The International Boxing Hall of Fame nominees for the Class of 2008 are:
Georgie Abrams * Horacio Accavallo * Joey Archer * Jose Beccerra * Johnny Bratton * Jimmy Carruthers * Jung Koo Chang * Donald Curry * Hiroyuki Ebihara * Tommy Farr * Tiger Jack Fox * Ceferino Garcia * Betulio Gonzalez * Yoko Gushiken * Naseem Hamed * Carlos Hernandez * Rafael Herrera * Larry Holmes * Al Hostak * Harry Jeffra * Peter Kane * Cocoa Kid * Pone Kingpetch * Tippy Larkin * Jose Legra * Miguel Lora * Raul Macias * Ernesto Marcel * Lloyd Marshall * Freddie Mills * Brian Mitchell * Rinty Monaghan * Masao Ohba * Ken Overlin * Eddie Perkins * Gustave Roth * Lou Salica * Dave Sands * Petey Scalzo * Samuel Serrano * Yoshio Shirai * Kid Tunero * Holman Williams * Myung Woo Yuh * Hilario Zapata
IBHOF 2008 Nominees
Re: re
barry since so many have been discussing the somewhat popular notion that Hamed might be considered in this round and you have named nine of your top considerations......how far back would Hamed be in your opinion. By the way your top five are about as deserving a list as can be created. Ask me the same question two years ago and I think I would have been more likely to inlclude more "pop" names in my top five. Including possibly Hamed and certainly Joey Archer. Archer stills figures rather high on my list though. I notice that no one else has him listed.barry wrote:My Picks:
Larry Holmes
Lloyd Marshall
Tommy Farr
Tiger Jack Fox
Cocoa Kid
Holman Williams
Ken Overlin
Al Hostak
Ceferino Garcia
-
elmersalsa
- Heavyweight
- Posts: 15678
- Joined: 02 Feb 2003, 03:50
Re: re
Joey Archer in the hall of fame???BoxBuzz wrote:barry since so many have been discussing the somewhat popular notion that Hamed might be considered in this round and you have named nine of your top considerations......how far back would Hamed be in your opinion. By the way your top five are about as deserving a list as can be created. Ask me the same question two years ago and I think I would have been more likely to inlclude more "pop" names in my top five. Including possibly Hamed and certainly Joey Archer. Archer stills figures rather high on my list though. I notice that no one else has him listed.barry wrote:My Picks:
Larry Holmes
Lloyd Marshall
Tommy Farr
Tiger Jack Fox
Cocoa Kid
Holman Williams
Ken Overlin
Al Hostak
Ceferino Garcia
re
I think that Hamed is certainly, in my opinion, deserving to be elected to the Hall of Fame. The only reason that I left Hamed off my list is because I had already listed nine fighters and I did not want to list a slew of fighters and I feel that there are some older fighters who should have been in the HOF a long time ago, such as Lloyd Marshall, Holman Williams and Tommy Farr, but being that they had not been elected prior to this year, I feel that they should be inducted before Hamed, which is not to say that they are more deserving in the quality of their career, just that they are long overdue and Hamed will have several years to make the cut.
Well this is going to be pretty long!
A lot of people will claim that Naseem Hamed does not deserve to be a Hall of Famer, but I disagree very much!
As far as his career, I think Hamed had a great career, which was certainly HOF worthy! His hitting power was among the very best that I ever seen at the featherweight limit and he pretty much cleared out the division and then Barrera moved up and gave Hamed a boxing lesson, which unfortunately the Barrera fight is what people seem to remember and that is very, very unfair. Hamed knocked out some top notch fighters…some of which had never been stopped. Hamed won the WBO featherweight belt by beating tough Steve Robinson, who was on an eight fight winning streak, seven of which were title defense wins and the bout with Hamed was his eighth defense, but Hamed easily won stopping Robinson for the first time in his career. Very few Americans have seen much of Steve Robinson, but most British fans, who have been a boxing fan since Robinson’s time; well they can certainly verify how good Robinson actually was.
He followed the Robinson win with two quick knockouts over a couple of quality opponents, but not great fighters. However his third defense was against tough former champ Manuel Medina and Hamed pretty much dominated Medina stopping him in the 11th round. Some would claim that Medina was past his prime when Hamed beat him, but Medina would go on to win the IBF featherweight title on two more occasions and the WBO featherweight belt on one other occasion following his loss to Hamed. Overall Medina was a five-time featherweight world champion! Pretty lofty laurels!!!
Hamed had an easy-one in his next fight beating undefeated Remigio Molina, who was 27-0-0…Hamed, blasted him away in 2 round.
His next fight Hamed beat Tom Johnson, who at the time was considered the best featherweight in the world and had been viewed as such for a few years, the IBF featherweight champion. Hamed was Johnson 13th defense of the IBF belt and Hamed destroyed him. Johnson took a bad beating and was stopped for the first time in his career. This win gave Hamed the IBF belt to go with his WBO title.
Hamed followed with three more title defenses against solid opposition scoring three knockouts.
His next bout against Kevin Kelley was his most exciting fight and probably his best win as a professional. Kelley, a former champion, came into the fight with a record of 47-1-2 (32 KO). Both fighters were knocked down multiple times, but Hamed was the one to overcome scoring a knockout of Kelley.
Hamed’s next bout was ever tougher, well on paper at least, as he took on three-division world champion and current WBA featherweight world champion Wilfredo Vazquez. Vazquez was a murderous puncher who had scored some very impressive wins in his career. Vazquez was certainly not at his best as he was nearing the end of a glorious career, but he was in fact the WBA featherweight champion, though the WBA would not sanction the fight and they stripped Vazquez, so the only title which was on the line was Hamed’s WBO title. Again Hamed beat a top notch opponent with relative ease giving Vazquez a solid beating. Hamed had now beaten the WBO, IBF and WBA featherweight champions.
Instead of taking an easy bout Hamed took on tough Wayne McCullough, who was a former bantamweight champion as well as a fighter who had one of the best chins in the history of the sport. Hamed punished the tough Irishman and won an easy points victory in the 11th defense of his featherweight world title.
Hamed the defended against tough Paul Ingle and again gave a top quality fighter a solid beating. Ingle would later win the IBF featherweight title following his loss to Hamed.
Now Hamed only needed to fight the WBC featherweight champion to make a clean sweep of the division, which a victory would leave no question about who the real world featherweight champion was, though most already considered Hamed the real champion a win over the WBC champion would seal it. So Hamed goes after WBC featherweight champion Cesar Soto. The fight turned out to be one of the ugliest title fights in history as Soto was very unorthodox and really just quite unprofessional, but Hamed was able to win fairly easy which gave him the WBC belt to go along with his WBO belt. The IBF had either stripped Hamed, or he dropped the belt, but it was certainly not due to him not fighting the top ranked opponents. The WBA had stripped Vazquez because he chose to fight Hamed, so that belt was not on the line in that fight, but there was not question that Vazquez was the WB champion when he faced Hamed.
So now Hamed had beaten all of the top belt holders and the featherweight division had a unified champion for the first time since the IBF organization was formed in the middle 1980s.
Hamed followed the Soto bout with an impressive performance over long-time Jr. Featherweight champion Vuyani Bungu. Going into the bout Bungu had defended his Jr. Featherweight belt 13 times of which he had defeated such fighters as Kennedy McKinney (twice), Jesus Salud and Danny Romero. Hamed just steam-rolled Bungu right from the start and scored a stoppage in round 4, which this was the first and only time that Bungu was ever stopped in his career.
Hamed next fought hard-punching Augie Sanchez, but it was Hamed who landed the hard punches as he scored a frightening knockout over Sanchez in one of the better knockouts of 2000. Hamed was completely in love with his ability to punch at this point and this is what really hurt him against Barrera.
Hamed was brought down to earth in his next fight as he fought Mexican great Marco Antonio Barrera. Going into the bout Hamed had a record of 35-0-0 (31 KO). He had scored knockouts against the best in the division and unfortunately for Hamed, he felt that he could simply knockout every single fighter he faced, so instead of taking Barrera serious and training in a proper manner, Hamed was content to hype everything on his punch and he was certainly in the lime-light while Barrera was sweating it out in the gym. It seems like the little training that Hamed was doing focused primarily on power punching techniques, such as throwing vicious uppercuts on the speed bag, instead of actually working the speed bag. One punch uppercuts to the speed-bag and single bombs to the heavy-bag was the only training that I recall seeing Hamed do leading up to the fight with Barrera. Hamed was overly confident that it would be an early night and a quick knockout, but Barrera had other ideas and he solidly out-boxed, out-fought and out-punched Hamed in every area and he simply embarrassed Hamed. The scorecards were a lot closer than the fight actually was as Barrera won very easily and the fight pretty much ended Hamed’s career. It wasn’t that Hamed took a serious beating, or anything, but he did take a serious boxing lesson and the embarrassment evidently shattered his confidence and the over-the-top ego that Hamed carried from day one was deflated in an ugly manner as Barrera was at his very best.
Hamed would fight one more time winning an easy, but very unimpressive bout against a relative unknown go all twelve rounds.
Hamed would be the first to knockout a slew of tough boxers. He was the first fighter to stop Freddy Cruz, who had had 56 fights prior to facing Hamed. Sergio Liendo had not been stopped in 49 bouts prior to Hamed. He was the second fighter to ever stop Peter Buckley who has a career total of 245 losses of which he has only been stopped ten times total. He was the first to stop Steve Robinson and also Tom Johnson, who had not been stopped in 48 bouts prior to facing Hamed. He was the first of only two fighters to stop tough Juan Cabrera who has been stopped twice in 68 bouts. First to stop Jose Badilla, Paul Ingle and Vuyani Bungu.
If Hamed never fights again, which he really shouldn’t being that his last fight was five years ago, then his final career record will be 36-1-0 (31 KO). His record in world title fights will be 16-1-0 (14 KO). He scored 11 straight knockouts in his first 11 world title bouts. He beat ten of the eleven world champions that he faced and he beat several European boxing champions. He fought five probable Hall of Famers beating four!
I can certainly name several boxers who are currently in the HOF who much less deserve to be there compared to Hamed. As I mentioned, unfortunately a lot of people focus entirely on Hamed's loss to Barrera instead of fairly looking at his entire career! Hamed was a very outrageous showman, which being so greatly turned off most fans, but Hamed should not be judged on his behavior out of the ring...he should be judged on his performance and doings in the ring and not just the Barrera fight...all of his fights! There have been few fighters of the past twenty years that have been so thoroughly dominant in one division and very few have beaten the WBC, WBA, IBF and WBO world champions in one division...Hamed accomplished it and he certainly left us with a number of exciting performances as well as a slew of exciting knockouts! Does Naseem Hamed deserve to be a Hall of Famer...absolutely!!!
Well this is going to be pretty long!
A lot of people will claim that Naseem Hamed does not deserve to be a Hall of Famer, but I disagree very much!
As far as his career, I think Hamed had a great career, which was certainly HOF worthy! His hitting power was among the very best that I ever seen at the featherweight limit and he pretty much cleared out the division and then Barrera moved up and gave Hamed a boxing lesson, which unfortunately the Barrera fight is what people seem to remember and that is very, very unfair. Hamed knocked out some top notch fighters…some of which had never been stopped. Hamed won the WBO featherweight belt by beating tough Steve Robinson, who was on an eight fight winning streak, seven of which were title defense wins and the bout with Hamed was his eighth defense, but Hamed easily won stopping Robinson for the first time in his career. Very few Americans have seen much of Steve Robinson, but most British fans, who have been a boxing fan since Robinson’s time; well they can certainly verify how good Robinson actually was.
He followed the Robinson win with two quick knockouts over a couple of quality opponents, but not great fighters. However his third defense was against tough former champ Manuel Medina and Hamed pretty much dominated Medina stopping him in the 11th round. Some would claim that Medina was past his prime when Hamed beat him, but Medina would go on to win the IBF featherweight title on two more occasions and the WBO featherweight belt on one other occasion following his loss to Hamed. Overall Medina was a five-time featherweight world champion! Pretty lofty laurels!!!
Hamed had an easy-one in his next fight beating undefeated Remigio Molina, who was 27-0-0…Hamed, blasted him away in 2 round.
His next fight Hamed beat Tom Johnson, who at the time was considered the best featherweight in the world and had been viewed as such for a few years, the IBF featherweight champion. Hamed was Johnson 13th defense of the IBF belt and Hamed destroyed him. Johnson took a bad beating and was stopped for the first time in his career. This win gave Hamed the IBF belt to go with his WBO title.
Hamed followed with three more title defenses against solid opposition scoring three knockouts.
His next bout against Kevin Kelley was his most exciting fight and probably his best win as a professional. Kelley, a former champion, came into the fight with a record of 47-1-2 (32 KO). Both fighters were knocked down multiple times, but Hamed was the one to overcome scoring a knockout of Kelley.
Hamed’s next bout was ever tougher, well on paper at least, as he took on three-division world champion and current WBA featherweight world champion Wilfredo Vazquez. Vazquez was a murderous puncher who had scored some very impressive wins in his career. Vazquez was certainly not at his best as he was nearing the end of a glorious career, but he was in fact the WBA featherweight champion, though the WBA would not sanction the fight and they stripped Vazquez, so the only title which was on the line was Hamed’s WBO title. Again Hamed beat a top notch opponent with relative ease giving Vazquez a solid beating. Hamed had now beaten the WBO, IBF and WBA featherweight champions.
Instead of taking an easy bout Hamed took on tough Wayne McCullough, who was a former bantamweight champion as well as a fighter who had one of the best chins in the history of the sport. Hamed punished the tough Irishman and won an easy points victory in the 11th defense of his featherweight world title.
Hamed the defended against tough Paul Ingle and again gave a top quality fighter a solid beating. Ingle would later win the IBF featherweight title following his loss to Hamed.
Now Hamed only needed to fight the WBC featherweight champion to make a clean sweep of the division, which a victory would leave no question about who the real world featherweight champion was, though most already considered Hamed the real champion a win over the WBC champion would seal it. So Hamed goes after WBC featherweight champion Cesar Soto. The fight turned out to be one of the ugliest title fights in history as Soto was very unorthodox and really just quite unprofessional, but Hamed was able to win fairly easy which gave him the WBC belt to go along with his WBO belt. The IBF had either stripped Hamed, or he dropped the belt, but it was certainly not due to him not fighting the top ranked opponents. The WBA had stripped Vazquez because he chose to fight Hamed, so that belt was not on the line in that fight, but there was not question that Vazquez was the WB champion when he faced Hamed.
So now Hamed had beaten all of the top belt holders and the featherweight division had a unified champion for the first time since the IBF organization was formed in the middle 1980s.
Hamed followed the Soto bout with an impressive performance over long-time Jr. Featherweight champion Vuyani Bungu. Going into the bout Bungu had defended his Jr. Featherweight belt 13 times of which he had defeated such fighters as Kennedy McKinney (twice), Jesus Salud and Danny Romero. Hamed just steam-rolled Bungu right from the start and scored a stoppage in round 4, which this was the first and only time that Bungu was ever stopped in his career.
Hamed next fought hard-punching Augie Sanchez, but it was Hamed who landed the hard punches as he scored a frightening knockout over Sanchez in one of the better knockouts of 2000. Hamed was completely in love with his ability to punch at this point and this is what really hurt him against Barrera.
Hamed was brought down to earth in his next fight as he fought Mexican great Marco Antonio Barrera. Going into the bout Hamed had a record of 35-0-0 (31 KO). He had scored knockouts against the best in the division and unfortunately for Hamed, he felt that he could simply knockout every single fighter he faced, so instead of taking Barrera serious and training in a proper manner, Hamed was content to hype everything on his punch and he was certainly in the lime-light while Barrera was sweating it out in the gym. It seems like the little training that Hamed was doing focused primarily on power punching techniques, such as throwing vicious uppercuts on the speed bag, instead of actually working the speed bag. One punch uppercuts to the speed-bag and single bombs to the heavy-bag was the only training that I recall seeing Hamed do leading up to the fight with Barrera. Hamed was overly confident that it would be an early night and a quick knockout, but Barrera had other ideas and he solidly out-boxed, out-fought and out-punched Hamed in every area and he simply embarrassed Hamed. The scorecards were a lot closer than the fight actually was as Barrera won very easily and the fight pretty much ended Hamed’s career. It wasn’t that Hamed took a serious beating, or anything, but he did take a serious boxing lesson and the embarrassment evidently shattered his confidence and the over-the-top ego that Hamed carried from day one was deflated in an ugly manner as Barrera was at his very best.
Hamed would fight one more time winning an easy, but very unimpressive bout against a relative unknown go all twelve rounds.
Hamed would be the first to knockout a slew of tough boxers. He was the first fighter to stop Freddy Cruz, who had had 56 fights prior to facing Hamed. Sergio Liendo had not been stopped in 49 bouts prior to Hamed. He was the second fighter to ever stop Peter Buckley who has a career total of 245 losses of which he has only been stopped ten times total. He was the first to stop Steve Robinson and also Tom Johnson, who had not been stopped in 48 bouts prior to facing Hamed. He was the first of only two fighters to stop tough Juan Cabrera who has been stopped twice in 68 bouts. First to stop Jose Badilla, Paul Ingle and Vuyani Bungu.
If Hamed never fights again, which he really shouldn’t being that his last fight was five years ago, then his final career record will be 36-1-0 (31 KO). His record in world title fights will be 16-1-0 (14 KO). He scored 11 straight knockouts in his first 11 world title bouts. He beat ten of the eleven world champions that he faced and he beat several European boxing champions. He fought five probable Hall of Famers beating four!
I can certainly name several boxers who are currently in the HOF who much less deserve to be there compared to Hamed. As I mentioned, unfortunately a lot of people focus entirely on Hamed's loss to Barrera instead of fairly looking at his entire career! Hamed was a very outrageous showman, which being so greatly turned off most fans, but Hamed should not be judged on his behavior out of the ring...he should be judged on his performance and doings in the ring and not just the Barrera fight...all of his fights! There have been few fighters of the past twenty years that have been so thoroughly dominant in one division and very few have beaten the WBC, WBA, IBF and WBO world champions in one division...Hamed accomplished it and he certainly left us with a number of exciting performances as well as a slew of exciting knockouts! Does Naseem Hamed deserve to be a Hall of Famer...absolutely!!!
Re: re
Well he beat every man he ever fought except Fulmer and Griffith, and he gave both of them all they could handle. Never KO'd in his long career. Not the worst resume you could have. Like I said I consider him a "pop" name as he was a pretty watched and talked about fighter in the states during his prime.elmersalsa wrote:Joey Archer in the hall of fame???BoxBuzz wrote:barry since so many have been discussing the somewhat popular notion that Hamed might be considered in this round and you have named nine of your top considerations......how far back would Hamed be in your opinion. By the way your top five are about as deserving a list as can be created. Ask me the same question two years ago and I think I would have been more likely to inlclude more "pop" names in my top five. Including possibly Hamed and certainly Joey Archer. Archer stills figures rather high on my list though. I notice that no one else has him listed.barry wrote:My Picks:
Larry Holmes
Lloyd Marshall
Tommy Farr
Tiger Jack Fox
Cocoa Kid
Holman Williams
Ken Overlin
Al Hostak
Ceferino Garcia
-
dr_devious
- Heavyweight
- Posts: 5348
- Joined: 29 Dec 2005, 09:19
Barry, great review of Naz's career. I agree that Naz should get into the HOF, but some of the old-timers may be more deserving of that honour right now.
I can also vouch for your assessment of Steve Robinson, he was a top quality operator, a tough guy who was technically accomplished. Nazeem destroyed him when they fought, which was a hell of an accomplishment.
Naz had all the talent in the world; he was extremely unorthadox but he seemed to believe his hype and never developed his technique as he could - and Barrera found him out. Some of Naz's showboating was also quite distasteful at times
I can also vouch for your assessment of Steve Robinson, he was a top quality operator, a tough guy who was technically accomplished. Nazeem destroyed him when they fought, which was a hell of an accomplishment.
Naz had all the talent in the world; he was extremely unorthadox but he seemed to believe his hype and never developed his technique as he could - and Barrera found him out. Some of Naz's showboating was also quite distasteful at times
re
I believe that I was pretty much basing Farr's career on his ability to last with Louis, but I did not really look at his record at all! However I just looked over it and his main wins are against Bob Olin, Max Baer, Tommy Loughran, Ben Foord, Larry Gains and Walter Neusel. That most likely would not qualify him, but I see others who are in the Hall that had lesser careers, which that certainly doesn't automatically make Farr, or any other fighter credible for a HOF spot! Farr was a very good fighter though...HOF...maybe not after looking over his career!
-
Ambling Alp
- Heavyweight
- Posts: 3627
- Joined: 15 Jul 2005, 22:31
Of the fighters that were nominated:
Holmes is a nobrainer. He obviously should get elected.
Lloyd Marshall and Holman Williams deserve to make it.
After that you have several fighters that are very close.
One guy that should be strongly considered is Georgie Abrams.
He lost close decisions to Hall of Famers Sugar Ray Robinson,Marcel Cerdan, Tony Zale, and Freddie Apostoli.
Abrams had a draw with Hall of Famer Charlie Burley, and beat Hall of Famer Teddy Yarosz. He also beat Cocoa Kid, who is also nominated for the Hall of Fame. Abrams was also 3-0 against Billy Soose who was a very good fighter.
Holmes is a nobrainer. He obviously should get elected.
Lloyd Marshall and Holman Williams deserve to make it.
After that you have several fighters that are very close.
One guy that should be strongly considered is Georgie Abrams.
He lost close decisions to Hall of Famers Sugar Ray Robinson,Marcel Cerdan, Tony Zale, and Freddie Apostoli.
Abrams had a draw with Hall of Famer Charlie Burley, and beat Hall of Famer Teddy Yarosz. He also beat Cocoa Kid, who is also nominated for the Hall of Fame. Abrams was also 3-0 against Billy Soose who was a very good fighter.
-
dr_devious
- Heavyweight
- Posts: 5348
- Joined: 29 Dec 2005, 09:19
-
Borinken25
- Heavyweight
- Posts: 721
- Joined: 08 Jul 2005, 12:28
-
elmersalsa
- Heavyweight
- Posts: 15678
- Joined: 02 Feb 2003, 03:50
Re: IBHOF 2008 Nominees
My picks are:Ric wrote:The International Boxing Hall of Fame nominees for the Class of 2008 are:
Georgie Abrams * Horacio Accavallo * Joey Archer * Jose Beccerra * Johnny Bratton * Jimmy Carruthers * Jung Koo Chang * Donald Curry * Hiroyuki Ebihara * Tommy Farr * Tiger Jack Fox * Ceferino Garcia * Betulio Gonzalez * Yoko Gushiken * Naseem Hamed * Carlos Hernandez * Rafael Herrera * Larry Holmes * Al Hostak * Harry Jeffra * Peter Kane * Cocoa Kid * Pone Kingpetch * Tippy Larkin * Jose Legra * Miguel Lora * Raul Macias * Ernesto Marcel * Lloyd Marshall * Freddie Mills * Brian Mitchell * Rinty Monaghan * Masao Ohba * Ken Overlin * Eddie Perkins * Gustave Roth * Lou Salica * Dave Sands * Petey Scalzo * Samuel Serrano * Yoshio Shirai * Kid Tunero * Holman Williams * Myung Woo Yuh * Hilario Zapata
Tippy Larkin
Holman Williams
Rafael Herrera
Eddie Perkins
Ernesto Marcel
Hilario Zapata
Pone Kingpetch
Larry Holmes, (of course)
Cocoa Kid
Donald Curry
Myung Woo Yuh
Brian Mitchell
Horacio Accavallo
This is a very underrated class.
