Who was the best swarmer/ pressure fighter ever?

Roberto Duran

 

HW Marciano / some peak versions of Tyson

 

In the modern era, French was way up there.

Although he was versatile, JC Chavez was an awesome pressure fighter.

 

When I saw the subject I immediately thought of 5 fighters. Henry Armstrong, Joe Frazier, Aaron Pryor, Curtis Parker and Frankie Warren.

 

Lightweight & welterweight Duran was no doubt in my mind.

 

I like Armstrong.

There's some good banter in the below thread as well if this one doesn't take off fully -

https://www.boxingforum24.com/threads/best-pressure-fighters.501568/

 

Frazier
Armstrong
Fenech
Pryor
Mancini
Chavez
Duran
Young Tyson
Braxton
Petroli
Berg

 

Fenech was truly awesome at his peak. He gets penalized for his abrupt drop off in form, but he had a number of phenomenal performances despite a career marred by one debilitating hand injury after another.

Impressive beating Zarate, and bullying Zaragoza like no one else ever did, but in my judgement the best testimony to his skills was overcoming a serious of crippling injuries, a disastrous weight cut, and preposterously dirty tactics by Marcos Villasana in their fight. Fenech won lopsidedly despite eating headbutts, elbows, and a stream of punches to the groin.

Fearless and seemingly immune to damage, its not hard to see why Mike Tyson so openly admired Fenech as a pugilistic peer.

 

Fantastic post. My fave might be Callejas. IMO nipped an excellent career in the bud that night.

 

Wow, so many. So many good ones. I'll start with the Original Pressure fighter, J.Dempsey, H.Armstrong, J.Frazier, seemed like almost all the Philly fighters from mid 60's thru the early 80s seemed to fight that style. Of course A.Pryor , J.Chavez, D.Braxton, M Tyson. But the best of them all., esp when considering how great he was applying pressure, and being hard to hit cleanly, Hands of Stone R.Duran is the absolute best I've seen.

 

Duran skillwise is probably the best. But Armstrong might be more effective.

 

This is about it for me too. Armstrong pressures harder and more constantly but Duran while a bit less frenetic is so skillful. Armstrong was all about pressure tho and what a nightmare he would have been to fight. You'd sure know what you were in for. He had his own (borne out of necessity) set of skills in there too.