Who was the greatest defensive fighter of all time, not counting JJ

Good List!

 

Excellent post!

 

Me personally it's Wilfredo Benitez.
He did against four of the greatest
offensive fighters In their primes in Cervantes
Leonard , Hearn's, and Duran.
Though he lost to Hearn's and Leonard,
they both have admitted over the yrs
No one in there careers' made them miss
as much as Benitez did.
Roberto Duran, Hank Armstrong, and believe or not Joe Frazier
for their styles were extremely hard to hit
cleanly.
Pernell Whitaker, Willie Pep, Nicolino Locche, all were
brilliant defensively....

 

Imo,looking back at my list,I might replace Pryor with Benitez smh,sorry for the opinion

 

I personally can't see Marquez on here. I do think he's defensively sound though especially earlier in his career. Lopez is outstanding all around. it's just his level of opposition isn't the greatest but that's no fault of his.

 

This,,,,Willie Pep

 

I've seen all the footage of Locche I can get my hands on and he was a top-notch defender, but I wouldn't class him with the greatest--Pep, Mayweather, Whitaker, Benitez, etc. Locche just wasn't as versatile as others, though he was superb in what he did.

Let's not forget names like Young Griffo, Benny Leonard, Midget Wolgast, Freddie Welsh, Tommy Loughran, Charley Burley, and many more.

 

Pep Mayweather and Whitaker are in a class of their own

 

It’s sort of hard to pin down RD lots of guys are saying Benitez… is the goal to find out who could avoid punches best? Or the most successful guy at playing “hit and not get hit” because I’d argue Benitez ain’t really in the same tier as guys like Napoles, Toney and even Leonard in that way.

 

I’d say Toney (haven’t watched Whitaker) and even Marlon Strarling shared a tier or in JT’s case exceeded Mayweathers ability I don’t think he’s “the best defensive fighter of all time” personally.

 

I concur.

 

"Championship Fighting: Explosive Punching and AGGRESSIVE DEFENSE," by Jack Dempsey.

The legendary Malcolm "Flash" Gordon, for his review of Qawi-Saad Muhammad II in his "Tonight's Boxing Program" that, "Like a fabulous Jose Napoles master of defense, Qawi never takes a backwards step while avoiding punches moving in, always keeping his lead foot between his opponent's feet..." (This footwork is a perfect distillation of cutting off the ring and splitting an opponent's guard between his arms.) So in a single line, Flash drops two legendary names.

As Quenzell McCall and Wesley Mouzon explained about Dwight's seemingly ever-present contemptuous sneer, "He took up boxing when he was older, so it's too late to change his habit of breathing through his mouth."

In fact, at the outset of every round, you can see Qawi leave his corner with his mouth shut, but very quickly open as he begins to exert himself. Now as we all know, getting punched in the face with the mouth opened is an invitation to having the jaw fractured, yet not only did this never happen to Dwight, he was only knocked out in his rematch with a newly juicing Holyfield (Qawi's been extremely outspoken about how ridiculously stronger Evander was the second time around, and the ridiculous way Holyfield blew up after like other juicers confirms his accusations - at 222 for Foreman right after Holyfield II, Dwight himself did not muscle up like that), and when he threw up his arms and quit against the shoving and wearing Big George, due to exhaustion from being so horribly out of shape, maybe the first time Foreman ever prevailed in this way. (George himself came in at only 232, the lowest weight of his second career.)

Numerous monster punchers, including Foreman, could not produce knockdowns on Qawi, including Holyfield I, Michael Spinks in possibly the Jinx's best lower weight performance, Saad Muhammad 2X, Jerry Martin, Eddie Davis, Johnny Davis 3X, Jerry The Bull Martin, Nate Miller and other noted opponents who could hit. So far as dealing with George's unworldly natural physical strength, Dwight stood his ground better than Frazier in his 1976 rematch, and vastly better than a very heavily juiced 226 pound Morrison later would. Avoiding shots from George without retreating is crazy. Ali did it in Kinshasa with vastly superior hand speed, a longer reach and straighter punches.


Here's what Joe "johnhgarfield" Rein reported about seeing the silent film of Charley Burley's rematch against Oakland Billy Smith at a time when almost nobody else had viewed it that he noticed after a few rounds against a much taller and longer armed guy with pretty good skills was that Burley didn't made defensive moves yet was unhittable, not touched by anythng. JG went on to say the only other fighter he ever saw with that kind of radar was Marcel Cerdan (of whom we have lots of fluid live sound footage, as he fought through WW II, mostly in Algiers). He remarked how one wanted to applaud when Pep or Whitaker evaded shots, but that Burley didn't even seem to try, that he just wasn't being hit. "(It was the damndest thing.)"

JG otherwise expressed that he only commented on fighters he'd seen in person, a shame, as his article on Burley showed. (I let Joe know that in no uncertain terms via PM, but this was one time he chose not to reply to me. I think I understand his reticence. It's the same reason Brian Wilson would shake his head and quickly close his piano the instant his late wife Melinda said something about him further developing one of his incredible spontaneous riffs. Joe cracked open the Pandora's Box on writing about someone he hadn't personally seen, then immediately closed and sealed it. Amazing he's been gone for over a decade now. I've lost an awful lot of close posters since, but he was the first online friend of mine to pass.)


So, Burley, Cerdan, Napoles and Qawi ought to be mentioned in this thread, although I still have to defer to Arcel. (Something to contemplate about Whitaker though is how good a defensive specialist he'd have been if orthodox.

 

It has been claimed by many in the know that Willie Pep won a round without throwing a punch. Defense does not get any better than that!