Would rather pay to watch Salido than watch Ward for free

Ali shouldn't have gotten away with all the holding he did. That's a fact. Being a great fighter doesn't put you above the rules. We wouldn't let Ezzard Charles or Roy Jones Jr get away with constant low blows, elbows, or thumbing people in the eye. Of course, if the refs had warned Ali more for holding, and taken points away, maybe he wouldn't have grabbed and leaned so much, and the fights were he did that to excess would have been better. When he wasn't doing that, his fights were things of beauty. More of that, less of the other.

 

If you're bought up from a mere pup boxing a certain way, as Cubans routinely are, it's got to be very hard to shed it. We are all products of our environment. And personally, I don't see why they should have to. If Gatti or Salido had the ability to avoid punches like Floyd, they would use it, guaranteed. Can you think of fighters who possess elite defensive skills but rarely use them? Genuine question I'm not being sarcastic. They're just fighting to their strengths.
If the thing you value most in a fighter is blood sweat and tears, fine, nothing wrong with that, but their approach is no more valid that Whitaker or Rigo.
It is a boxing match, not a 'fight' as such. Some turn into fights, and that's cool, but there's no obligation to do so. Would you prefer if all fights resembled Vargas Salido, and, for example, Rigo vs Donaire or Floyd vs Corrales never happened? Plus it's interesting when the 2 extremes of approaches meet (eg Angulo vs Lara :hey)
Given that this thread's about Salido, talking about honour and fairness seems a little odd, he cheats more than anyone since Golota.

I get your reasoning, it's not wrong, but as I see it there's more than one way to skin a cat.

 

yeah I'm down with free.

 

Not all Cubans box that way though. Felix Savon, Teofilo Stevenson, Mario Kindelan, Ariel Hernandez, Pablo Romero, Roberto Balado, Odlanier Solis, Mike Perez, and Yuriorkis Gamboa don't box like Lara and Rigondeaux.

I'm not talking about defensive fighters. As I said earlier, I admire Pep, Locche, and Whitaker for their abilities. They didn't have to run endlessly, stall, grab and hold to box defensively.

Yes, that is something I would appreciate very much. Ideally, we'd have meetings of elite fighters with well balanced skillsets of offense and defense (Duran vs Leonard I, Charles vs JJW, Morales vs Pacquiao, Morales vs Barrera, Pacquiao vs Marquez, Gonzalez vs Estrada) or two great offensive fighters clashing (Hagler vs Hearns, Zamora vs Zarate, Foreman vs Lyle).

Yes, his fights are marred by fouling and would be better if they were clean. But personally, I feel like Mayweather cheats more, PEDs, holding, sucker punching Ortiz and Gatti, etc. And the point where I started turning away from Rigondeaux was when he sucker punched Sod Kokietgym knocking the man out after feigning to touch gloves. That's first ballot rat fink stuff right there.

And I'd like to see that cat skinned according to the rules.