I take your point - once they fought, the speculation tends to die away as you're just left with the result of what happened. That being said, I think the Pacquiao of 2010 would have been an entirely different proposition for Mayweather and Floyd knew this, which is why he was none too keen to meet him then! For what it's worth, I always had Floyd as the favourite in this matchup, even back then. But there's no way Floyd would have cruised his way to a points win like he was able to in 2015.
You're quite right, actually. And the window from when Roy went up to SMW and Eubank lost to Collins was quite small, so Collins would be the more natural opponent. Also Eubank was only 29 when he lost to Collins, so age shouldn't really been a factor. Collins was actually the older fighter. Still, Eubank wasn't "exposed". He lost two scrappy, competitive fights. It happens. Collins perhaps doesn't get the recognition at SMW that he deserves, since he looked a bit pedestrian. Eubank and Benn were more charismatic, but Collins did of course beat them both.
Tyson was crap in the 90`s because he sacked Rooney, Tyson wasn`t fully developed as an amateur, he improved as a pro and amateur bouts are only three rounds long, if you cut Tyson`s pro title fights to three rounds he wouldn`t have been effective, he even lost the first three rounds of his `87 fight to Tucker but then Rooney told him how to adjust and the rest of the fight turned out in Tyson`s favour, look at Floyd Mayweather, he was a known slow starter and used to just feel out fighters for the first few rounds, Judah boxed his head off for three rounds but the he adjusted and used a body attack to take away Judah`s speed, body shots aren`t really a factor in amateur boxing and Tyson`s body attack became vicious during his pro career, his speciality was the right hook to the body followed by a vicious uppercut, I bet he hardly threw any body shots as an amateur, he also got beat by Spinks in the Olympic trials in `84 then destroyed him easily as a pro three years later but took about 6 rounds to do it, if you look at the first three rounds it was much closer with Tyson trying to figure out Biggs movement.
While Eubank was only 29, he clearly wasn't the same fighter at this stage. He'd been mixing it up at world level for 5 years by this point, fighting 4 sometimes 5 times a year as well. I think the damage accumulated over that time span had started to take its toll. 2 fights with Benn, 1 of them he probably lost' 2 close fights with Watson, 2 close fights with Ray Close, Lindell Holmes, Rocchigiani, a close fight with Malinga as well. Heck even 3 of his last 4 fights before the Collins bout he was losing 4/5 rounds against guys like Dan Schommer, Henry Wharton and Mauricio Amaral who hadn't beaten anyone of note and achieved very little afterwards. He was definitely on the slide and you can't deny the Watson tragedy didn't effect him. All credit to Collins for beating Eubank, he was still a world class operator at the time, but I think he got him at the right time and from a stylistic stand point, Collins was hard guy to beat.
The only fights where Eubank took a lot of damage was the first Benn fight and the second Watson fight, his other fights weren`t high level his defenses were against limited opposition nowhere near the level of Jones, Toney and McCallum who Eubank refused to fight, the Wharton performance was considered one of the best for a long time, Colin Hart even wrote an article saying before Eubank beat Wharton nobody would have given him a chance vs Roy Jones but now after this great win I`m not so sure, this was in `94 one year before the Collins fight.
Tucker won the 2nd round I believe. I don't think Tyson and Spinks met as amateurs. Spinks was a middleweight .Are you confusing him with Tillman?
Was born in '58 and I always said that Sugar Ray Leonard was the best fighter of my lifetime and I will stick with that
