herol graham v nigel benn

[Controversial]

Big toe, little toe

[Switch hitter]

Then dropped Kalambay 2 twice in the rematch to get robbed....

I remember reading the Boxing News report and they made it clear Herol boxed very well and deserved the decision. Sumbu was a top class boxer but Herol was better. Damn Eastwood and all the managerial arguments that ruined all that patience and hard work.

That was a fight with two old inconsistent past prime fighters, not really that relevant in deciding who was better imo.Graham took a beating that finished what he had left post-jackson, but took advantage of Kalambay's by then painfully slow starts to build up a lead with knockdowns that should have got him a decision.But if they had fought a third time right after it, Graham would have probably been knocked out and dominated as kalambay had one solid performance left in him after it and was able to roll back the years against Collins where Graham was finished and couldn't even beat a domestic fighter like Grant.


I'd like to have seen them fight more than once in the late 80s when both were prime(same with Graham and McCallum, should have been more than one fight there), but overall i'd say kalambay was the better fighter during that period.Much better, more rounded technical chops..a genuinely great defensive fighter and technical boxer, unlike Graham's more flawed "pull the head straight back from punches" mostly intuitively reflexive style.MUCH better ring general, generally sharper punches and counters with a quicker, better and more educated jab.

btw Graham had been fighting more aggressively for a few fights before kalambay...against Boston, Williams, Kaylor etc and he won while mostly looking good, it wasn't some sudden thing he was forced into for that fight.


Don't get me wrong though, Graham was a very good awkwardly effective fighter, but his style was more flawed and sloppy.he was a rough diamond in need of a bit more polishing than he got.

It was a totally different Graham against Kalambay than the other fights you mentioned.
Also how can you polish a style like Graham's.....the rough diamond as you put it is why we still talk about him today

[SamWise72]

Also, and this really ought not to be overlooked, he got his shot against WILLIE DEWITT.

Potato. potato.

Not really as they are different fighters, Willie was a heavyweight.

I know, I was being facetious (not in the first place, I just fucked up, my bad)

[Arbachakov]

[/quote]It was a totally different Graham against Kalambay than the other fights you mentioned.
Also how can you polish a style like Graham's.....the rough diamond as you put it is why we still talk about him today[/quote]

A better trainer could have sharpened things up without interfering with the essentials of his style, i don't mean trying to turn him into Joe Louis or Donald Curry.Gave him better punch slipping knowledge to fall back on when just pulling and swaying away from punches would be a bad idea.

Tightened up his textbook punches, giving him a sharper offensive output....it's not like he threw ridiculous and unique punches like Naz and that attempting to change things would have ruined that, he was attempting to be more or less technically correct in the way he threw punches and combos anyway, but was pretty sloppy at times...stuff like the way he would often lift his back foot off the ground and step in after throwing his sneak lead straight-left.It would leave him square on and chin up, open for a counter which was exploited at times by the better fighters he fought.The little things like that could have been worked on without changing his style-making him a better fighter, but never were.

It's no big deal, Graham just tends to be one of the fighters that come to mind for me when i think of ones that had an unorthodox style and a lot of talent, but could have been even better with some refining.

[Switch hitter]

It was a totally different Graham against Kalambay than the other fights you mentioned.
Also how can you polish a style like Graham's.....the rough diamond as you put it is why we still talk about him today[/quote]

A better trainer could have sharpened things up without interfering with the essentials of his style, i don't mean trying to turn him into Joe Louis or Donald Curry.Gave him better punch slipping knowledge to fall back on when just pulling and swaying away from punches would be a bad idea.

Tightened up his textbook punches, giving him a sharper offensive output....it's not like he threw ridiculous and unique punches like Naz and that attempting to change things would have ruined that, he was attempting to be more or less technically correct in the way he threw punches and combos anyway, but was pretty sloppy at times...stuff like the way he would often lift his back foot off the ground and step in after throwing his sneak lead straight-left.It would leave him square on and chin up, open for a counter which was exploited at times by the better fighters he fought.The little things like that could have been worked on without changing his style-making him a better fighter, but never were.

It's no big deal, Graham just tends to be one of the fighters that come to mind for me when i think of ones that had an unorthodox style and a lot of talent, but could have been even better with some refining.[/quote]

Just like the guys Eastwood brought in for the first Kalambay fight....i think your missing the point on Herol Graham it was his style what made him what he was ....unique

[Controversial]

Just like the guys Eastwood brought in for the first Kalambay fight....i think your missing the point on Herol Graham it was his style what made him what he was ....unique

I agree. Ali wasn't a text book fighter, hardly threw a body punch and done lots of unconventional things. He done alright for himself.

[Arbachakov]

No, i think you're missing the point on what i'm trying to say switch hitter.I'm not advocating changing the main aspects of his style-which was basically copying Ali defensively and footwork-wise, but with emphasis on combinations and counterpunching rather than jabbing-i'm saying he could have benefited from polishing up some of the messier elements of it.Stuff that wouldn't have intruded on the way he wanted to fight at all.

The guy was a sloppier fighter than he needed to be.

[Datsue]

Kalambay was past it and had become very inconsistent from fight to fight by that rematch.He had become a really slow starter, was starting to unravel in terms of offensive sharpness and was losing his reflexes.His only good performance around this time was the Collins fight, where he rolled back the years defensively.

Graham was past-prime too and had lost a lot of durability after the jackson KO(Kalambay had him rocked 5-6 times, more or less every 2nd or 3rd time he landed a right hand flush) and didn't have his prime reflexes either, but he had maintained his timing and offensive precision better.

That was a brutal, great fight btw a classic war between two aging fighters.Not a comfortable win for Graham at all, he took serious punishment and it more or less finished what he had left for the Grant loss afterward.He probably did deserve the decision with those two early knockdowns though, and had points unjustly taken off.

I wouldn't take credit away for Kalambay for his first win over Graham when they were both prime.He was the superior ring-general and technician, which showed.Sure Graham started over-aggressive thinking Kalambay was a chump, but he had time to adapt and mostly failed, then when he did try and fight off the back foot for a bit later on, Kalambay walked him down, countered and made him miss efficiently.Watch both fight against McCallum and it's clear Kalambay had a lot more chops technically and at least as much natural talent.Graham was more of a rough diamond that never had quite the quality of trainer to round out his Ali influences with some beneficial technically sound habits that didn't hamper that natural style.

No, i think you're missing the point on what i'm trying to say switch hitter.I'm not advocating changing the main aspects of his style-which was basically copying Ali defensively and footwork-wise, but with emphasis on combinations and counterpunching rather than jabbing-i'm saying he could have benefited from polishing up some of the messier elements of it.Stuff that wouldn't have intruded on the way he wanted to fight at all.

The guy was a sloppier fighter than he needed to be.

[orbtastic]

Echo that.

[Broomhall]

Sorry guys I would disagree with that. Grahams unorthodox style did sometimes make for clumsy encounters-but this was because his oppononts just found it so difficult and it could often look a bit clumsy when they got tangled up-but if you started to "polish" it you may have taken away the unpredictability and the level of difficulty his opponents had to deal with. In this thread Nigel Benn was sometimes all over the place with his swings, but again you take that away and you start to tinker with what it is that makes these guys hard to beat.

[Switch hitter]

Sorry guys I would disagree with that. Grahams unorthodox style did sometimes make for clumsy encounters-but this was because his oppononts just found it so difficult and it could often look a bit clumsy when they got tangled up-but if you started to "polish" it you may have taken away the unpredictability and the level of difficulty his opponents had to deal with. In this thread Nigel Benn was sometimes all over the place with his swings, but again you take that away and you start to tinker with what it is that makes these guys hard to beat.

exactly....well said

[Switch hitter]

And its just like when Naz left the Ingles.....they tried to change his style tried to trian him like a normal boxer and for him to rely on his power

[Datsue]

I think the two previous posts smack a little bit of the prevailing response of UK fans to the Ingles: that any fighter who came out the Wincobank is a mystical supernatural force of magical wonderment, & that asking them to occasionally not cross their feet like a berk or stick their chin up in the air & square up after throwing certain shots is tantamount to shitting on the Mona Lisa & would immediately cause their natural gifts to dematerialise into thin air.

Manny Pac, Amir Khan, Lennox Lewis: massively physically gifted all. All lost devastatingly, moved to America & met trainers who didn't change their best points, just gave them some polish to iron out their most glaring faults that (in the case of the UK pair) their UK-based trainers wilfully ignored.

All three went on to achieve more post their devastating setbacks than they achieved beforehand. The rest of their attributes didn't magically vanish once they'd learned to throw a right hook/not fight like a lightweight Tommy Hearns wannabe with no power/defend against right hands & clinch when hurt, & I don't see why Ingle fighters should be different.

I'm not advocating a Barney Eastwood style makeover, he was obviously not the bloke. But a trainer perceptive enough to see what worked & brave enough to change what didn't is what they all needed, all the Ingle fighters.

Brendan was a maverick, a character & a bit of a saint. His incorrigible attitude makes for great myth-making, but people do talk some bullshit about him. It's tempting to venture that all his fighters were ultimately doomed to fail at top top level, once the physical flash of his boys faded a scintilla or at the moment they were matched hard enough to exploit the holes that were dismissed in their "games" (in the Yank sense, i.e. their overall make-up) or met someone whose particular talents lent themselves to exploiting those glaring weaknesses that were never fixed.

PS: IMO Naz began to lose it before the Belcastro fight. All this pseudo-magical bullshit about "it was only after he left Ingle" is bolllocks imo, he was doomed like I said from very early 'cos he had faults ingrained in him right from the get-go.

[Switch hitter]

[quote="Datsue"]I think the two previous posts smack a little bit of the prevailing response of UK fans to the Ingles: that any fighter who came out the Wincobank is a mystical supernatural force of magical wonderment, & that asking them to occasionally not cross their feet like a berk or stick their chin up in the air & square up after throwing certain shots is tantamount to shitting on the Mona Lisa & would immediately cause their natural gifts to dematerialise into thin air.

Manny Pac, Amir Khan, Lennox Lewis: massively physically gifted all. All lost devastatingly, moved to America & met trainers who didn't change their best points, just gave them some polish to iron out their most glaring faults that (in the case of the UK pair) their UK-based trainers wilfully ignored.

All three went on to achieve more post their devastating setbacks than they achieved beforehand. The rest of their attributes didn't magically vanish once they'd learned to throw a right hook/not fight like a lightweight Tommy Hearns wannabe with no power/defend against right hands & clinch when hurt, & I don't see why Ingle fighters should be different.

I'm not advocating a Barney Eastwood style makeover, he was obviously not the bloke. But a trainer perceptive enough to see what worked & brave enough to change what didn't is what they all needed, all the Ingle fighters.

Brendan was a maverick, a character & a bit of a saint. His incorrigible attitude makes for great myth-making, but people do talk some bullshit about him. It's tempting to venture that all his fighters were ultimately doomed to fail at top top level, once the physical flash of his boys faded a scintilla or at the moment they were matched hard enough to exploit the holes that were dismissed in their "games" (in the Yank sense, i.e. their overall make-up) or met someone whose particular talents lent themselves to exploiting those glaring weaknesses that were never fixed.

PS: IMO Naz began to lose it before the Belcastro fight. All this pseudo-magical bullshit about "it was only after he left Ingle" is bolllocks imo, he was doomed like I said from very early 'cos he had faults ingrained in him right from the get-go.[/quote

All the above boxer's were conventional where Graham and Hamed were a bit different and Harder to train Steward and Suarez didn't have a clue what to do with him.
To say Naz began to lose it before the Belcastro fight is ridiculous

[Datsue]

So Pac was conventional then?

& yes, bad habits Naz learned at age 19 or so, faults that developed & go worse over time & never ever got addressed, these were set in stone by the time of Belcastro (though I think in Naz's case the setting in stone of those faults had a lot to do with his immense personal arrogance, which was fed by his relationship with Ingle).

[Switch hitter]

Compared to these 2 yes he is.....you say faults but for a fighter with all these faults he didnt do that bad.When he stopped listening thats when it all went wrong for Naz

[palooka]

It wasn't Naseem's style of boxing that was the issue, it was his nocturnal habits and reliance on power shots and aversion to road work that created the problem.

[Datsue]

Compared to these 2 yes he is.....you say faults but for a fighter with all these faults he didnt do that bad.When he stopped listening thats when it all went wrong for Naz

So to be completely clear, two questions:

1) every single other naturally-gifted fighter in the history of boxing could be improved by utilising certain bits of "proper" boxing technique--say, by keeping their unorthodoxies as much as possible intact but filing off their rough edges & papering over their most glaring faults--but any fighter who came out of Wincobank was somehow immune to this?

2) asking, say, Herol not to close his eyes & stick his head up in the air like a rodent peering over the edge of his burrow post-combination punching (a fault that led to him being caught by right hands that came over the top in multiple fights, Jackson, Kalambay leap highest to mind) would immediately change every single other aspect of his style & negate all of his good qualities?

[Switch hitter]

Compared to these 2 yes he is.....you say faults but for a fighter with all these faults he didnt do that bad.When he stopped listening thats when it all went wrong for Naz

So to be completely clear, two questions:

1) every single other naturally-gifted fighter in the history of boxing could be improved by utilising certain bits of "proper" boxing technique--say, by keeping their unorthodoxies as much as possible intact but filing off their rough edges & papering over their most glaring faults--but any fighter who came out of Wincobank was somehow immune to this?

2) asking, say, Herol not to close his eyes & stick his head up in the air like a rodent peering over the edge of his burrow post-combination punching (a fault that led to him being caught by right hands that came over the top in multiple fights, Jackson, Kalambay leap highest to mind) would immediately change every single other aspect of his style & negate all of his good qualities?

1) Kirkland Laing is another.....he didnt come from Wincobank.....you take the rough edges you lose the unotherdox boxer

2)Everybody gets caught...Ali got floored twice by left hooks...maybe he should have got rid of Dundee

[Switch hitter]

It wasn't Naseem's style of boxing that was the issue, it was his nocturnal habits and reliance on power shots and aversion to road work that created the problem.

And the idiots around him

[palooka]

It wasn't Naseem's style of boxing that was the issue, it was his nocturnal habits and reliance on power shots and aversion to road work that created the problem.

And the idiots around him

Yeah, that's a fair point.

[orbtastic]

One thing that always got me about the build-up to Hamed/MAB - He's driving round with his brother (the fat camp one who keeps talking about fornicators and gamblers) and he giggles and says something along the lines of - What an idiot, he's all the way up there [Big Bear] and I'm down here - I just never got why he thought being driven around in an air conditioned car was infinitely preferable to training at altitude.

[misterpunch]

you never got it?
lets start with naz not being the sharpest knife in the drawer - I could mention his arrogance but I think i'll quit while I'm ahead.

[Broomhall]

So Pac was conventional then?

& yes, bad habits Naz learned at age 19 or so, faults that developed & go worse over time & never ever got addressed, these were set in stone by the time of Belcastro (though I think in Naz's case the setting in stone of those faults had a lot to do with his immense personal arrogance, which was fed by his relationship with Ingle).

Yes, I think it fair to say there to say that ingle fighters fight in a similar way-much of this is learned off each other rather than trained- most of the fighters from that gym will have copied their hero-Graham who was the major fighter from that gym at that time and so on-and no different from the template laid out by Ali-and then we see all young black american fighters copying him-you can pick up all these fighters for having bad habits-from Ali (look at the Cooper fight) to Leonard-but where do you begin to change them? and by chnaging them do you alter something fundamental-for every boxer that improved by going to a new trainer like say Dennis Andrries, you can find others who have floundered on switching trainers and ideas.

Some fighters with excellent technique never scale the heights (Pat Cowdell) whilst others with awful technique (the above mentioned Andries) do-and others like Camacho, Leonard, Benitez-dropped their hands, leaned back, switched (which was a terrib le sin when I was a boy) I doubt that Dundee taught Ali to box with his hands down, or move the way he did-but like most sensible trainers he did the best to work with that style rather than try to hamstring him with proper technque.

[orbtastic]

you never got it?
lets start with naz not being the sharpest knife in the drawer - I could mention his arrogance but I think i'll quit while I'm ahead.

Of course I got it. I said it's the thing that stuck with me the most!