Your top 10 favourite rounds

Simple premise - list your all-time favourite rounds you’ve ever seen with a brief explanation of why.

No restrictions other than making it 10 only.

You can include 10 rounds from one fight if you want, or just first rounds, list them in any order, and they don’t have to be complete rounds either. They can be all-action or just include a significant, dramatic moment that happened that stands out to you.

Have fun!

 

In reverse order, here’s the bottom half of my personal top 10 with a short write up of why I rate them followed by a link to each round at the end.

10. William Caveman Lee v John LoCicero, round 5:
I had this on VHS back in the early 90s as I kept hearing what an awesome round it was and it certainly lived up to my expectations, with LoCicero getting dropped hard for a nine count before throwing the kitchen sink at Lee and then a final uppercut drops LoCicero for the full ten.

A nice intro from Al Bernstein leads into this one:

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9. Eder Jofre v Jose Medel 1, round 9:
This is like Gatti-Ward round 9 forty years earlier but with an all-time great bantamweight facing a terrific contender and coming off worse until literally the final punch of the round. With just as many momentum shifts as the more celebrated Gatti-Ward humdinger, this is well worth three minutes of your time.

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8. Diego Corrales v Jose Luis Castillo 1, round 10:
Sometimes a great round is a pivotal moment in a great fight, other times it’s unforgettable action and every once in a while it’s both. The pivotal moment is the mouthpiece spitting from Corrales, not once but twice, after each knockdown. It cost him a warning and then a point but bought him valuable seconds. Still, it seemed inconceivable that he could find a way back. Joel Goosen made it clear - ‘You gotta get ****in’ inside on him now’ - but even he couldn’t have imagined what happened next. This was a round had everything - drama, controversy and a great comeback.

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7. Jung Koo Chang v Tatsuyoshi Tokashiki, round 4:
This is probably the lowest profile round on my list but it is jaw dropping. Two fighters trying to tear each other’s heads off - subtle this ain’t but the action never relents for a moment. And the crazy thing is… almost every other round in the fight is like this one.

Skip to just before the nine minute mark to observe the unbridled violence:

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6. Ruben Olivares v Kazuyoshi Kanazawa 2, round 13:
The last stand of a hopelessly outgunned but wonderfully gutty challenger, Kanazawa looks on the brink of collapse on more than one occasion but somehow musters the energy to back Olivares into a corner and unload everything on him. It’s in vain as El Puas is back on the attack again before the round is over and Kanazawa is done and dusted in the next round, but for pure heart it’s hard to top this performance.

Highlights from round 13 starts just under a couple of minutes in:

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Here’s part 2 of my list, counting down the top 5 in reverse order:

5. Larry Holmes v Mike Weaver 2, round 11:
This is one of three rounds featuring Holmes that I could have included, along with round 15 of the Norton fight and round 9 of the Witherspoon fight, but unlike those two which I came to with some element of expectation, this one took me completely by surprise and blew me away the first time I saw it. The pivotal round in one of the least heralded great heavyweight fights, Weaver matches Holmes blow for blow until an awesome uppercut finally turns things Larry’s way.

The link below shows some highlights of round 11 but you can find the full round inside one of the full versions of the fight on YouTube.

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4. Israel Vasquez v Rafael Marquez 2, round 3:
Understandably, round 12 of the 3rd fight is the best remembered round of their series and was the one that decided who would finish on top in the trilogy (let’s forget the 4th fight) but this one might have been the best of all of them for pure action. Marquez is wobbled early but mounts a tremendous rearguard response to nearly take a share of the round before Vasquez rallies back.

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3. Wilfredo Gomez v Lupe Pintor, round 12:
I decided to limit myself to one round per fight so as to choose the very best round I could, but this was a fight that had two other worthy contenders, round 3 (The Ring’s Round of the Year for 1982) and round 9. I chose this round because it signalled the last hurrah for Pintor in the fight. He’d come back from an early round beating twice before in the aforementioned rounds and managed to do so again in round 12, but after that he would have nothing left to fight back with.

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2. Marvin Hagler v Thomas Hearns, round 1:
Superfights aren’t supposed to start like this. Perhaps the most watched single round in history, no fight of this profile (between the two best fighters in the game at the time) has ever begun with a bigger display of fistic fireworks and all the hype and build up was justified in an opening three minutes of absolute fury. A round that become the benchmark by which all others would subsequently be measured. Yes, it’s an obvious choice but it’s only obvious because sometimes classic is just classic.

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1. Matthew Saad Muhammad v Yacqui Lopez 2, round 8:
A round in five acts, the first thirty seconds sees Saad manage to back Lopez to the ropes and throw combos, before the next thirty sees both fighters move to ring centre and start to trade, then Saad backs up Lopez again and starts unloading again, but this time Lopez stays where he is and throws back before spinning Saad round and unleashing an enormous volley, rocking Saad around like a rag doll. On the verge of being stopped, Saad now manages to turn Lopez round and backing him up, unrelentingly chasing Lopez but Yacqui fires back again before the bell sounds.

A complete fight in three minutes and one that showed the fight in microcosm, with Lopez coming to a crescendo of momentum over the first two minutes, landing 20 or so flush, unanswered shots while Saad rides the wave of the storm and begins his most remarkable fightback of fightbacks and turns the tide his way. Long after I first saw it and after rewatching it multiples times, this remains the greatest round I’ve ever seen.

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I get your point but it’s like hating the Pryor-Arguello fight because of the black bottle. There aren’t many more dramatic and exciting rounds in boxing history that are the climax of an incredible fight than this one.

 

Some interesting choices!

 

These are all great rounds!

 

Cool, glad you enjoyed it! I agree about Bernstein, I’ve always thought he was exactly as you describe him. All about the fights and the fighters is the way I see him too.