Cleaning up a division better than jumping up in weight ??

I know Haz gives great credence to guys that clean up divisions which is fair enough..........But myself I like a guy who looks for challenges.. elsewhere.....If none are forthcoming..

There is certainly a lot of rightful acclaim for someone who makes a division his own...But do we really want to see a guy head and shoulders better than the rest a la Hagler and Pryor....Feasting on wallies like Obelmijas twice, Hamsho twice and the Gary Hinton's of this World....

Both in my mind missed out on great matchups...............Pryor - Curry...........Hagler - Spinks....Hagler - Qawi (wow what a fight!!)..........

Mayweather, Manny, Oscar, JMM and the like get criticism for struggling with guys at higher weights because people do forget that they are actually four or five weights higher than when they first won their titles...........Manny isn't a 147/154 pounder so we under sell his achievements.....(His colorful history doesn't help)

The consensus ATG list comprises of Robbo, Armstrong, Leonard, Duran, Fitz all guys that showed ambition and took on heavier men for rewards.....With mixed success.............

Cleaning up a division is only worthwhile for me If it's full of talent...........90% of the time it isn't...........

Give me a Leonard to a Hagler anyday..............

Yes, you should clean up the division showing everyone your the king at that weight and then move up.

How long do you stay to do that ???

You don't have to beat everybody to know who the best guy is...

Had Curry not fought Mccrory..........We'd all have known he was the best..

Too many pointless fights............Hagler beat two decent guys in twelve defences..

Sibbo and Hearns.........

Duran stayed too long at 135 for me..

It depends on IF your trying to get the fights made Truss.

If you are and there's a good chance your going to get that opportunity then you should stay and clean up. If not then don't take easy defence's move up and cement your legacy (no catchweights though, they diminish things further IMO)

Derbymanc wrote:It depends on IF your trying to get the fights made Truss.

Pryor missed out on Leonard/Curry and Mcrory and even Mancini................Hagler turned down Spinks.......Hagler - Qawi is a fight of the year candidate...

As I said to me being the best in your division is a hollow achievement when challenges await and you lack ambition...

Oscar would have fought Spinks I have no doubts..........Would of lost as would Hagler..........But that's not the point...

Gotta disagree (again :-) Unifying the division and showing your the cream of the crop is an achievment unto itself. There's nothing to stop you moving up afterwards, it becomes a bit of a different story if you move up get battered and then try and come again.
From a business stand you've got less of a bargaining chip and from a sport perspective the other guys could now avoid you by saying you were just battered so what's the point.

You aren't really disagreeing with me...I said it was an achievement..

Just creaming Hamsho and Obelmijas twice or Edwin Viruet types seems to me a little bit meaningless.

i can see both sides to the argument, but as a fan ultimately i want to see great fights. If that means a smaller guy moving up to take on a guy at a higher weight, that's great and i'll cut him some slack for it if he loses.

Ideally they clean out their division first, but if politics gets in the way i'd rather they moved up than hung around fighting stiffs. Obviously it isnt a one size fits all argument, if you forgive the pun. Some guys have a frame to carry the weight better than others, but there comes a point where there are no challenges at their own weight they have to look around.... if they want the bigger fights for money/glory whatever.

Hagler and leonard make an interesting (better qualify that that's just my opinion!) comparable. Hagler wanted to dominate the middleweight division, he wasnt huge and for him it was his natural weight and a prestigious belt steeped in history. For the fans, it meant we had to watch him batter hamsho twice. His big fights were all guys who moved up to challenge him. We've debated hagler spinks on here a few times, and he'd have been giving a lot away, and despite people saying there was no clamour for it, spinks did call him out. Was he giving away much more than duran or leonard did against him?

Leonard fought the who's who in the welter division very quickly and ran out of meaningful fights, but in between he'd hopped up a weight to beat kalule. He had a half weight division to move to which hagler didn't, and had a reputation for picking his fights and stacking the contractual odds in his favour when he did move up to the higher weights. But move up he did. Although when you look back at his career, like hearns, it's his work at his best weight that you admire most.

I understand guys wanting to dominate their division, i don't have a problem with them not disadvantaging themselves, but unless its a clearly talent laden division with regular kids on the block posing a threat, it counts against them to a degree when you look at ATG stuff. Which they may or may not give a monkey's about.

Trussy, is manny the only one with a perceived colourful history? Is he the one who's forked out to keep failed blood tests under wraps? Allegedly!?

Depends on where the biggest and best fights are, really. Sometimes there's a lot of talent all crammed in to one division, in which case it makes a lot more sense to stay there and clean it out than it does to hop between the weights for the sake of picking up additional alphabet titles against lesser fighters.

But I see what you're saying because, for the most part, if you look at the twenty-odd best non-Heavyweight fighters of all time, the majority of them have their world titles or biggest / best wins spread across at least a couple of divisions, rather than just staying in one. Even if you're lucky enough to be in one of those divisions with a lot of good fighters and challengers in it, then if you're good enough and dominant enough you'll still run out of big options there sooner or later. Monzon had some great contemporaries between 1970 and 1977 at Middleweight, but if he'd have carried on after that he'd have been left with the Minters, Antuofermos and Corros of this world before Hagler got to the very top - and that would have definitely increased the pressure on his shoulders to move up to 175 and have a crack at someone like Saad or Galindez.

In general, I'll take the guy who has proven himself in more than one division over an outstanding single-division champion, as long as they are actually proving themselves rather than just picking up straps against gatekeepers for the sake of promotion.

I've said Mayweather is probably dodgy too...........

Spinks routinely fought at 171 Milky and those were days when it was the same day weigh in..

Spinks-Hagler would have been big as they were both undisputed and I have no doubt Spinks would have compromised on the weight...

Duran looked really small at middle..........Credit to him and he nearly upset Marvin who thought he'd be clever like he did against Leonard and show "skills" he didn't have..

Hagler wasn't as good a boxer as he thought he was..

Cherrypicking is only a 21st century invention...Didn't you know.

Depends on the state of your division. If there are still significant challenges left for you in that division, then I'd give precedence to cleaning it up and being "the man" for as many defenses as it takes for it to be undisputed. If there's little left to challenge you then I'd give precedence to moving up to seek challenges.

Andre Ward is pretty stuck in the 'no challenges left' zone at 168. The downer for him is that he hasn't made significant money yet for his achievements, which is why he's looking to stick around for a pay day against someone like Chavez jr. Unfortunately for him, Froch is beating everyone else and, given Ward's dominance over Froch, none of the other contenders are attractive. Ward has essentially 'cleaned up' 168 and I think most fans would prefer to see him seek challenges.

Milky says what I was trying to get at better than me, next time i'm gonna message you and get you to rewrite for me   

Trussy, i'm on record many times as saying i wish hagler had gone for spinks.... and been shot down in flames by the hagler luvvies who are a bit defensive of their man on the whole! Unlike myself... a paragon of objectivity. marv v qawi would have been a cracker too.

Although Chris suggests otherwise i'm not so convinced that monzon was fending off a huge queue of talent and, big lad that he was, i'd like to have seen him have a crack at 175 too.

Agree with you Milky..........

Like I said JMM, Oscar, Floyd and Manny's achievements are all the more memorable for them achieving them out of their comfort zones...

Rest assured all four will be above Hagler and Pryor on my list when they are done..

Interesting that we're at odds slightly over Monzon, milky.

Should clarify that I'm not saying that I wouldn't have wanted to see Monzon have a go at the Light-Heavies if I'd been around at the time, or that I'm not intrigued about how it might have unfolded from this point in time. Just feel that the pool available to him at 160 lb in the seventies was generally good enough to keep him protected from accusations of lacking ambition etc, if that makes sense.

Certainly two very skilled and accomplished Middleweight champions right at the start of his reign (Benvenuti, and what a performance that twelve-round stoppage first time out against Nino was) and again right at the end (Valdes). In between that, Tonna and Mundine are a bit more so-so, but still worthy challengers to a long-serving champion.

Think we'd all agree that both Napoles and Griffith (although Griffith gave Monzon a good fight second time of asking) were more great 'name' kind of wins rather than outstanding victories in their own right....But the pair of them were still highly-regarded and still carried marquee value at the time.

I tend to think that Monzon justifiably doesn't get quite as much heat about not going up to Light-Heavy as Hagler does....You reckon their cases are pretty much one and the same?

milkyboy wrote:Trussy, i'm on record many times as saying i wish hagler had gone for spinks.... and been shot down in flames by the hagler luvvies who are a bit defensive of their man on the whole! Unlike myself... a paragon of objectivity. marv v qawi would have been a cracker too.

Although Chris suggests otherwise i'm not so convinced that monzon was fending off a huge queue of talent and, big lad that he was, i'd like to have seen him have a crack at 175 too.

What's a Hagler luvvie?

Hagler v Spinks would have been interesting to see, I have no problem saying that. I'll also say though that I can't see Hagler beating Spinks.

Was there really a big clamour for this fight just because Spinks called him out?

I think cleaning up and becoming THEE man at you're weight is more important now then ever. With all the many titles to claim many meaningless.

I would say Camacho was guilty of weight jumping. On the one hand I can understand the reasons for seeking big money fights that might be a few pounds extra but Camacho for me never stood out as a dominant fighter in his career.

GREAT ARTICLE.

ONETWOFOREVER wrote:
GREAT ARTICLE.

Have some dignity, please.

the problem is have with weight jumping is that is has now become a away of avoiding good fights as much as seeking them. I can think of a couple of recent multi weight champs that could and should have fought each other to establish division top dog status before jumping up to take on easier fights...

For me weight hopping does get a bit over valued nowadays. The achievement is a bit diluted by how many divisions there are and how many belts are available in those divisions. Whilst obviously someone winning titles 20 or 30 pound north of where they started has to be admired, think the achievements require a bit more analysis than that. In days when the likes of Glenn Catley and Gavin Rees can call themselves world champions it is not always that tricky to annex a portion of a world title in a weight, without being anywhere near the best at that weight.

We constantly hear of guys being 6, 8 or 14 weight world champions, but how many guys who can make such claims have actually established themselves as the man at those weights.

On the flipside of that am no great fan of sitting around a division when you have clearly proven your dominance over it. Ward would be a good example, particularly when the truly mouth watering clashes are in the division directly above him.

What's so mouth watering about Ward moving up to light heavy? None of the champs up there have established themselves as anything special apart from Hopkins, and Hopkins isn't a great light heavy.

Moving up to take on alphabet champs because they have name recognition doesn't exactly make jumping up in weight a great feat either.

Just think chucking him in with either Stephenson or Kovalev is more intriguing than him going over old ground at SMW, particularly as those two appear further away than ever from actually meeting each other. You never know he might even put Hopkins out of our misery once and for all.

Rowley wrote:

ONETWOFOREVER wrote:
GREAT ARTICLE.

Have some dignity, please.

Dignity by Deacon Blue great great song.....

Never answered my pm Rowley..Complaining about Milky's disgraceful behaviour !...

Very rude..

You know as well as me Truss nobody PM's me now I haven't got a green badge

Man City are in blue so be proud of that color........

Atila wrote:

milkyboy wrote:Trussy, i'm on record many times as saying i wish hagler had gone for spinks.... and been shot down in flames by the hagler luvvies who are a bit defensive of their man on the whole! Unlike myself... a paragon of objectivity. marv v qawi would have been a cracker too.

Although Chris suggests otherwise i'm not so convinced that monzon was fending off a huge queue of talent and, big lad that he was, i'd like to have seen him have a crack at 175 too.

What's a Hagler luvvie?

Hagler v Spinks would have been interesting to see, I have no problem saying that. I'll also say though that I can't see Hagler beating Spinks.

Was there really a big clamour for this fight just because Spinks called him out?

Two of the top three p4pers would have been huge.........

Spinks never rated Hagler but in fairness showed some bollox and took on a guy 40 pounds heavier..

I think you have to look at the fact that moving through the divisions these days is far easier than it was years ago due to the fact there are more of them and they’re less far apart (in terms of weight). In addition, day before weigh ins coupled with enhanced rehydration methods result in natural middleweights fighting at light welterweight (and then gradually dehydrating less in order to wind up where they should have been fighting all along).
 
In Hagler’s day, the middleweight division was far larger (and more dense) than it is today. Super middleweight was in its infancy and so moving up to light heavyweight to take on Spinks would have been a far taller order than a fighter moving between 160 to 168 (especially considering the affect of day before weigh ins). Hagler fought at middleweight as a middleweight. Had he moved up to 175, he’d have been legitimately giving away more than a stone in weight. That’s a plainly different scenario to moving up in weight in 2014 (in addition, as we’ve gone over before, there never was a serious offer to face Spinks, a less lucrative option to either Leonard or Hearns).
 
If a fighter’s good enough, they can of course do both. Roy Jones was good enough to stand as a colossus above 160-175; a three weight titlist who, in reality, would have been a long-term middleweight boss in the old days.
 
The misnomer that fighters such as Oscar and Floyd moved through divisions looking for challenges is ridiculous. They moved through divisions to make money (in Floyd’s case that generally meant low risk, high reward opponents) – that’s the way boxing works these days (sadly). Both were still growing when they burst onto the scene and so the majority of their multi-weight achievements merely entailed good fighters finding their natural weights. Rarely did they CHAMPION a weight, as Hagler, Monzon etc. did. Becoming the main man at a weight and taking on your top-rated contenders one after the other is a hell of a feat, one that shouldn’t be diminished by revisionists with an agenda.
 
If you’re looking to name fighters who championed a division and then genuinely moved on to test themselves and enhance their careers (in terms of sporting achievement) then you’ll be struggling (I mean moved of their own volition due to exhausting their opposition or from being beaten).  Roy Jones is one from the modern era (middleweight to light heavyweight). There aren’t many others.

Robbo was a welter and fought for the 175 pound title..

So that's bollox for a start

So that's two (I alluded to there being a handful of others). There certainly aren't many from the modern era.

chris, always felt monzon had good opposition rather than great, and he too doubled up on guys he'd already beaten... i guess at least they were guys who'd given him a decent shout, rather than the hamsho's of this world. Less open to the 'criticism' (if we can call it that) than marv, but some also ran defences and as i said, he looked like a guy who could carry 175 if he wanted to.

Atila wrote:

milkyboy wrote:Trussy, i'm on record many times as saying i wish hagler had gone for spinks.... and been shot down in flames by the hagler luvvies who are a bit defensive of their man on the whole! Unlike myself... a paragon of objectivity. marv v qawi would have been a cracker too.

Although Chris suggests otherwise i'm not so convinced that monzon was fending off a huge queue of talent and, big lad that he was, i'd like to have seen him have a crack at 175 too.

What's a Hagler luvvie?

Hagler v Spinks would have been interesting to see, I have no problem saying that. I'll also say though that I can't see Hagler beating Spinks.

Was there really a big clamour for this fight just because Spinks called him out?

someone as objective as yourself wouldnt know what a hagler luvvie is atila but they do exist fella!

Don't think people were screaming for hagler spinks, infact i'm sure they weren't so its not like anyone's saying its a duck... more an observation of a fight you'd like to see that could have happened. And occasionally brought up in discussions about how hagler's biggest fights were guys moving up to fight him 

As were Monzon's.......

TRUSSMAN66 wrote:

Atila wrote:

milkyboy wrote:Trussy, i'm on record many times as saying i wish hagler had gone for spinks.... and been shot down in flames by the hagler luvvies who are a bit defensive of their man on the whole! Unlike myself... a paragon of objectivity. marv v qawi would have been a cracker too.

Although Chris suggests otherwise i'm not so convinced that monzon was fending off a huge queue of talent and, big lad that he was, i'd like to have seen him have a crack at 175 too.

What's a Hagler luvvie?

Hagler v Spinks would have been interesting to see, I have no problem saying that. I'll also say though that I can't see Hagler beating Spinks.

Was there really a big clamour for this fight just because Spinks called him out?

Two of the top three p4pers would have been huge.........

Spinks never rated Hagler but in fairness showed some bollox and took on a guy 40 pounds heavier..

If you do some research, you'll find that Spinks received nearly ten times more money for fighting Holmes than he did for his last light heavy title defense. I'm sure that had something to do with him having bollox. Pretty sure that Hagler might have moved up too if he was going to be paid ten times more than usual.

Hagler was a strange one though...........This complete warrior stuff and yet..

"Hearns doesn't deserve a rematch".....Though it was fight of the year for KO, The Ring,World Boxing and Boxing Illustrated.....and he was cut and wobbled.....

Yet Hamsho and Obelmijas deserved rematches and Vito....and a three years out welter who was decked off a journeyman in his last fight deserved a shot.

Even Merchant on HBO asked what the point of Hamsho 2 was before the fight..

No Hearns 2 ...No Spinks ...

Hagler knew where his bread was buttered....

Yet we slag off Manny, JMM and Floyd for not being convincing 24 pounds higher than where they became champions..

No Hagler wasn't perfect, and I say that as a big fan of his. I never liked the way he sat around with just one fight in 1985, one in 1986 and one in 1987. But I don't hold it against him for fighting Hamsho and Obelmijas twice, they were mandatories. In those days you got stripped for not fighting your mandatories.

All about opinions and all are/were welcome.....

Tossed this little sandwich out because it's been a little slow on here...

Being dragged to sunny Scotland tomorrow......Can't wait !!    

So have a good weekend.........

Marvin Hagler battered Thomas Hearns' when they fought and stopped him in three. You need to get over this fact and get on with your life.

Better to be a true and dominant champion in one division that float about and never dominate any. Even finding a genuine champion in one division now is difficult enough. Off the top of my head I would only recognize 4 or 5 and that includes one in the p1ss poor heavyweight division and another who is more of a commentator than a boxer nowadays.

The argument that Monzon's biggest fights were against men moving up doesn't hold that much water; his biggest win was over Valdes who was a full blooded middleweight, then there's also the Briscoe win.

The smaller men they faced are the biggest names they fought but in Monzons case Griffith was at one stage the genuine middleweight champion as was Benvenuti. The wins over Duran and Napoles are comparable but the greater Welterweight was dealt with easily by Monzon so again not really comparable.

Monzon again holds all the cards when it comes to middleweight champions beaten, he has three whilst Hagler has two as well as a loss to the third he faced.

As for the OP, well it depends on where the challenges are, moving up and fighting sub par opposition doesn't mean a lot, neither Hagler or Monzon had much pressure to move up because of men like Hearns, Valdes, Leonard or Napoles. Yes it would have been nice to see them step up to face Foster and Spinks respectively but they both had a big challenge in the Middleweight division.

It is a very thin line, Pacquiao moved up to Welterweight because that's where the challenges were whereas Cotto moved up because the 154lb division was pretty crap and constituted an easy title to pick up.

You have to understand the nature of Marvin Hagler. This is a man who was kept away from the championship for more than 50 fights and seven years (when it was still " the championship").

“I want to stay bitter,” he told Sports Illustrated. “I use it; I feed on it. That’s why I put myself in jail like this to train for a fight. I want to be mean. All I want to think of is destruction. Then nobody can take from me what’s mine. The only way they’ll get the title from me is to kill me.”

There was no way Hagler was going to give up that title anywhere other than in the ring. A Spinks fight was never seriously floated, it was nothing more than a throw-away line from Butch Lewis after Hagler had nailed either Hearns or Mugabi. They needed Hagler -- he didn't need Spinks.

The biggest names on Monzon's record are Valdes, Napoles, Griffith and Benvenuti. Three of those were fighters who had risen in weight.

I'm in agreement with Haz on this one. Marv was driven by bitterness and resentment. He resented the fact he had to wait so long for his shot (as a result he was going to hold onto that belt as long as he could) and I feel he also resented the fact that Leonard was the darling of the boxing world and could seemingly do whatever he wanted without criticism whereas Marv felt he'd always done it the hard way. Don't get me wrong there's a lot of Larry Holmes type bitterness in Marv and I'm not justifying it, I'm just giving my opinion