What's the greatest performance in Boxing history?

Hearns KTFO 2 Duran is up there with the greatest ever.

 

Same with Hagler Hearns

 

Yeah I couldn’t find it so I thought I’d ask you. Maybe it was deleted. Gonna check with my informer to see if he trying to set you up.

 

Hearns v Duran is nowhere near. You have potentially one of the best light middles ever v a career lightweight 3 divisions from his comfort zone. Ok it's a great win still but you have to take this in to account. Hearns v Cuevas was a much better win and in similar fashion.

 

Sugar Ray Robinson - Jake La Motta VI
Jose Napoles - Curtis Cokes
Pernell Whittaker - Greg Haugen

 

I always thought Roy Jones Jr’s performance against Richard Hall was one of his best showing, despite the opponent.

I’d also like to add Bernard Hopkins’s performance against Glen Johnson. One of his best fights along with the Trinidad and Pavlik. He showed endless stamina and threw lots of punches. People forget that Hopkins was a pretty aggressive fighter back then.

 

Schmeling-Louis 1

There were almost no boxing writers who picked Schmeling to win.

Max stood up to a man thought to be invincible, but he had a plan and stuck to it in the face of a tremendous amount of punishment.

It took 12 rounds but Schmeling patiently kept chipping away at Louis waiting for the right moments to land his right hand. It was a masterful performance against long odds.

 

If greatest = most complete I'd say Armstrong beating Ross, Robinson TKOing LaMotta and Napoles stopping Cokes (in their first fight) would be hard to beat. All tremendous title-winning efforts.

Against-the-odds great performances would also include Duran beating Leonard in Montreal, Willie Pep regaining the title over Sandy Saddler and maybe also Henry Armstrong's win over Lou Ambers for the lightweight title.

All the biggest upsets in history deserve a mention too - Ali over Foreman, Douglas over Tyson and Turpin over Robinson.

 

Some of my favourites....

Napoles versus Cokes (I). Everything good about the sweet science packed in to thirteen brutal, yet at the same time beautiful rounds. The definition of a fighter hitting the groove, finding his rhythm and having all aspects of his game firing. Flawless performance by Napoles.

Kalambay versus McCallum (I). Seriously underrated win and performance. An undefeated McCallum, one of the better fighters of his era and with plenty of defining moments still to come, was completely flummoxed here. Complete mastery of range, terms of engagement and defence by Sumbu here.

Sanchez versus Gomez. I know, I know, this one gets put forward a lot. But it deserves to. An unbeaten Gomez, crushing everything in his way at 122 lb, but it was as if Sanchez shrunk him down and had him moving / punching through treacle. Perfection in just about every aspect - he outboxed, outfought, outmuscled, out-sped, outmanoeuvred and out-toughed an all-time great for just about every second of the fight, right from the off. Took a piece of Gomez's soul which was never returned.

My last pick is another which doesn't get mentioned enough - Nelson versus Fenech (II). Actually eerily similar to Sanchez-Gomez in some ways; Nelson was considered the underdog, and was against an unbeaten opponent who'd been cutting through the divisions below (Fenech, had he got the win in the first fight which he deserved, would have been the first man to become a four-weight champion having never lost a fight, remember). Nelson also had the ****** of that first fight and dodgy verdict on his back - yet just like Sanchez against Gomez, he knocked Fenech down early, never let him recover fully from it and proceeded to systematically take his opponent apart before stopping him in eight rounds. Nelson was absolutely sublime here and, again like Sal, bullied the bully from the off. The way Nelson worked the high-low in this fight was a thing of beauty. And needless to say, the hammering Fenech got basically finished him as a fighter.

 

Henry Armstrong v Barney Ross
Jack Dempsey v Jess Willard
Jack Johnson v Tommy Burns / Jim Jeffries
Joe Louis v Max Schmeling 2
Joe Gans v Pete Herman

 

Rigo vs Donaire

 

Leonard - Duran 2.

 

Way to many in Boxing to be sure, Pac vs Cotto comes to mind, also Tyson vs Spynx….but the single greatest performance in Combat Sports history I’ve ever seen hands down is a UFC fight and that was Cody Garbrandt vs Dominick Cruz

 

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