Kid Gavilan vs. Jake LaMotta

[ferroz]

2 light hitting granite chin fighters who would have won?

[Tantum]

Ut oh, here comes the attack of the Keed. If he's not too embarrassed from his last quarrel to show his face, that is.

[Jaclem]

i was just thinking about the keed the other day..realizing that i've missed him here. i'll go with lamotta on the basis of his strength.. a lightheavyweight crammed into a middleweights body. gavilan could..and did..beat some good middleweights, but i think jake would bull him around and nullify the hawk's speed and cleverness. all those fights with robinson when the latter was a welterweight were wars...and the weight weakened lamotta was even effective in the early and middle rounds of the valentine massacre. so..if lamotta could do that well against a fighter who was taller, even faster and a much harder puncher than gavilan,i can't see my favorite cuban guy being able to hold jake at bay.

[crooked nose]

LaMotta would spend the night swinging at air while Kid Gavilan would turn his mug into chicken cacciatore. Not even close. LaMotta is overrated. He would have never been champion if he hadn't nearly ripped Cerdan's arm out of the socket.

[Jaclem]

crooked nose lamotta had two busted knuckles in the cerdan fight and at the time nat fleischer (before your time...in his day an excellent authority) said his hand was so bad the injuriers were equal. plus..it was lamotta's strength in the infighting that caused the cerdan injury..plus much later in the fight than cerdan later claimed. mauling is part of the game, you know, as long as it's legal, which is was. cerdan wasn't bad at it himself..lamotta was just better. too bad you've never seen him fight.

gavilan was a superb fighter...but no way would he be able to hold off lamotta....who, by the way, didn't cut easily.

[The Keed]

Ut oh, here comes the attack of the Keed. If he's not too embarrassed from his last quarrel to show his face, that is.

Is that the one where you said Vernon Forrest was an all-time great for sure?

[silkov]

Lamotta would have been too strong for Gavilan and would win a close but clear decision. Gavilan lost to Bobo Olsen for the Middleweight title and Olsen was a simular inside fighter like Jake. Lamotta was not overrated, in fact if anything he is underrated, he wasn't the mindless brawler many seem to think, but a wiley fighter who was actually pretty difficult to hit... was already past his best when he won the world title and battling constant weight problems.... he had a iron chin and better punch than he's credited for... great infighter... he'd win clearly over Gavilan.
Lamotta would probably have dominated the Middleweights in the 40s if he had been given a shot earlier at the title. And I say this despite having great respect for Zale, Graziano and Cedan.

[KOJOE90]

Lamotta on points is my pick.

[Jaclem]

silkov..this is the best assessment i've seen of jake lamotta. brief but thorough.

[The Keed]

silkov..this is the best assessment i've seen of jake lamotta. brief but thorough.

Yeah, that is a good one.

As far as the fight itself goes, that's a tough one to call... good arguments can be made for both fighters.

To respond to what Jaclem said earlier, about comparing Gavy with Robinson, Gavy did have one advantage over Robby, and that was that he probably had superior defense and technique. LaMotta has often struggled with guys who were lesser fighters, but better boxers, than Robby (ie: Fritzie Zivic, Tony Janiro, Laurent Dauthuille, etc.).

As far as Gavy's fight with Olson... that's a good point too, but also remember that Gavy was past his prime then. He appeared to have been sliding for at least a year by then (since his first fight with Tiger Jones, at least).

One other little point in Gavy's favor: Gavy often did better than LaMotta against common opponents. For example, he beat Dauthuille clearly, whereas LaMotta lost to him and then just barely won the rematch. Gavy also whupped Janiro twice easily, while LaMotta had to put on a big finish to pull out that decision. Also, LaMotta lost once clearly to Robert Villemain, and supposedly got a gift in another fight with him... Gavy lost to Villemain too, but it was on a split decision, and probably a bit questionable one (the fight was in Montreal, Villemain's turf... The New York Times thought Gavy had won it).

To me, a Gavy-LaMotta fight is kind of a toss up.

[Simonpure]

As much as I respect the opinions of Crooked Nose, I am going to side with Jaclem and Silkov on this one.

A question one might ask is how would Kid Gavilan, as great as he was, fare against the likes of Bob Satterfield, "Irish" Bob Murphy and Dick Wagner? The only answer I can come up with is....not so good. LaMotta, of course, held wins over all three.

LaMotta was, as Jaclem points out, a light heavyweight stuffed into a middleweight`s body. As always in the case of a great little man vs. a great big man, size counts.

[Tantum]

Ut oh, here comes the attack of the Keed. If he's not too embarrassed from his last quarrel to show his face, that is.

Is that the one where you said Vernon Forrest was an all-time great for sure?

No, I believe that's the one where you tried bashing fighters to sell Azumah Nelson and looked like a complete idiot. (As usual)

[The Keed]

Ut oh, here comes the attack of the Keed. If he's not too embarrassed from his last quarrel to show his face, that is.

Is that the one where you said Vernon Forrest was an all-time great for sure?

No, I believe that's the one where you tried bashing fighters to sell Azumah Nelson and looked like a complete idiot. (As usual)

This is ironic as hell, coming from the guy who has to hide behind another name after every time he "quarrels". The only thing more pathetic than that would be to post under more than one name at once, to make it look like there are people here that actually agree with you. Oh, but wait, you've done that too...

Naturally, of course, you never bothered to think how on earth "bashing" Azumah's opponents somehow "sells" Azumah. But then, if you ever thought before you posted, you wouldn't need all those other names in the first place.

[Tantum]

I have to hide under another name? I haven't used that name in a long long time. And you're about the only one who didn't find that funny... Everyone just loves laughing at you. (Not with you)

And I never posted under that name to "agree with myself", you can go look back at those topics to see that you're full of shit.

[The Keed]

I never posted under that name to "agree with myself"

http://www.boxrec.com/phpBB2/viewtopic. ... highlight=

And you're about the only one who didn't find that funny...

http://www.boxrec.com/phpBB2/viewtopic. ... highlight=

http://www.boxrec.com/phpBB2/viewtopic. ... highlight=

[Tantum]

Umm... None of those were cases in which I agreed with myself to prove any point, so like I said, where did you pull that out of your ass?

The poll was by accident, I meant to do that under my own name.

Hell, the one thread you pulled up proves your a moron, in which Tomato said it was me, yet you didn't have a clue until just recently when I blatently let the cat out of the bag.

And if you think somehow those posts proved people were on your side, you are dead wrong.

[The Keed]

Umm... None of those were cases in which I agreed with myself to prove any point, so like I said, where did you pull that out of your ass?

The poll was by accident, I meant to do that under my own name.

Hell, the one thread you pulled up proves your a moron, in which Tomato said it was me, yet you didn't have a clue until just recently when I blatently let the cat out of the bag.

And if you think somehow those posts proved people were on your side, you are dead wrong.

Uh huh... those are some nice attempts at sounding smart there.

[Tyson KTFO 3 Times]

Tantum doesn't need to attempt to sound smart... Speaking of which, how many times have you attempted editing records of fighters not mentioned in this thread?

You Keed, are truly Boxrec's resident Fuckwit