Who were most loyal to their trainer/cornermen?

Yoel's cornering skills are unrivalled..What more can you say than "Bing bang boom and then Bam!!!" Its 1min of rushed instructions in less then 8 secs.

When I first saw Yoel in action I was shocked. I went straight to my local gym, to my old trainer and Im like "Whats the deal? You told me about the bing and bang but what about the boom and bam??" "I could have been so much more if I had known about those"

He just told me he didnt think I was ready....what could have been.

 

He had a huge ego but what boxer doesn't?

He seems to have mellowed in the twilight of his career and was nothing but class before and after the Calzaghe fight.

Given his dysfunctional upbringing (boxing training since he was in nappies,regular beatings) under a tyrannical father,I reckon he turned out pretty decent.

Whether or not he was "juiced" is all speculation.I know he tested positive to a banned substance but it didn't incur a suspension and he said it was from a supplicant of some sort.So I'll keep an open mind about it even if you won't.

I suppose the fact he never said he could've sent a beaten opponent to the morgue or called Ray Leonard's wife a ***** costs him in the eye's of the real purist.Personally I think saying **** like that is a lot more distasteful,obnoxious and despicable than Roy's childlike boastfulness.

 

Goldman/Marciano

 

I was watching a Zab fight with a girl and all she kept asking me was "what does Bing, Bang, Boom, Zip Zab stand for?"

All I could do was shake my head and sigh...some people will never learn.

 

Many don't! Many realize that they're lucky to leave the ring in one piece and are humbled by the inherent risks of their profession and the knowledge that much of what keeps them safe is blind luck.

He was never bad after a fight and always seemed to be grateful to the opponent for playing straight man to his performance. His opinion of himself, whether to pump himself up or whatever was, in my opinion, both arrogant and clownish.

Go read up on Duran's upbringing. If you excuse Jones like this, you'll petition the pope to beatify Duran.

Just because it didn't incur a suspension doesn't mean a thing. He was a superstar and we can expect plenty of motivation from a sport as corrupt as boxing to turn a blind eye to something like this. I for one have considered the evidence and have become utterly convinced. Who could have sat there and watched "The Devil and Mr. Jones" and not had very strong suspicions that both Jones and Paz were juiced??

You took a shot and missed. Duran was an *******. I'm on record as saying that several times.

 

You missed another.

 

Stonehands you are a great poster...

On this subject something people don't understand is just how physically fit a boxer is. How punishing their training is.

Now, let me just widen oput the debate way from just Jones... I know guys who juice up. They work out, eat like maniacs and build muscles on muscles... BUt they hit the weights, eat and sleep. You cannot put on 10+ pounds of solid muscle and train like a pro-boxer. The guys I know won't jog a minute for fear that aerobic exercise will deflate their hard earned biceps etc...and these guys freely admit to injecting.

It's not just Jones (but the rumours among insiders in the sport have gone on for over a decade). IMO any fighter jumping up and down weights is doing so through the use of something they shouldn't or has not been available in the past.

 

You're lurching towards a fallacious ad hominem argument, Chris. My distaste for Jones' personality has nothing to do with my high esteem for his athleticism or his chances in H2Hs with former greats any more than it does my position that he does not belong in the all-time top 20. If you're trying to dismiss my opinions of him as a boxer due to my low opinion for him as a man, then it is you who is being unfair.

I suspect that had you met any number of fighters between 1900 and 1920, you'd believe that you were in the presence of trash. Many of them were raw-boned, low-class brutes. Had you met that sociopath Monzon, you'd dislike him. The manic-depressive ignoramus that was Tyson would be difficult to have a drink with too. Duran was hedonistic, rude, loud, and ridiculous, and had he walked into your bar and you didn't know who he was, chances are that you would walk out. As would I. To further illustrate the point, I believe that Don King is evil... but that has nothing to do with his prowess as a businessman -which I fully recognize.

I'll give you that compared to today's top fighters, Jones' loyalty to Merk is very rare indeed. I'm with you there. Compared to Oscar, Jones is the apostle John. However, if you, for your part, use a wider lens and look at the past 80 years as opposed to the last 20, you'd see that there are several examples of more impressive loyalty.

 

I wonder who you could accuse of being the least loyal?

I can think of a few very good fighters indeed that went through trainers like candy at some points of their career.

 

I'm just a bum from the neighborhood. But thanks, and the high regard is shared here for you.

Thanks for the info. I live in mortal terror that Holyfield was juiced throughout his HW career. If so, then he is a cheater and his accomplishments since 1988 should be wiped away. Same goes for Jones.

 

Except that their opponents were probably juiced too. Always the problem when comparing greats out of their eras. This is why I take many of the h2h arguments with a pinch of salt (the ones based on athleticism).

Guys used to outgrow their division (sometimes), maybe they'd stretch it to the full weight class and go from 147 to 160 (for example). But they grew into it. They couldn't then jump back down so easily.

Even in his best performances at 154 Duran was never tight, not even when he'd trained properly.

 

Duran simply ate more, trained less, and relied on experience and skill as opposed to athleticism. And you're on the money -he was never a physical work of art after 147 and after the age of 30. "Duran's looking soft around the middle" was a stable of commentators for the next 20 years. I for one would have loved to see the Montreal Duran at 145 face JMWs just for the hell of it. He may have done better in that form than he would have with the extra steaks...

Speaking of that, I have more respect for those fighters way back when who'd step up and face larger men and were still close to their best weight. Armstrong faced and beat Ross for the WW title at 133 and three months later faced Ambers at LW at a pound more. The great (as in top 10 great in my book) Mickey Walker at 168 faced 210 Bearcat Wright and almost finished him over 10 rounds back in '31. You just gotta love that.

Roids are for cheaters and cowards. And if 1/2 the best fighters of the 90s were juiced, then I'd dismiss the whole lot of them.