BoxRec

Pretend I don't know about the first World Cruiserweight Champion Marvin Camel and please tell me about him. How skillful was he?

He wasn't overly skilled, more like a thinner Joe Hipp. Kind of a brawler with limited power and a ton of guts.

Underrated fighter who flew under the radar and never gets discussed much now.
He was good enough as a boxer and strong enough as an infighter to split a pair of decisions with an up and coming Matthew Saad Muhammad and tough enough to beat a prime heavyweight Ibar Arrington, who outweighed him by nearly 20 pounds. He was durable and cagey, but not especially gifted athletically and didn't fight, in my opinion, as well at Cruiserweight as he did at 175lbs despite his winning a title at that weight.

Ironically, he fought Joe Hipp and was stopped in the twilight of his career.

There's a YouTube video out there featuring him, sort of a mini-documentary, that's worth watching.

Dart340 wrote:Underrated fighter who flew under the radar and never gets discussed much now.
He was good enough as a boxer and strong enough as an infighter to split a pair of decisions with an up and coming Matthew Saad Muhammad and tough enough to beat a prime heavyweight Ibar Arrington, who outweighed him by nearly 20 pounds. He was durable and cagey, but not especially gifted athletically and didn't fight, in my opinion, as well at Cruiserweight as he did at 175lbs despite his winning a title at that weight.

Ironically, he fought Joe Hipp and was stopped in the twilight of his career.

There's a YouTube video out there featuring him, sort of a mini-documentary, that's worth watching.

I was about to reply about the fight between Marvin Camel, who was near at the end of his career against Joe Hipp, but you beat me to it. Not just Camel fought Hipp, who was a heavyweight, but Camel was outweighed by Hipp at 59 lbs!

Not sure if link above works but I met him (while wearing a fornicating awful shirt) out in Croatia around 10 years ago.

I was working as a boxing journo and spent time with Vitali, Haggler, Witter and a few other fighters. I'm not just saying this to blow smoke up his arse, but Camel was best of the lot. At times He was almost pleased to be there, giving impression he wasn't recognising his achievements as on a par with others. Had good long chat about the night he won the title , photo (of course) and bumped into him couple times after.

I'll be honest, I cut our chat short to meet Haggler as he was living in Italy and about to leave in an hour or so. He was stood on his own so I bolted from Camel to speak to Haggler then made a complete tit of myself. Standard.

Very interesting Wales.

Wales wrote:Not sure if link above works but I met him (while wearing a effing awful shirt) out in Croatia around 10 years ago.

I was working as a boxing journo and spent time with Vitali, Haggler, Witter and a few other fighters. I'm not just saying this to blow smoke up his arse, but Camel was best of the lot. At times He was almost pleased to be there, giving impression he wasn't recognising his achievements as on a par with others. Had good long chat about the night he won the title , photo (of course) and bumped into him couple times after.

I'll be honest, I cut our chat short to meet Haggler as he was living in Italy and about to leave in an hour or so. He was stood on his own so I bolted from Camel to speak to Haggler then made a complete tit of myself. Standard.

What did you do?