early rounds (at least over ten ) . In fact those wins are quite a bit better than any of Ayala's, especially as he was said to have won every round against the granite chinned Finnegan, a fighter with much better skills than any of Ayala's wins. Now, Finnegan's cuts susceptibility was a huge issue for him by then and maybe after having just fought Hagler and Kalule he had taken the relatively unknown Weir a bit lightly...quite likely he beats him in a rematch or would have come back over twelve/fifteen in that fight if his skin had held up, but there's nothing on Tony's record that makes me sure he could even replicate that.

So I don't see this as a sure thing at all...Weir might have been a pure slugger with a dodgy defence, but Ayala was no kin of Duran either and his feet often looked like they were in cement. The South African was faster and harder hitting than the chubby ******. Better stamina too. Ayala's main advantage is tidier punching, but he wasn't Moore in there. This would be a brutal shootout and neither were proven extensively in this sort of fight to be making big claims with certainty, imo. In fact Ayala wasn't proven at all in them....if he'd fought Davey Moore he might well have ended up bounced around like a basketball against Moore's faster handed, gifted offensive skills too. I certainly don't see him avoiding that wicked straight right hand-left hook combo of Moore's too much.

Ayala's one "could have been" fighter that always seems to get far more credit than anything he actually accomplished hinted at. Yeah he was a big punching, exciting, face first prospect...but so were Said Skouma, Marijan Benes , Matthew Hilton, Mark Kaylor and a bunch of other forgotten hard hitting sluggers that we got to see come undone because they didn't get sent down.

 

Ayala was not the more proven at a high level. He was basically like Weir without the title shot and slightly worse opposition (Herrera was his best win, whereas Weir had Colbert and Finnegan). Weir cleaned out some of the same fringe guys earlier than Ayala did, and even easier.

 

fair.

 

Ayala by ko

 

I’d like to see Weir against Frank Fletcher and John LoCicero in fantasy matchups. A bit more his speed imo.

 

Ayala hadn’t stepped up (and really never would given that he spent a good portion of his life in prison) but Weir had also been KO’d by two journeymen … and that never happened to Tony (who had fought some journeymen).

Have to factor that into the equation.

 

Was Weir exposed vs Moore or was Moore in fact just that good at the time and people conveniently like to forget that?
Was Moore rushed into a fight with Duran and brutalized to the point he was a damaged boxer afterwards?
Was Tony as good as they said based on actual bouts or was it more on the POTENTIAL rather then what he actually accomplished?
Because I have to be honest Tony got dropped pretty hard by Herrera on HBO.
With all that said I think Tony would take apart Weir due to Tony's short compact power punches but this is not an easy fight like some would like to think due to the power of both.
I saw Hilton's name mentioned in this thread and I would guarantee at his best Hilton would have walked through both Weir and Tony. Hilton was not only very physically strong he was much faster then both Weir and Tony.

 

I do, though I don't care too much about the very early one. That's partly why I see it as a fight that could go either way despite Weir being the more proven of the two, though it's not like Ayala looked impervious to a journeyman/fringe contender stoppage either; he was pretty badly hurt by Mario Maldonado, who wasn't a puncher.

It was just the idea it was a mismatch/obvious win for Tony that I had to push back on. I don't really rate either all that highly, beyond being dangerous punchers and exciting to watch.