BoxRec

stujones wrote:

DavidPayne wrote:Hamed was in his prime - he just wasn't prepared mentally or physically.

Barrera was in his prime - and he was.

Actually, I do think the Morales fight took something from Marco. Never fought with the same intensity after. Obviously, he was still excellent and hardly shot - but never fought with quite the same desire and work rate after that night.

Completely schooled Naz all the same.

clubberlang wrote:

stujones wrote:

DavidPayne wrote:Hamed was in his prime - he just wasn't prepared mentally or physically.

Barrera was in his prime - and he was.

Actually, I do think the Morales fight took something from Marco. Never fought with the same intensity after. Obviously, he was still excellent and hardly shot - but never fought with quite the same desire and work rate after that night.

Completely schooled Naz all the same.

A prime is a subjective thing.

I would say that Hamed & MAB where both in their physical primes in 1996, had they fought in 96 I’m convinced Hamed would have knocked Marco out because Marco would have got involved in a punch up.

Fast-forward to 2000 and perhaps there both still in their physical prime, but Hamed has now lost the plot, arrogance has blinded him to the threat that Barrera poses & his attempts to add fundamentals have screwed up his style.

MAB on the other hand has tasted a knockout defeat & he’s learned from it, he knows he cant trade blow for blow with Hamed, so he boxes clever, refuses to engage Hamed in a punch up & boxes the unprepared Princes head off.

stevieb_8006 wrote:yeah history has re-written the fight. Naz won bout 3 rounds, it wasnt the lacyesque whitewash its made out.

DavidPayne wrote:Hamed was in his prime - he just wasn't prepared mentally or physically.

Barrera was in his prime - and he was.

hitman_hatton1 wrote:

DavidPayne wrote:Hamed was in his prime - he just wasn't prepared mentally or physically.

Barrera was in his prime - and he was.

the hamed of 95 was way better than that joker that entered the ring against barrera.

SLK wrote:

hitman_hatton1 wrote:

DavidPayne wrote:Hamed was in his prime - he just wasn't prepared mentally or physically.

Barrera was in his prime - and he was.

the hamed of 95 was way better than that joker that entered the ring against barrera.

It was glorious to watch DD

You thought it was glorious to watch an undertrained, unmotivated boxer get outpointed over 12 rounds? You need to get out more.

hitman_hatton1 wrote:

DavidPayne wrote:Hamed was in his prime - he just wasn't prepared mentally or physically.

Barrera was in his prime - and he was.

the hamed of 95 was way better than that joker that entered the ring against barrera.

nobby_nobbins wrote:People forget that Hamed had looked dreadful for a while. When he got rich and had a family he just lost his hunger. He was no longer training properly and had no ring sharpness. The Naz who drifted through those later fights, just relying on the big punch, was a poor shadow of the elastic sensation with lightning reflexes who'd humiliated Belcastro, Robinson and Johnson. Anyone who says Naz lost because he'd stepped up to elite level, is ignoring his huge and well-documented deterioration leading up to the Barrera fight.

Scrap wrote:To beat Nazyou dont go looking for Him, Thats what Barrera did to the letter taking half a step back. DD

stujones wrote:
Two fights before he destroyed Bungu in four rounds. It was one of his performances of his reign.

Terence wrote:Barrera was better than Naz. Take the Mike Tyson glasses off and look at the fights in which Naz didn't hammer someone to defeat, he became very predictable, and this was when he was ripping up trees.

Stepping off, moving in behind a 1-2 and then stepping off again, this was always a problem for Naz. He was so unorthodox, orthodox boxing gave him problems. Barrera had the class, the relative youth and the fire to beat Naz, and the seeds were there in previous fights, even in some Naz's best nights.

Terence wrote:Split his nose, that is funny, that could mean that he landed a single shot. It is not about bloodying a nose and winning the odd round, and as stirring visual images go it is not quite up there with causally tossing away a point whilst ramming a guy into the ringpost and asking him, "Who is your daddy?", that, more than a bloody nose, suggests total control of a fight. The nose thing means about as much as this



Look at Naz versus Medina, or at times in the McCullough fight and Hardy fights, he could look power reliant back then. As for '95 Naz, is he the same as the 90-second Tyson who is the best fighter ever? Naz defeated Robinson and the likes of Perez in 1995, what can that tell us, exactly, about how he would fare against someone as good as Barrera? Nothing really, as Robinson was not quite as good as Barrera at that, or any, point. Especially given the circumstances surrounding the Hamed-Robinson fight.

You think the 1995 Naz who showed potential in the Robinson fight is a world beater who would handle pretty much anyone in the history of the division? That is nonsense.

nobby_nobbins wrote:
the hamed of 95 was way better than that joker that entered the ring against barrera.

It was glorious to watch DD

You thought it was glorious to watch an undertrained, unmotivated boxer get outpointed over 12 rounds? You need to get out more.

SLK wrote:
Touched a nerve?

It's hardly Barrera's fault that Hamed was acting like a munchkin wannabe rapper in his only true step up in to world class. He got made to look a fool. I remember Hamed fans getting up and leaving in the 10th and 11th round. They knew the score.
Getting a scratch on your nose is hardly the same as having your head knocked about like some bobble-head doll.

Terence wrote:You think the 1995 Naz who showed potential in the Robinson fight is a world beater who would handle pretty much anyone in the history of the division? That is nonsense.

nobby_nobbins wrote:

SLK wrote:
Touched a nerve?

It's hardly Barrera's fault that Hamed was acting like a munchkin wannabe rapper in his only true step up in to world class. He got made to look a fool. I remember Hamed fans getting up and leaving in the 10th and 11th round. They knew the score.
Getting a scratch on your nose is hardly the same as having your head knocked about like some bobble-head doll.

Didn't touch a nerve at all. I was a fan of Hamed and it was a sad spectacle to watch for me but I wasn't that surprised. Like I said, he'd looked awful for a while. Most of the things that made him such magic to watch had gone. As for having his head knocked around like a bobble head, Hamed always looked stupid when he got hit. I agree that it wasn't Barrera's fault. Barrera executed his gameplan to perfection. Even that version of Hamed was a dangerous proposition and Barrera defused him beautifully. I really don't think what I'm saying is controversial. Most people who followed Hamed's career know he was no longer dedicated by then. If you think he was just as dedicated and hungry as he was in 95 then that's just fine.

Terence wrote:Must be someone else, Lionel, not posted consistently on there for well over a year now.

I know you are not comparing Naz to Tyson, but claiming that teleporting Naz from 1995 to the time of the fight is akin to the 'Well, the Mike who battered Berbick was the best fighter ever!' line trotted out by Tyson fans.

Hamed 'slipping' is not a sign that the 1995 (do you still think the 1995 version was the best of Naz? That is very misleading, as he was yet to be seriously tested, in fact he was only once seriously tested in his career, and lost) version would be able to do better, or that Barrera came along at the right time.

Boxing is not about looking good against a fighter who was not at his best on the night, as most people believe was the case with Robbo, nor is it about blasting aside guys who have seen better days or who are a bit green, it is about doing it over the course of a career, something Naz could not do, and it is also about responding in the face of adversity, something Naz could not do.

As for boxing publications talking about his decline, well they once talked about his pre-destined march to greatness, as did the national press, so maybe they played a part in the creation of the monster we saw in the doc that has recently been posted on here. The British fans who believed that Naz was a great in the making (despite a lack of truly great wins) simply fell into the hype, as did Naz, and the hype was punctured the first time he took on someone with pedigree and relative youth. The Medina fight, despite being a good win on paper, told you all you needed to know about Naz, I knew he was heading for defeat after that fight, and I was pretty sure even then that Barrera could hand it to him.

Naz's impudence made him what he was, he was always arrogant, a blessing that became a curse, and the truth is that he would never have defeated Barrera, and I feel that his post-Barrera career (for want of a better word) proves this.

Maybe the real truth, as we have seen in other scenarios, is that the fighter had some physical gifts/talent but his mental outlook prevented him from being a great fighter, and he lost out in this regard the moment he stepped into a real battle with a fighter who is a genuine all time great. Hamed's performances decayed as he stepped up in class, however well managed this step up was, perhaps that is an area worth looking into when wondering why Hamed started to look like a fighter in premature decline post-1995, a year when he looked awesome, against lesser opposition.

The flaws Barrera exposed were always there, even in the Alicea fight, people got caught up in the hype, and looked beyond them. Naz was an accident waiting to happen, the only shocking aspect is just how little appetite he had for the sport once his bubble was burst. Oh, I also feel that Naz's "I want the winner of that fight, I want Barrera!" claim was not based on honour, it was a way of taking on the more battle-worn boxer and avoiding Morales, who, the Barrera performance aside, had looked frightening up to that point.