Comments Thread For: Daily Bread Mailbag: The future for Boots Ennis, Mike Tyson, and the brilliance of Bam Rodriguez

[Doubledagger]

I was going to reply to the comment above but I’ll add to yours instead, which is much more closely aligned with what I see.

Fury’s beat downs of Wilder were not as impressive as, say, Lomachenko’s thorough spanking of Rigondeaux. Rigo was closer in natural size to Loma than proportionally Wilder was to Fury, as well as the Cuban maestro being infinitely more skilled than the one trick pony from Alabama. And yet everyone, including Loma himself, tends to dismiss that masterful win due to the difference in size, while marvelling at Fury beating up Wilder.. Go figure.

Rigo jumped two weight classes to fight Loma.

There is absolutely nothing special about that victory

[The D3vil]

Tyson Fury & the ghost of Randy Turpin would disagree that "the (UK has) never had the No. 1 P4P fighter", plus in 2016 Carl Frampton was The Ring Mag azine, The Boxing Writers Association of America and ESPN's Fighter of the Year & that's not exactly nothing.

Dude, Tyson Fury was just marginally a top 5 P4P fighter in his prime. he was never P4P #1

And Randy Turpin was just lucky to have caught Robinson on his tour of Europe when he had fought 7 fights in 6 weeks, something that wouldn't even be possible today.

They ran it back 2 months later & Robinson stopped his ass, brutally.

[Mark Elding]

Rigo jumped two weight classes to fight Loma.

There is absolutely nothing special about that victory

Oh please. It was all in the execution, a masterclass in feints, positioning, timing and technical nuance. Lomachenko knew he was bigger so, in order for the win to have meaning, he deliberately handicapped himself by electing not to use that advantage at all. He sat down on nothing. Just completely out-finessed his rival master technician. Same result if Loma was a 122lb fighter. And again, in real proportional terms, there was less of a size difference than we saw in the Fury-Wilder fights.

[Mark Elding]

Terrible take.

Wilder been a skinny legs the whole time he was "the most fearsome puncher ever", he was a massive favourite in the first fight & got gifted a draw because his KD's were so spectacular. He was still favourite going into the second fight.

Now if you'd said Loma vs Walters... I still would have disagreed

It’s a take that few would agree with because most people weirdly believe, in an acknowledged weight governed sport, that weight is only a significant factor for fighters below 200lbs. This isn’t the 1930’s anymore when anyone over 240lbs was technically inept. Fury had an absolutely huge size advantage over Wilder, irrespective of how much blunt force trauma Deontay could produce. If fighters like Lomachenko, Inoue, Usyk and Crawford had spent virtually their entire careers enjoying similar physical advantages in the ring they wouldn’t get any ‘pound for pound’ consideration at all.

[Jab jab boom]

Bread taking a biased view of the UK boxing scene. Again. He talks about the UK under performing per capita. The USA has (just under) 5 times the population of Britain but it doesn't have 5 times the number of world champions .

As of November 15th 2024 the US has 14 world champions (15 if you count puerto rico as part of the USA). and the UK has 4 at the moment. So per capita the UK is faring better than the USA. Obviously this fluctuates month on to month. Tonight we may lose a champ in CBS.

And this is actually a thin patch for the UK compared to recent years when we had more champs - deserving or not - such as Leigh Wood, Fury, Warrington, Joe Cordina etc. and I'd say a purple patch for the US what with 3 champs at ww who refuse to fight each other and who in other eras would have unified.

The best boxing country per capita? Historically it's probably Cuba. THE USA has 30 times the population of Cuba. As of today Cuba has 2 world champions. To match this the uSA would need all the other champions in every weight class to be American which has never and will never happen.

What is biased about what Bread said? He said UK fighters haven’t consistently ascended to the top of p4p lists and he’s right. In Ring current top 10, there are currently 4 Americans and 0 UK fighters. That’s been the case fairly consistently for quite some time. The UK doesn’t produce fighters that typically hit the top of p4p lists.

The USA significantly surpasses the UK in pound for pound level fighters, world champions, hall of famers and all time greats at a rate that’s greater than the population disparity.

[SteveM]

What is biased about what Bread said? He said UK fighters haven’t consistently ascended to the top of p4p lists and he’s right. In Ring current top 10, there are currently 4 Americans and 0 UK fighters. That’s been the case fairly consistently for quite some time. The UK doesn’t produce fighters that typically hit the top of p4p lists.

The USA significantly surpasses the UK in pound for pound level fighters, world champions, hall of famers and all time greats at a rate that’s greater than the population disparity.

Your comprehension is poor. I didn't address p4p lists. Nor Ring current top ten. I specifically focused on his point about per capita representation, pointing out why he is wrong and i laid out the specifics viz-a-viz USA has 5 x the population of the UK. I also mentioned this flexes on a month by month case - eg. we lost a champion last night when CBS lost. This has been a 'bad' year for British boxing - it's cyclical - in another 12 or 18 months we'll likely have a few more champions. Don't believe me? Look at the case of Japan - they are on top of the world right now with 9 or so champions - a few years ago they had perhaps 3.

[SteveM]

Fury doesn't have good punching technique though. His power is primarily because he's huge. Just to give you a few examples, he likes to throw lazy jabs from the hip with his other hand low. It works because he's got a major height and reach advantage against pretty much everyone, but if you take away the size advantage, the skills don't hold up. He throws a lot of arm punches too, especially hooks and uppercuts. Good enough at heavyweight vs the competition he's faced, outside what passes for the elite of the division, but he'd get stopped early if you take the size away and look at it skill for skill. That's why, for all his size, he's got only a 70% KO ratio, most of which are TKO. He's got 4 total actual KO's, vs Wilder and Cunningham, who he outweighed by huge amounts (40lbs and 44lbs), and vs guys with mostly losing records early in his career.

And speaking of getting stopped, he's kinda chinny. He's been knocked down by guys who were way smaller than him who aren't known for their knockout power. Got knocked down by a debutante, FFS, and really should have lost that fight. What kind of P4P talent gets knocked down and has to be handed a gift decision vs a person in their first boxing match ever?

That's leaving aside the fact that he's a cheater too. Great at marketing himself, but I just don't see how he holds up when you really adhere to the key concept behind P4P, which is, literally and definitionally, how good is this fighter if you take size and weight out of the equation. If you want to argue that P4P is consequently a fundamentally meaningless, artificial, and largely arbitrary list that frequently looks a lot like a popularity contest, well, I won't argue with you on that at all.

I'm British but no way Fury was ever #1 P4P - I think 8-10 after Wilder 2 and 3. Regards your last sentence then there is bias because most of these lists are created by American journalists working for American publications. If eastern european fighters can't get the shake of the dice in actual fights (Loma vs Haney / Golovkin vs Canelo 1 / Bohachuk vs Ortiz / Madrimov vs Crawford) then what chance they get a fair shake of the dice in P4P lists?

[SteveM]

Dude, Tyson Fury was just marginally a top 5 P4P fighter in his prime. he was never P4P #1

And Randy Turpin was just lucky to have caught Robinson on his tour of Europe when he had fought 7 fights in 6 weeks, something that wouldn't even be possible today.

They ran it back 2 months later & Robinson stopped his ass, brutally.

I like your top ten list except Haney doesn't belong on it atm.

Who is that very athletic woman?

[crimsonfalcon07]

I'm British but no way Fury was ever #1 P4P - I think 8-10 after Wilder 2 and 3. Regards your last sentence then there is bias because most of these lists are created by American journalists working for American publications. If eastern european fighters can't get the shake of the dice in actual fights (Loma vs Haney / Golovkin vs Canelo 1 / Bohachuk vs Ortiz / Madrimov vs Crawford) then what chance they get a fair shake of the dice in P4P lists?

100% agreed on that. But what about your personal list?

[Jab jab boom]

Your comprehension is poor. I didn't address p4p lists. Nor Ring current top ten. I specifically focused on his point about per capita representation, pointing out why he is wrong and i laid out the specifics viz-a-viz USA has 5 x the population of the UK. I also mentioned this flexes on a month by month case - eg. we lost a champion last night when CBS lost. This has been a 'bad' year for British boxing - it's cyclical - in another 12 or 18 months we'll likely have a few more champions. Don't believe me? Look at the case of Japan - they are on top of the world right now with 9 or so champions - a few years ago they had perhaps 3.

Perhaps it’s your comprehension that is poor. He said per capita they haven’t produced many great fighters. Your argument was to mention your current champions who are essentially belt holders and not at the top of any p4p lists.
So if you want to stick to the topic of what he stated, he’s right. The Uk doesn’t even produce more great fighters than Puerto Rico and there’s a massive difference in the population of those 2 places. Per capita the U.S. has produced way more than 6x the great and hall of fame fighters than the UK.