Most Overrated Fights

[StarshipTrooper]

But Quartey-DLH had way too much posing and not enough punching. Actually, calling it a chess-match might be nice. A chessmatch usually would imply both guys carefully planning every move and trying to set traps, a mistake resulting in big payment (like a big punch landing). Quartey-DLH seemed to feature just a lot of posing and staring rather than this sort of high-skilled chessmatch.

A fight like Toney-McCallum 1 is a high-paced chessmatch, with both guys throwing a lot of hard shots but not just aimlessly.

Good distinction.

Poet

[Dirt E Gomez]

2 Types of overrated fights:

Overrated in a sense that the actual outcome of the fight wasn't extremely relevant: Ali-Frazier III

Overrated that I didn't find particularly exciting: Too many to name. Watching mediocre fights beat the piss out of each other just doesn't do it for me. Gatti, despite being a blood and guts warrior, never really amused me because it was just silly to watch half the time.

[StarshipTrooper]

Yeah some would but it was one of those FOTY's (Ring Magazine, etc) because it was an event more than anything else.

Sure, but if you've kept track of Ring's fight of the year picks you'd see that if there was a Heavyweight fight that year that was a minimumly credible entry then it will automatically get more votes than excellent fights from lower weight classes.

Poet

[Thread Stealer]

Sure, but if you've kept track of Ring's fight of the year picks you'd see that if there was a Heavyweight fight that year that was a minimumly credible entry then it will automatically get more votes than excellent fights from lower weight classes.

Poet

Like Foreman-Young over Saad-M.Johnson 1 (which is in my top 5 all-time).

[Guest]

Sure, but if you've kept track of Ring's fight of the year picks you'd see that if there was a Heavyweight fight that year that was a minimumly credible entry then it will automatically get more votes than excellent fights from lower weight classes.

Poet

Yeah too bad Biggs-Tyson wasn't better that year.

Know what ya mean.

Times have changed for sure, and that's good.

[Thread Stealer]

I thought Leonard-Hagler was a pretty entertaining fight.

Both guys weren't what they had once been, but that might've actually made the action better. Hagler being slower defensively with his parrying and upper body movement, Leonard getting tired quicker which also made him easier to hit (of course Hagler had slower hands by 87' and that made him less effective).

Among the Fab 4 fights, definitely behind Duran-Leonard 1 and Hagler-Hearns but I liked it a lot better than Hagler-Duran, Leonard-Duran 2 and the god-awful third fight.

Likewise, Leonard and Hearns slowing down by 1989 made their rematch a pretty good action fight.

[StarshipTrooper]

I personally think there's too much attention paid to Heavyweights.....an obsession almost. I tend to view all the original 8 weight classes equally. If the Welters are the best at given time that's fine and dandy by me.

Poet

[TheGreatA]

Dempsey vs Firpo might not really be overrated by the average boxing fan, maybe by a couple of historians. It's a rather ugly fight with a lot of holding and hitting and wild action.

I do have to say that what intrigues me about this fight (as well as Hagler-Hearns) is that Dempsey pretty much threw out all of his boxing skill (which he did possess) to fight his opponent's fight and make it an exciting battle worthy of the hype. He gets tagged early and basically fought the rest of it in blind rage of which he said he didn't remember a thing after the fight.

[princemanspoper]

Just curious...why do you feel that way? I mean it had two of the greatest heavyweights of all time going at it, who absolutely hated each other. It was pretty violent and throw in the fact the in ring temperatures were over 100 degrees makes it even more crazy. There was a lot of drama, momentum shifts, and a crazy ending. Joe doesnt want to quit even though he's on the verge of going blind, his trainer throws in the towel, and on the other side it looks like Ali is asking for his gloves to be cut off because he's about to pass out from heat exhaustion.

Well for a start you had one great heavyweight(ali) and one very good heavyweight(frazier) who were both past their prime.There wasn't many momentum shifts at all,very little drama and not a crazy ending as you put it

The most action of the fight was ali using fraziers head as a punching bag towards the end of the fight.The fight wasn't close,fast paced or that brutal until ali's onslought towards the end.Very overrated in terms of how competitive it actually was

And stop using speculation to try and dramatize this fight even further ******

[TheGreatA]

I'm surprised at people picking the Thrilla in Manila as an overrated fight. Rumble in the Jungle would be overrated if anything, a sloppy bout without a whole lot of punches landed, but I felt the Thrilla is well deserving of the hype and was truly a brutal, brutal contest in which two men gave their all.

Imagine this kind of action in a modern heavyweight bout, it would be talked about for years: