The Greatness of Naseem Hamed

[Left Hook Tua]

With all due respect to the threadstarter, Hamed receives the flak he does because of the way he was maneuvered and the fights he avoided.

It's real easy to throw down a list of names that look solid and say, "look at how many good fighters this guy beat." I've seen people do that with Oscar. But unless you actually remember when he fought those people, who people thought he should fight instead and what the public perception was at the time, it means little. So sure you can list Tom Johnson as a great win for Hamed but we all know Johnson had a foot out the door when he beat him. Same for Cesar Soto and several other names on the list.

Really, I could break it down but I'm not up for it this morning - tired of battling the boxrec warriors. In any case, I will say that Hamed over time has become underrated but that's probably because he was overrated during the time he was fighting.

well at least your the first one that tried to explain it.

everyone else just says he sucks , he's overrated , he fought nobody , etc. without explaining why they feel that way.

i might not agree with you completely but at least you mention why you don't rate his wins highly.

yes tom was on the downside of his career , soto as well when your fighting a guy that's on his 45th-50th fight chances are he is on his way out the door. i still consider it good wins though.

name one fighter that don't have an old fighter on their resume. boxing feeds it's old to the young. if you list a lot of guys resume you'll see a lot of old guys on there. still good wins for a young fighter though.

[Bogler]

GREAT


NOT GREAT


got it!!!

kurneh bro.

[IMDAZED]

well at least your the first one that tried to explain it.

everyone else just says he sucks , he's overrated , he fought nobody , etc. without explaining why they feel that way.

i might not agree with you completely but at least you mention why you don't rate his wins highly.

yes tom was on the downside of his career , soto as well when your fighting a guy that's on his 45th-50th fight chances are he is on his way out the door. i still consider it good wins though.

name one fighter that don't have an old fighter on their resume. boxing feeds it's old to the young. if you list a lot of guys resume you'll see a lot of old guys on there. still good wins for a young fighter though.

True but where are the prime fighters on his resume? The good ones? Even Kevin Kelly was supposed to be a gimme. Instead, it was almost a nightmare.

Marco Antonio Barrera was that guy and he soundly outboxed Naseem. Had Hamed continued to fight, we'd know where to place him. But he just...stopped. I mean, Barrera's still fighting! LOL. The truth is, a lot of guys Hamed fought were either on the wrong side of their careers or weren't that good to begin with. Sure, the old are fed to the young. But at some point, you gotta step up. When Naseem did, he got sent back down.

[Left Hook Tua]

True but where are the prime fighters on his resume? The good ones? Even Kevin Kelly was supposed to be a gimme. Instead, it was almost a nightmare.

Marco Antonio Barrera was that guy and he soundly outboxed Naseem. Had Hamed continued to fight, we'd know where to place him. But he just...stopped. I mean, Barrera's still fighting! LOL. The truth is, a lot of guys Hamed fought were either on the wrong side of their careers or weren't that good to begin with. Sure, the old are fed to the young. But at some point, you gotta step up. When Naseem did, he got sent back down.

he fought some okay prime guys obviously their resume wasn't as good as the older guys. now that said naseem beat every single belt holder in his division at the time. what's the worst division right now? 154? heavy? if someone right now in those awful divisions were to beat 3-4 of the champions (no matter how ordinary a champion he is) would you not think he was a great fighter?

let me ask you this too. i did a featherweight poll a few months back where people voted on barrera , pacquiao , erik , naseem and juan manuel and the concensus in that thread was that marquez was a great fighter.

now how much better is juan manuel's resume to naseem's? they fought a few of the same guys.

[Left Hook Tua]

kurneh bro.

what's kurneh?

[Cuauhtémoc1520]

The guy lost one fight by decision to a future hall of famer and people talk about him like he was a joke. Hamed was a victim of the anti-Arabic/****** sentiment in the US.

Actually I was one of the ones that called him a bum but in reality he was a good talent and could have had a much better legacy.

This thing about anti-American sentiment towards ******s is BS, first off it happened 5 months before Sept 11th, so there was no real Anti-****** sentiments.

If anything he brought it on his own, claiming the fight for Islam and coming short of saying it was Islam defeating Christianity. He made it a point to fight on one of the holiest of Christian weeks and made a mokery of things when he would pray and chant Allah-Akbar over and over before the fight.

I thought he was decent but he was a clown as a person, disrespected an entire religion and paid for it by recieving an old fashion Mexican ass whoopin.

[IMDAZED]

he fought some okay prime guys obviously their resume wasn't as good as the older guys. now that said naseem beat every single belt holder in his division at the time. what's the worst division right now? 154? heavy? if someone right now in those awful divisions were to beat 3-4 of the champions (no matter how ordinary a champion he is) would you not think he was a great fighter?

let me ask you this too. i did a featherweight poll a few months back where people voted on barrera , pacquiao , erik , naseem and juan manuel and the concensus in that thread was that marquez was a great fighter.

now how much better is juan manuel's resume to naseem's? they fought a few of the same guys.

He didn't necessarily beat every belt holder. That's a very clever way to put it. He took them one at a time and dropped each one before he actually had to defend it. So he never held them at once. The only one he DID keep was the WBO because they kept feeding him chumps, even worse chumps than the ones the other sanctioning bodies would've given him. That's saying A LOT.

Unfortunately, I did not take part in this poll you're referring to so I find it completely irrelevant. We're discussing Naseem Hamed and while I WILL answer it, I'm not here to debate the two resumes so let's not get caught up in that. In any case, I'll take wins over Derrick Gainer and Rocky Juarez over nearly everyone Hamed fought. You'll probably harp on that more than my next point - a draw and a controversial loss to Pacquiao trumps anything Hamed did too.

[Left Hook Tua]

He didn't necessarily beat every belt holder. That's a very clever way to put it. He took them one at a time and dropped each one before he actually had to defend it. So he never held them at once. The only one he DID keep was the WBO because they kept feeding him chumps, even worse chumps than the ones the other sanctioning bodies would've given him. That's saying A LOT.

Unfortunately, I did not take part in this poll you're referring to so I find it completely irrelevant. We're discussing Naseem Hamed and while I WILL answer it, I'm not here to debate the two resumes so let's not get caught up in that. In any case, I'll take wins over Derrick Gainer and Rocky Juarez over nearly everyone Hamed fought. You'll probably harp on that more than my next point - a draw and a controversial loss to Pacquiao trumps anything Hamed did too.

he didn't drop all of the belts. didn't one of the orgs strip their champ of his belt for fighting naseem? there was a lot of wba/wbc/ibf politics against the wbo at the time.

when you respond you seem annoyed that you have to explain yourself to me. no worry i'm not one of your dreaded boxrec warriors. i don't need to debate this issue with you. we'll just agree to disagree.

by the way i'm not a brit or big nas fan if that's what you're thinking. i was barrera guy that hated naseem and thought he was overrated too. naseem is not the greatest but i just don't think he should be called a bum or hype. he did have some accomplishments. no matter how minor it might seem to some.

[IMDAZED]

he didn't drop all of the belts. didn't one of the orgs strip their champ of his belt for fighting naseem? there was a lot of wba/wbc/ibf politics against the wbo at the time.

when you respond you seem annoyed that you have to explain yourself to me. no worry i'm not one of your dreaded boxrec warriors. i don't need to debate this issue with you. we'll just agree to disagree.

by the way i'm not a brit or big nas fan if that's what you're thinking. i was barrera guy that hated naseem and thought he was overrated too. naseem is not the greatest but i just don't think he should be called a bum or hype. he did have some accomplishments. no matter how minor it might seem to some.

I think my notes come across that way - believe me, you're one of the better posters I've responded to. Truthfully, most of my posts sound scornful because I'm usually talking with some idiot who just started watching boxing, really only watches one fighter and uses boxrec and youtube clips to fill in the rest. A LOT of those around these parts.

Anyway, the WBO had very little respect then because their top ten was even worse than say the IBF's. And that's pretty bad. They were well connected with European promoters like Klaus Peter-Kohl and Frank Warren, basically allowing them to pick and choose who their fighters wanted to fight. Look at the guys Naseem, Michalchewski, Calzaghe, etc. defended against. It's pretty scary.

Finally, Naseem was in no way a bum. He was an ultra talented fighter whomay have been better suited at 118 or 122 if he actually trained with the intensity others did. On paper, his accomplishments look better than they actually were and, the first time he truly stepped up, he got beat soundly. He should've continued fighting but it appears he just didn't have the heart. That, more than anything, ruined his legacy. After all, the Barrera who beat him is the same Barrera that got his head bashed in by Junior Jones even worse than what Marco did to Naseem.

[Scott9945]

Actually I was one of the ones that called him a bum but in reality he was a good talent and could have had a much better legacy.

This thing about anti-American sentiment towards ******s is BS, first off it happened 5 months before Sept 11th, so there was no real Anti-****** sentiments.

If anything he brought it on his own, claiming the fight for Islam and coming short of saying it was Islam defeating Christianity. He made it a point to fight on one of the holiest of Christian weeks and made a mokery of things when he would pray and chant Allah-Akbar over and over before the fight.

I thought he was decent but he was a clown as a person, disrespected an entire religion and paid for it by recieving an old fashion Mexican ass whoopin.

I was posting on boxing message boards before 9/11, and there was always strong resentment of Hamed because of his heritage and his religion. He was called names that you could never refer to another minority in a similar manner, yet board moderators dismissed it as nothing. It was very real and it wasn't my imagination, and I am neither Arabic or ****** so it wasn't my own paranoia either.