Who was closest to being 'unknockoutable'?

If this was 2003, we could have said the same thing about Roy Jones jr.

 

Actually, earlier than that, when Wigfall decked Hagler under a car in a Brockton party streetfight. (Once Hagler had been forged into steel by the JR Peltz, Watts, Monroe, Hart & Briscoe Ironworks in Philadelphia, forget about it!)

 

There was quite a few fights where Eubank got caught hard and regularly i.e. Benn, Watson, Collins, Calzaghe, Thompson and one or two others.

 

What do you make of Calzaghe knocking down Eubank in round 1 of their fight? Does that say anything about his power or was Chris just caught cold?

 

I never said that he was the most durable. But the combination of durability and elusiveness of Muhammad does make him extremely hard to knock out.

 

What is your point? Haglers cut impaired him? Eubanks eye was totally shut.

I've already said this. Hagler was better BUT even without that Eubank is still 'unknockoutable'. Plus Eubank was stopped by a 200 pound puncher. What happens when Haglers face takes the force of 200 pounds and not 160 pounds. I'm not talking about chin, I'm talking about withstanding injury.

He had the durability to go 15 rounds with Leonard, Duran and Hearns. When boxers did try to make him work they just found themself shadowboxing. Leonard, Duran and Hearns tried but failed. Leonard stopped him but it was questionable. Hearns often opened up with both hands in 5, 6 and 7 punch combos. Watch the replay and you'll see he missed 75% of them. Thus Benitez heard the final bell.

You have to take into consideration particular things. If someone is injury prone that is one thing i.e. Cooper, Minter or Klitschko. However the one off stoppage, like Ali or Eubank, because of being human should not be held against them. Admitingly if you are injury prone YET still get through it then you deserve extra credit i.e. Floyd Mayweather. He's been injured in about ten of his last twenty fights, yet he's come through them all to win, even if they have been toughish fights i.e. Castillo, Judah etc

 

Nothing to do with power. Obviously Calzaghe needed respectable power to do it. I think it has more to do with Eubank always coming out cold, being forced into a tough fight quickly BUT fighting someone who had the speed and skill to make him pay for mistakes. Eubank is pulling back but faced someone with the speed to make him pay for it.

Calzaghe has good power yet Eubank got up in one second and took bigger punches over the course of the fight.

 

Benn x2, Watson x2, Collins x2, Thompson x2 and Calzaghe. That's 9 fights off the bat. Just like that I've come up with nearly 20% of his bouts being taxing fights.

Eubank did have moves with his feet and head movement but for every shot that he manage to mask in these fights, there is another shot in another fight that made up for it.

 

Bull ****. He has a lot of 1 punch KO's. And what about all of his first round KO's?

 

Obviously those are the stand out fights for punishment but Collins, Calzaghe and the others were tagging him nicely.

Benn was an almighty beatdown to the body.

The Watson fight in my eyes was basically a shut out until the end.

 

This may not be as absurd an idea as it might first appear.

It's a good question Achilles. Hagler never stepped up in weight, because when he went into training, "My weight goes right down." He also described a reduction of a pound or two as producing a noticable improvement in his speed. (His body was clearly a high-performance engine.)

However, it may well be that Hagler was a Harry Greb or Mickey Walker type, who could have more than held his own with many of the big boys, especially with his southpaw style. Mike Spinks weighed only 170 for his title defense against David Sears. When training with Mackie Shilstone for Holmes, Spinks actually reduced his bodyfat from 9.1 percent to 7.2 percent. If he was using Shilstone's services only to reduce his bodyfat down 2 percent from 170 pounds (instead of simultaneously adding muscle), then a Spinks/Hagler match could have been a very plausible idea. Spinks was psyched out by the idea of facing Tyson, as Patterson was Liston. But the marionette Spinks otherwise proved to be a surprisingly good heavyweight. Certainly, Toney, RJJ, and even Iran Barkley are former middleweights who proved themselves able to compete at the world class level as heavyweights, past their youthful MW athletic peaks, and well above their optimal weights. (Barkley retired Coetzee.) It is therefore not a stretch for me to see a peak 160 pound Hagler performing well against full blown heavyweights. Marv was far tougher at 160 than Barkley was, and unlike Toney (against RJJ), nobody ever came close to dropping Marv in combat. It merits mention that when trained to a razor's edge for the original scheduled date of the Schmeling fight, Walker weighed 158, also Hagler's best weight, even when not concerning himself with making the MW limit. (In his blarney-filled autobiography, Walker didn't claim that he would have beaten Schmeling if that bout went off as originally scheduled, but he did assert he would have been much better than he was.)

Let's face it. Although steroid-bolstered, the fact remains that Toney wasn't destroyed as predicted in 24 rounds of boxing against Samuel Peter, or 12 complete rounds against Hasim Rachman, despite being very fat and pushing 40. Do fans really believe he's better now than he would have been against these heavyweights, if he was 15 years younger, and 60 pounds lighter?

 

A detail of that altercation which the Boston area media would understandably omit, what with Wigfall and his family also residing in Brockton. (Since it was reported to be at a party, your missing piece fits right in neatly Manassa. Thank you.)

 

Caught cold

He then proceeded to jump straight to his feet, smile, nod and say "good shot" to Calzaghe, then go 12 grueling rounds with arguably the best supermiddleweight ever.

12 rounds in which he was clearly not the better man, and had clearly lost the fight, yet about 10 seconds before the final bell rocked Calzaghe back on his heels with a few beautiful shots. Actually rocked Joe's world like I haven't seen anyone do since.