F--- boxing

To tell you just how far boxing has fallen in the national consiousness, I've never heard of Oliver McCall.

 

He was heavyweight champ in that mid-90s era between when Holyfield/Bowe/Foreman and a couple others brought it back to life, and when Lennox Lewis started dominating.
He's most famous for having an in-ring mental breakdown against Lewis in which he broke down into tears at one point. It's a quite infamous match, actually.

 

Now that baseball season is done I often spend weeknights watching old fights on YouTube, some I haven't seen since watching them live, others I've never seen at all. Just this week I've watched Pryor - Arguello I, Hagler - Minter, Hagler - Mugabi, Boza-Edwards - Chacon I (epic fight) and Eubank - Benn (a legit British middleweight feud).

 

My favorite is Gustavo Ballas vs Rafael Pedroza, WBA junior bantamweight title, December 15, 1981.
Chacon vs Edwards is second.

 

Damn, @Huggy, those are some great fights from the last golden age of boxing.

 

I've got Boza - Chacon II and Chacon - Limon ahead this week. Also planning on revisiting the Bramble - Mancini fights (I was at the first one in Buffalo). I also looked at a couple of Jeff Chandler fights, the great Philly bantamweight champ who would appear on network TV when fighters at those weights were seldom seen. Oh yeah and the epic Battle of the Z Boys, Carlos Zarate vs. Alfonso Zamora at the Forum. Crazy fight in the ring - with the fighters and an in-ring intruder early in the first round. A very young Richard Steele was the ref.

 

Thanks, I will look for that!

 

The only video I can find of it is in five parts on YouTube in Spanish, even though I remember watching it as a kid on ESPN with Randy Gordon calling it.

 

Years ago we used to get a Spanish-language station here in Toronto that showed fights from Mexico every Saturday afternoon. Pretty much the only Spanish I know I got from that show. It was great.

 

I liked Arguello -- against Pryor he probably moved up one weight class too far.

 

My favorite fighter from that era after Hagler. He would have beaten any 140-pounder on the planet that night other than Pryor, who was clearly a bridge too far. I watched Pryor's title-winning fight against Antonio Cervantes tonight, there was nobody who fought like he did.

Also tonight: Nelson - Fenech II (one of the great "road" wins in boxing history) and the unreal war between Matthew Saad Muhammad and Yaqui Lopez, probably the best light heavyweight fight I've ever seen.

 

I'm not a boxing fan, but I watched a bunch of Micky Ward fights. They were brutal. Ward could take a punch even if he was as slow as Christmas.