BoxRec

banjo wrote:

DaveyH wrote:I agree, Kelley wasn't shot. They were pretty evenly matched and that showed with the amazing battle they had. Both dangerous but chinny fighters. Naz's power won out though.

Johnson, Vasquez and Bungu were definitely shot by the time Naz walked through them and to be honest I think everyone believed Barrera would be too.

I guess it depends on what your opinion of a shot fighter is, to me a shot fighter is what Danny Williams is now, whereas Johnson, Vasquez and Bungu were past their best but they were still good enough to be reigning titlists at the time Hamed fought them. Fighters going head to head while both at their peak is a rarity anyway so I don't look too much into that.

Yeah thats a fair point, no way were any of them shot in the way Williams is. They were all past their best though as you say. Johnson appeared as though the tank was well and truly empty. Vasquez was 38 by the time he fought Naz and looked every day of it in the fights leading up to Naz. Bungu appeared to me like he had no interest whatsoever in fighting, I think he just wanted the nice pay check that fighting a cash machine like Naz generated.

Naz did have some excellent performances but his recognised best two (Robinson and Badillo) were hardly against world class operators. The Robinson fight always left a bitter taste to me. Naz swerved Barrera at Super bantam (was number one contender for Barrera's WBO title) and made his debut at Featherweight in a title shot. One where Robinson was given short notice. It was cynical FW matchmaking and Steve deserved better.

As for Badillo. The performance was pretty chilling from Naz, but Badillo was hardly a world beater. He's the level of opponent that Calzaghe got routinely criticised for fighting. Prior to fighting Naz his best performance was giving Tom Johnson hell before being outpointed by majority verdict. This addresses my earlier point about Johnson being past his best. Going into the Johnson fight Badillo was a 17 fight novice, and those 17 opponents' combined records were 88-68-5 (yes I am sad enough to have counted!). How he got a title shot in the first place I'll never know but he did and he lost, before fighting another 3 journeymen with a combined record of 55-44-5 before getting the shot at Naz. After losing to Naz he had 8 more fights, losing 5 of them! If we compare his level with someone from Calzaghes record we're looking at someone like Mger Mkrtchyan, but yet Badillo is held up by many as some kind of measure of how good Naz was.

For me, Naz's best performance is the one he is often criticised for, Manuel Medina. Medina had mixed it up at world level, was very awkward due to his height and range, plus he still had plenty in the tank and came to the fight with some serious ambition. It was a good test for Naz and we saw him have to dig pretty deep for the first time. All that nonsense about having a bad cold or whatever was unnecessary because he dismantled a very good opponent. He was unfairly criticised because he didn't knock Medina out in the second round, as we'd come to expect from anyone Naz landed a glove on.