Tonight's Action (SPOILERS)

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Setting the thread up early, so everything about tonight's action can go here

Quigg has been arsing around for the last year. Not really been built at all. Stuck in poor match ups as a support act.

The McGuigans have done a fabulous job with Frampton to be fair to them. Pulled out all the stops. Barry has a flair for it. Sky should be making room for him.

Fantastic performance from Frampton (once again). Meticulously prepared fighter and far too quick and well-balanced for Avalos - who was made to look pedestrian.

Frampton will look to come to England to face Quigg next. McGuigan knows ITV can't compete with Sky's money and so plead for common sense last night so that the fight can go out on terrestrial (obviously thinking long-term).

The Hearns are likely to push for a PPV clash - which would be a shame. I imagine an outdoor venue, Loftis Road anyone?

Frampton is some fighter - enjoy him while you can.

Where does everyone rank Kid Galahad now? Lots of people on social media saying he would have done the same to Avalos last night.

Frampton would destroy Galahad currently although it would be nice to see him in with a ranked fighter.....would like to see Quigg in with someone of note as well at some point in his career

Galahad wouldn't have been able to do that to Avalos as he doesn't have Frampton's power. Fantastic boxer, though. Needs a big fight but seems to be struggling to land a big name.

The worry is he gets protected because of his new found star status like Barry was !!

The old Pedrosa instead of Nelson..........Bernard Taylor with the heating turned up over 100 degrees............The awful Cabrera...........and then a part time cab driver that beat him....

Let's hope Barry hasn't learned too much off Eastwood..

Pedroza over Nelson? Pedroza was the more recognized (lineal) champ.

And Taylor's excuse about the Kings Hall being hot and smokey was rubbish. Taylor was from North Carolina, McGuigan from freezing cold Belfast - how did the heat help Barry? Poor excuse that.

Team mcguigan didn't really fancy nelson, think mcgiggle has pretty much conceded that. Pedrosa was like napoles and Tszyu an ageing champion where the timing was good.

The taylor fight was a weird one. Hard to blame the heat for beating Taylor and for losing to Cruz. Taylor looked really classy for a few rounds and then slowly fell apart without any obvious reason. That said, I was half cut when I watched it at the time so maybe I missed something.

Just watched the fury fight - I do t get all the hate.

For a heavyweight fight, I thought it was high paced at times and Tyson displayed some very good movement and punch selection.

For me, it was of his best performances.

hampo171 wrote:Post fight press conference courtesy of Sports View London. Avalos asked for a rematch

Thanks for this, does anyone know why kugan / IFL don't cover these fights in Belfast.

Also Barry McGuigan loves the sound of his own voice, frampton couldn't get a word in without Barry talking over him!!!

It was never a Pedroza over Nelson thing when Eastwood was negotiating to get Barry a world title fight. It was in fact Pedroza over Gomez, who held the WBC title until almost the end of '84. The McGuigan camp had decided that Gomez's heavier artillery provided the greater risk (beatable though he was in other ways) and therefore pursued Pedroza as the best option, even though they had to pay more to get him over to London.

By the time Nelson won the WBC title, negotiations with Pedroza were almost a done deal. It was after Barry became WBA champion that a unification fight with Nelson was so carefully skirted; Taylor was the mandatory defence, taken just three months after the Pedroza fight, but then there was a great deal of faff about going to Dublin to make a supposedly routine voluntary against someone who gave Barry heart failure and showed definitively that McGuigan was unlikely to prosper against Azumah. Nelson confirmed that by drubbing Cabrera a bit later and Barry made the whole subject redundant by losing to Cruz.

Frampton's a better fighter than McGuigan, for me - just as heavy-handed but crucially, isn't fazed by fighting off the back foot, which Barry never mastered and his trainer, Eddie Shaw, couldn't seem to teach. I'd love to watch him against Rigondeaux, personally - he'd start second favourite, yes, but he'd not be without a chance. With Froch virtually retired and Khan still making his case in his new division, there is a reasonable argument for placing Frampton at the top of the pile from these islands at the moment. In a year or so, I reckon that he'll be there without the need for dispute.

... My comments re nelson were about team mcguigan not fancying it when zoomy called him out. They managed him well until the Cruz fiasco.

I agree frampton looks a better all round fighter than Barry, though there are tests ahead that will clarify that. Mcguigan is nearer to quigg than frampton stylistically for me.

Yeah, I knew that, milky, was more of a response to truss/Haz suggesting that the choice before Barry became champ was McGuigan/Nelson. After was a different matter - Eastwood and the rest didn't want a bar of Zoomy and I can't say that I was/am surprised. Stylistically, of course, McGuigan was most like Paul Hodkinson, another Eddie Shaw pupil. Would love to have stuck them in a time-travelling fight to see who came out on top.

McGuigan even concedes he'd have struggled to beat Nelson. Is it fair to say that McGuigan was the recognised champion after defeating Pedroza? I'm pretty sure he was with Ring Mag etc. hence the fact Nelson courted him rather than the other way around (that and the fact McGuigan was a huge payday).

Don't think McGuigan was ever rewarded with a Ring Magazine title to go with his WBA one, Haz.

The lineage was broken when Saldivar retired as champion. If you think he automatically regains that status when he comes back, then he was WBC and lineal champion when he lost to Shibata - eventually that belt ended up with Jofre, who vacated it and remained unbeaten for the remainder of his career before retiring for good.

So regardless of whether Saldivar regained that status or not when he returned, it can't have ended up with McGuigan by rights. Pedroza had more defences behind him, but who really considered him a better fighter than Sanchez when they were both holding titles simultaneously? Sanchez's dreadful showing against Ford (who Pedroza dominated) aside, I can't imagine too many going with the Panamanian.

Having said that, he'd beaten Laporte (albeit not particularly convincingly) in 1982, and the following year Laporte won the WBC championship. If the Ring were being consistent, then they'd have awarded their belt to Pedroza at that point, as they'd done the same for Larry Holmes not long beforehand - when Mike Weaver knocked out Tate to win the WBA Heavyweight title, the Ring installed Holmes as their champion to go with his WBC title on the basis of him now having already beaten the other major titlist in his weight class. So maybe at that stage Pedroza had a real claim.

Not sure without checking. There was a precedent set for Pedroza (and so in turn McGuigan) to potentially have the Ring belt, but I'm not sure they applied the same rules to him as they did to Larry Big Pants.

Bit of a technicality if so, though, because if Pedroza ever was the best Featherweight on the planet it couldn't have been for very long; Sanchez passed in August '82, and Nelson, probably a top ten Feather in history and certainly deserving of a higher rank than Pedroza, had chopped down Gomez by '84 - the same time that Pedroza was winding down as champion.

Problem with Pedroza is he got most of his opponents out of the phone book and he stunk....

He'd be a cherrypicking muppet like Mayweather and Stevenson apparently are had he been around now....

His draw with Taylor was one of the worst fights I've ever seen..........On a par with Nelson - Deleon........The Laporte one wasn't much better..........Basically just pulled funny faces at eachother........Bit like Tubbs - Page....

Barry did us all a favor..

I'm not into this lineal stuff....................When Spinks is considered the number 1 heavy after bottling the HBO series then it shows what a non event lineal status is..

Never rated Eusebio and I never will........Not that he cares and nor should he....I was one of the few on here who had the unfortunate chance of watching him fight..

But I do love it how some that weren't around then try to reinvent history..

Just speculating, Truss. As I said, if (and it's doubtable) Pedroza ever really was the best Feather in the world it wouldn't have been for long. More just idle forum chat, beefster.

Have said before, though, that McGuigan's win over Pedroza was a little better than he gets credit for, in my opinion. Good timing by Eastwood and Pedroza was faded in the furnace of those 19 successful defences, but you'd think he was a complete shell the way some talk. I thought he basically matched McGuigan at least over twelve rounds - but the final three were just a bridge too far for him at that point against a young, fresh and all-action fighter of McGuigan's style. The fourteenth was another 10-8 of course.

I feel it was one of those really valiant, honourable losing performances which showed that, a) he was still a good fighter by 1985, albeit the damage of that fight clearly depleted what was left in his reserves, and b) it's not an absolute given that McGuigan would have beaten the Pedroza of two / three years before. Arguably a more impressive victory / admirable losing effort than Hatton's and Tszyu's in their own fight, which is commonly compared on those kinds of levels to McGuigan-Pedroza.

What's honorable about illegal smelling salts in the corner ???

Almost as bad as Pryor's black bottle..

I don't mind people rating Eusebio.......Some people rated Greg the flea Richardson who was probably another lineal champ (Who knows)......and he was better than him !!

To me he was a spoiler........Who never fought anybody...........

Problem for Pedrosa was no one gave a s**t..........I imagine people may well have had him pegged as the the real champ If anybody had heard of him !!

He was a rough and dirty spoiler, Truss. Just arguing that he was still a good fighter in his own right, if not a particularly inspiring one. Behaved himself well against Barry and showed he was a force to be reckoned with.

Never heard about the illegal smelling salts, though.

Whatever the weather, not in Sanchez or Nelson's class, which is something everyone agrees on.

http://boxrec.com/media/index.php/The_Ring_Magazine%27s_Annual_Ratings:_Featherweight--1980s

I'm in the minority with Truss on Pedroza and often get lambasted for saying Hamed was a) a better boxer and b) had a far superior record, he's a statistically impressive boxer but the majority of his 19 defences were absolute trash. Like you say Chris he can only be considered the best in between Sanchez and Nelson, both of whom are undoubtedly better than him and would have beaten him with ease. Sanchez's more human performances were against non-Hispanic boxers, put him in with a Panamanian and his Mexican blood will put him in destruction mode.

The Hatton/Tzuyu comparison is interesting, Tzuyu was probably better than Pedroza in each and every department but was probably over the hill that little bit more.

I'm one of the very few who thinks Hatton beats a prime Kosta.........

Hatton was the immovable object that night and I imagine every fight they have would be similar in style.........

Give Hatton angles or a southpaw style and he has tot hink and he wasn't a thinking fighter..............Style wise Kosta was the perfect fit..

Hugely underrated fighter Ricky on here...........End of the day he lost to the World's best two fighters.........Nothing to feel ashamed about..

All his other losses can be written off..........

I think Pedrosa was a good fighter...........Never a great though..

Who has lambasted you for having Hamed higher and pegged as a better talent than Pedroza, Hammersmith? Needless to say I'm definitely in your camp on that one.

Yeah, that was pretty much my thinking when comparing McGuigan-Pedroza to Hatton-Tszyu. Kostya was a better and more accomplished fighter than Pedroza but was probably further faded - or if you'd prefer, at least didn't compete and perform as well on the night as Pedroza did against Barry. Also think that the McGuigan-Pedroza fight in general was just a higher level of boxing and a much, much better fight. Hatton-Tszyu was a bit of a foul-filled grinder, albeit still an enjoyable and absorbing one due to the passionate backing Hatton had from so many at the time.

Interesting take on Sanchez's poorer / less dominant performances. I'd be more inclined to look at the fact that both Cowdell and Ford were awkward and rangey / cagey fighters and it was more of a styles thing than a nationality one. I used to excuse Sal's less than stellar moments on similar kinds of theories....Until milky told me I was making Waingro-level comments and gave me the v2 tanning of a lifetime to make me see the (possible) error of my ways. Could just be that, as an unbelievably smooth counter-puncher and clinical finisher, Sanchez was always going to look more at home against guys who carried the fight to him (Lopez, Gomez etc) and just needed to work that bit harder and looked a bit less spectacular against the more negative style.

If you're right then he'd have annihilated Pedroza. If I or the milk man is right then it's possible that Pedroza would have given him one of those hard nights and made him look average even if he won, with his negative style, reach and spoling. Guess we'll never know for sure.

I agree with Chris that Pedrosa would have made life awkward for Sal........Be a close fight.......

However Nelson would just be on him all night....With that famous way he made you work even though he didn't throw much back.........

GGG reminds me a bit of Azumah.......You feel he's always on top of you even when he isn't..

Agree with Hammer............Hamed higher by a distance.

I could be wrong about Sanchez Chris but he seemed different when he was in against a Hispanic, some of that does come down to style but he seemed more energised and his eyes were more focused. It was the same with Chavez and Gomez too, being Mexican and losing to a Puerto Rican or a Panamanian is unthinkable, it eats away at their machismo and for that reason i've always thought Sal destroys Pedroza.

As for the Hamed/Pedroza debate, I won't name names but did involve the usual three suspects.

I'm pretty sure I have a Ring Mag where McGuigan is classed as featherweight champion (with no mention of any other versions/title holders).

I've had a good look at Pedroza, though, and he's an underrated fighter (and as Chris notes, was far from finished when McGuigan faced him). Hamed might have been more talented but I'd take Pedroza to beat him in a head-to-head (providing neither of them gets disqualified).

Tszyu see liked fighting and excelled against guys who stood off him and who gave him room to build momentum as he went after them, Truss (despite being flashier and quicker than him, all of Hurtado, Gonzalez, Mitchell and Judah got chopped down or eventually just overwhelmed against him). When he did lose, it was against more obdurate brawling types who stood and exchanged constantly with him (like Hatton, Phillips brawled and mauled in close with him and stopped him when he was a young, frehs fighter), so I definitely don't rule out Hatton beating any version of Tszyu based on that. Hatton was one-dimensional but had that dimension to a pretty fine art.

I just don't think he beat the best version when they did fight, though. Still a good opponent for anyone at 140 at the time but at almost 36, having been out of the ring for much of the last three years or whatever it was and having a style quite reliant on fitness and strength it's fanciful to suggest that Tszyu hadn't lost at least half a step by 2005.

88Chris05 wrote:Tszyu see liked fighting and excelled against guys who stood off him and who gave him room to build momentum as he went after them, Truss (despite being flashier and quicker than him, all of Hurtado, Gonzalez, Mitchell and Judah got chopped down or eventually just overwhelmed against him). When he did lose, it was against more obdurate brawling types who stood and exchanged constantly with him (like Hatton, Phillips brawled and mauled in close with him and stopped him when he was a young, frehs fighter), so I definitely don't rule out Hatton beating any version of Tszyu based on that. Hatton was one-dimensional but had that dimension to a pretty fine art.

I just don't think he beat the best version when they did fight, though. Still a good opponent for anyone at 140 at the time but at almost 36, having been out of the ring for much of the last three years or whatever it was and having a style quite reliant on fitness and strength it's fanciful to suggest that Tszyu hadn't lost at least half a step by 2005.

I agree Chris I don't think he beat the best version..............But I don't think the fights would be any different stylistically If kosta was younger.........

Hatton was a ferocious fighter who had a great heart...........Heart won him that fight and I see it winning against a younger Kosta too...Who in fairness had lots of heart, though I never thought he had a " I'll die in the ring If I have to attitude !!....Like Hatton seemed to have...

My opinion though and If people don't share it....Not a problem.......

Do think Hatton is criminally underrated..

Did I really liken you to waingro Chris? Ouch!

The thing with Sanchez, and let's be clear, I think he was a terrific talent, is he was cool and hip and he died young. Pedrosa was a smart dirty street fighter. One was popular, one wasn't. It does colour objectivity a bit for some. Who was the better fighter? Sanchez. Who wins prime v prime. Well I'd err to Sanchez because he had a knack of getting over the line, but so did pedrosa and I think stylistically he would make it very difficult for sal. It's no foregone conclusion.

As for Sanchez being up for Hispanics. He may well have been... But his big wins were against guys he didn't have to go looking for, I think that's more key than his motivation.

I like the ggg v nelson analogy truss. Golovkin maybe a bit more measured but that knack of pressuring without seemingly doing much is definitely there. The McDonnell fight is a great example, McDonnell was well on the fight while nelson just stalked him, then zoomy just upped the ante late on and walked through him.

For the last time milky, yes you did. Stop trying to quell that guilt of yours over being such a nasty sod to me with that old 'Are you sure I said that?' tactic!

I feel I'm being obstinate for obstinate sake but has anyone really got an "I'd die in the ring attitude"? 

Despite what fighters may say, or how it may look, I don't know anyone who would willingly give their life to win a boxing match.

Truss is right on this. Hatton can beat a younger Tszyu. Although I only saw Tszyu fight once against Hatton, light welter wasn't his weight. He could have beaten plenty of fighters at that weight no doubt, but he came up against a pre-coke Hatton who was a bit of a beast at the time and who probably sneaks inside a top fifteen at the weight.

Light Welterweight wasn't Tzuyu's weight Herman?

Just checked his record, I take it all back

Was going to say he's the greatest (he was a great) 140lber since Chavez and an arguable top 5 man at the weight of all time, puts Hatton's record to shame.

How would Tszyu have gotten on with Matthysse Hammer, who looks a top top light welter to me?

88Chris05 wrote:For the last time milky, yes you did. Stop trying to quell that guilt of yours over being such a nasty sod to me with that old 'Are you sure I said that?' tactic!

Oh well. Glad it hasn't  left any scars!  

As it goes I liked waingro. He'd lost his puppy-like charm when he came back as hayemaker.

Herman Jaggery wrote:How would Tszyu have gotten on with Matthysse Hammer, who looks a top top light welter to me?

Difficult to say but i'd have to back Tzuyu, then again I don't think Hatton would have seen the 8th round against a younger version of Tzuyu, definitely a case of right place, right time.

He hit Hatton with his best shots and he still kept coming...

The punch is the last thing to go and Hatton seemed to absorb it..

Bit of a stretch to say he doesn't see 8.......

3fingers wrote:I feel I'm being obstinate for obstinate sake but has anyone really got an "I'd die in the ring attitude"? 

Are you pedantic or what ??

Shut up FFs..

TRUSSMAN66 wrote:He hit Hatton with his best shots and he still kept coming...

The punch is the last thing to go and Hatton seemed to absorb it..

Bit of a stretch to say he doesn't see 8.......

It's a cliche, the timing was quite there so neither was the power, he was landing good shots but he wasn't landing his best shot, Hatton was a solid grinder but I didn't enjoy watching him and he was the beneficiary of circumstance.

... Hard to say on Tszyu hatton. Tszyu had definitely seen better days but he certainly wasn't shot. That's about as good as we ever saw Ricky. There wasn't much in the fight as it was so I'd err to Tszyu, but not with much confidence.

It was great matchmaking by frank. He fed Ricky stiffs for years, then times his moment to pull the rabbit out of the hat in an 'everything to gain nothing to lose fight'.

Come on you could here some of the cracking shots miles away.....

He didn't come out for the twelve in a battle royale......Which tells you Hatton was prepared to go that extra mile....

Nothing in that fight suggests Kosta would ever find Hatton easy.....Or that a younger version would be able to handle him at all.....

They traded punches for 11 and Hatton was too good..and wanted it more !!

TRUSSMAN66 wrote:

3fingers wrote:I feel I'm being obstinate for obstinate sake but has anyone really got an "I'd die in the ring attitude"? 

Are you pedantic or what ??

Shut up FFs..

Wow! Really? I hope you feel better X