Top 100 Favorite Boxing Matches: #70-61
This is the fourth of my ten-part series covering my one-hundred favorite boxing matches. In the previous section, I had stated that the next entries are going to start seeming a bit more on the violence scale. That same statement applies, though this section in particular is unique as some of the entries are more technical affairs than savage brutality. I suppose that goes to show the subjectivity inherent in making a list like this, but make no mistake, all of these being recommendations remains true.
70 - Kelvin Seabrooks vs Thierry Jacob (July 4, 1987)
I liken Kelvin Seabrooks to being a lesser Matthew Saad Muhammad. Seabrooks may have lacked some of the technical gifts that let Saad thrive for as long as he did, but he had the heart and toughness to make that comparison have some merit. He certainly had the sort of contest with one Thierry Jacob that would, by all accounts, be an absolute rollercoaster. Speaking of collisions, Jacob’s body hit the canvas seconds in courtesy of a power right. From there, Jacob unleashed a frantic amount of volume on Seabrooks, managing to send him down to the floor twice before the end of a ridiculous opener. From there, it was a firefight but one that Jacob never seemed to lose a foothold over. Everything Seabrooks offered had an answer - a better one. Being backed into the ropes by flurry-after-flurry, Seabrooks tried to power his way back into the fight with a right hand, now being led into counters all the time - one put him down in the sixth. What had been previously a firefight had turned into a beating and it was just a question of how much Seabrooks could take in his willingness to find his one. The seventh showed he wasn’t quite yet, as a straight right to the body was beginning to land with greater regularity. In the process, something else was revealed: Jacob had poured out an enormous amount of energy to beat Seabrooks up - he was tiring. Something was going to change and in the eighth - a round that surpassed the first and remains one of the most insane rounds this writer has seen - the two laid all their cards on the table. Seabrooks nearly went down again but he threw back under Jacob’s assault and, suddenly, a right hand had Jacob staggering for the final seconds. Seabrooks wasted zero time in the ninth pressing. The fight ended abruptly and controversially - a cut on Jacob is what did it, but whether the bout was a stoppage or a technical decision was up in the air. Evidently, I’m not the person to ask.
69 - Fidel Bassa vs Dave McAuley I (April 25, 1987)
If the previous entry is a display of physical toughness, then this one is an exhibition of mental fortitude because, to be frank, neither Fidel Bassa nor Dave McAuley were known for being able to take tremendous punches on the chin. Despite that, the two were locked in one of the finest bouts the flyweight division had ever seen. The first round was a disaster for McAuley, who was dropped and bloodied as Bassa wasted no time trying to put him away. As Bassa continued to swing overhangs, McAuley found some life in his left hook counter. The third round saw Bassa almost inexplicably dropped by a glancing headbutt of all things, but a left hook sat him down for real as the tide shifted and McAuley pressed, looking for a decisive counter in a fight where both could be stunned. He didn’t have to work hard as Bassa continued to attack with bombs upstairs, only to sent reeling across the ring or to the canvas a cartoonish amount as the fight progressed. The seventh saw Bassa come alive behind the jab and the eighth had an overhand stagger McAuley, who rebounded with a devastating ninth as Bassa was dropped twice more. Yet Bassa seemed to refuse to stop pressing forward by that point on his bloodied man and, by the twelfth, it became apparent that McAuley was running on fumes. Bassa’s perseverance pays off in the thirteenth, successfully stopping his title challenger at last.
68 - Shozo Saijo vs Flash Besande (November 18, 1968)
A few years ago, a good friend of mine showed this to me, referring to it as ‘surprising’. In the 1960s, the success of legendary Masahiko ‘Fighting’ Harada inspired a generation of young Japanese boxers to shape the next. One was featherweight Shozo Saijo, who had managed to unseat Raul Rojas from his WBA throne convincingly. The now young champion was set for a homecoming title defense against an unknown, Flash Besande, whom we’re lacking a fair amount of footage for. All we have is his effort against Saijo - his desperate effort to reach the pinnacle of his sport. Besande, if anything else, didn’t have a lot of tools to trouble the champion, and a counter sent him down to the end of the first round seemed to confirm to Saijo that he was destined to walk through Besande. All the challenger seemed to have was a wide overhand left, the rest thrown like they were misappropriated attachments. And then that same overhand punch decked Saijo, who saved himself from the next charge with a counter hook. The challenger survived the second with his only other real trick: deceptively active upper body movement. Surely miracles didn’t just happen once, right? The third started with Saijo’s rear being sat down again. For some inexplicable reason, this challenger was dangerous in ways his punching form didn’t suggest, so Saijo reasoned he had to end it. He found himself down again in the fourth and now on active retreat from a challenger whose punches were being thrown like clothesline flails - it was the damndest thing. For the following rounds, Saijo decided to wait for his spots, yet the challenger’s confounded left hand still found some mark. It became almost amusing that it was a right was what dropped Saijo in the seventh. Was Besande on the verge of some massive upset? Had he exposed a serious problem in Saijo’s newly made kingship? I don’t really know the answer to the latter, but the eighth round was where Besande’s story came to an end, starting with a 1-2 from the champion, who wasted zero time playing with any irregularity here further - Besande didn’t last much longer, but, at the very least, his effort in this fight goes to show the value of the forgotten names and unknown stories boxing has given to us. Flash Besande was maybe not the best in the world, but he absolutely surprised everyone at Korakuen Hall that day and then some.
67 - Peter Mathebula vs Tae Shik Kim (December 13, 1980)
WBA flyweight champion Tae-Shik Kim was one of the most destructive minded pugilists the division had ever signed. As both a swarmer with notable power and zero pretense for anything less than haymakers, Kim battered his opponents into stoppage-after-stoppage. South African underdog, Peter Mathebula, went out against the odds to try and beat this juggernaut. Kim did his damndest to try and run over his challenger, but Mathebula met the cruder Kim behind his straight punches whilst showing willingness to brawl with one of the scariest sluggers of their generation. Mathebula’s eye was swollen from the process, though he outlasted Kim’s assault in the first half, coming alive in the second of a nonstop-action affair. While this bout can be considered a fight of two halves, the sheer competitiveness underlies that it was every bit the split decision it ended up being. For Mathebula though, it was his crowning achievement, as his heroic effort made history for South African boxers of future generations to be inspired by.
66 - Rolando Navarette vs Chung Ill Choi (January 16, 1982)
It was months prior that Rolando Navarette, perhaps the most talented boxer in the echelons of Super Featherweight after the great Alexis Arguello’s departure, absolutely blitzed through Cornelius Boza-Edwards in violent fashion. In Manila, he was set to defend against a relative unknown, one Chung Ill Choi, but what seemed to be a stay-busy defense was set to turn into an absolute nightmare. Choi was not a particularly skilled boxer, but he had amassed a record of knockouts for a reason: his jab was a javelin and his right hand was a laser. Navarette quickly discovered that this Korean was uniquely dangerous early as one of those lasers spun him on his heels. Since Navarette was the shorter man, he had to close some gap on Choi, who was more than willing to stand his ground and throw with opportunity. Navarette made a breakthrough discovery himself though, that Choi had a glass midsection. What followed amounted to an incredibly chaotic gunfight with both men able to hurt the other at anytime. While he bloodied Choi’s nose in the second, Navarette was hurt again in the third. The action tensed and exploded off-and-on until the insane fifth saw Choi drop the champion.
Navarette recovered his facilities and began to find answers, trying to counter Choi to the body and come behind his rear hand. The danger never left and a series of right hands had him staggered again in the eighth, but Choi was not built for surviving the war - another wild round in the tenth had Choi decked himself. With nothing left to lose, Choi went for broke in the eleventh - and his body broke from counters, and then his will from a right hook put him down for good to conclude one of the wildest shootouts the super featherweight division had seen.
65 - Ezzard Charles vs Harold Johnson (September 8, 1953)
At any division, Ezzard Charles had an argument for having the best tool of any fighter there - meaning he had mastery of the most basic tool, the jab. So what can you say about a boxer who could actually claim to have an even better jab than Charles himself? That was Harold Johnson, one of the greatest technicians in the history of the sport. In meeting Charles, both former light heavyweights-turned-heavyweight contenders were poised to deliver a match defined by its class. Johnson’s lead hand was on display early as he played on the outside, looking to draw Charles into counters, even managing to hurt him at one point. Charles’ attempts to transition to the inside were shut down, so he had to adapt. Fortunately, even an Ezzard Charles past his peak had just about the deepest bag of tricks a boxer could have and he didn’t just have one answer to Johnson’s tricks, he made multiple. The fight would be closely fought, Johnson winning the decision despite a knockdown in the ninth seemingly not being counted, and I’m frankly underscoring the skills here. Make no mistake, this fight was no brawl, but a demonstration of two absolute masters of their craft.
64 - Kevin Kelley vs Troy Dorsey (February 18, 1992)
Kevin Kelley’s most famous fight is likely against Naseem Hamed. His craziest is probably the comeback in the previous part against Ricardo Rivera. There are many other excellent scraps in Kelley’s career but, for my money, the twelve-round high volume brawl with Troy Dorsey was his best. Kelley, perhaps a man who stubbornly believed he could punch harder than he actually could, was willing to meet the come-forward, endless volume, only to run into the problem that Dorsey was impossible to back off. Nonetheless, Kelley wasn’t discouraged to not keep trying - if he couldn’t push Dorsey back, he could try to outvolume him - drawing Dorsey into the jab and counters the whole bout - and outposition him as Dorsey wasn’t an effective ringcutter more than he was a pursuer.
Said fight was simply an endurance contest for Kelley, staying off the ropes where Dorsey only upped his output, and hoping to inflict some form of damage to stay one step ahead. Kelley, always a man to fall into the fire, wasn’t able to avoid staying on the ropes and seemed on the verge of being overwhelmed at points - in the seventh and tenth in particular. Still, Dorsey’s approach was its own downside as red started coming from his mouth and telling body shots seemed to slow the immovable avalanche for Kelley to get some respite. With little to separate them, the two brawled to the final bell, refusing to concede that they were the less determined one as they saved their best for the last six minutes. Kelley would win a decision that could have gone the other way.
63 - Zovek Barajas vs Armando Muniz I (October 11, 1973)
If you thought Kevin Kelley and Troy Dorsey’s bout was a ridiculous display of volume, then I regret to inform you that we can up the ante. Armando Muniz was a quintessential television fighter and aggressive, smothering bulldozer - if you fought him, he was going to bring it. For a young and hungry “Zovek” Barajas, it was an opportunity to prove himself by going toe-to-toe with the man that you normally wouldn’t want to. Barajas showed himself as a complete package deal on footage, switching stances mid-combo, actively outpositioning Muniz with regularity, and even stunning Muniz midway through. Nonetheless, Barajas had to taste thunder himself, Muniz never backed down and even back in the final few rounds. The punches are unending from both - there probably isn’t a ten-round fight on footage with more thrown that I’ve found yet - and the result is a spectacular action fight. Barajas would seem to burn out after this bout, but it remains quite a watch to see.
62 - Sho Kimura vs Kosei Tanaka (September 24, 2018)
Kosei Tanaka sought to make history by becoming a three-weight champion within only a dozen matches - something only the prestigious Vasyl Lomachenko had done. In his way was his fellow countryman, one Sho Kimura. Difficult contests weren’t an unknown prospect to Tanaka, but this was going to be a step up. If anything else, he certainly didn’t show that pressure at first, as his jab manipulated Kimura’s guard, prodding to set up his finer shots. A left hook counter managed to stun Kimura, though this only lit a fire under the older man’s feet as bombs, launching in lever punches in bunches. While the tactical, technical war between Gennady Golovkin and ‘Canelo’ Alvarez had taken Fight of the Year honors, this was probably the deserving winner as the WBO Flyweight Champion marched forward behind his shell, firing artillery that sent Tanaka’s head flying backwards, while his challenger’s peppering combination work resulted in a swollen eye. The trench warfare only escalated as efforts were redoubled and both men’s ribs were taking a beating - there was even an arguable knockdown in the seventh. Tanaka’s superior distance management seemed to be the slightest of differences, but it was Kimura who brought the final stanzas to a fever pitch as he fired every bullet in his clip until the final bell. It wasn’t enough to stop Tanaka from achieving his goal, but there was no doubt that, for one bout in the Takeda Tova Ocean Arena, he had been taken through hell to do it.
61 - Matthew Saad Muhammad vs John Conteh I (August 18, 1979)
The newly christianed light heavyweight champion Matthew Saad Muhammad may well could not have gotten a harder first title challenger. John Conteh was a decade-long staple of the time and, at this point, the definitive technician of the division. Conteh was a boxer bred-and-true with one of the finest lead hands of his era - a jab that stabbed like a broomstick handle as one account claimed. For Saad Muhammad, he was given a special sort of opponent here that had an experience differential, but there was a bit of unconventionality to it too: Saad Muhammad was otherworldly tough - and that quality endeared itself to a battle of wills he often found himself dragged into. But with Conteh, the question wasn’t really about wills, it was a question of how skilled Saad was. For a fighter who could be inconsistent, fighting with discipline at any and all times here was a task. And yet, that’s exactly what he did, for Saad always had an unheralded jab - and it was a necessity to jab with a master like Conteh. But as good as his jab was, Conteh’s was still on another level: everything was a target to manipulate reactions and to control the ring - his jab fenced through the air between them with almost incalculable rhythm. The young champion, between Conteh’s accuracy and head collisions, found his eye swelling profusely. Adversity was Saad’s maker, but the drama in real time was that Conteh was seemingly always a step ahead. So Saad did his best work, punishing Conteh’s level changes or using his own jab to set up a trap of his own. At some point, Conteh had to slip up and that was Saad’s chance. It came in the fourteenth, as a one-eyed champion floored Conteh twice to get the razor edge decision he needed. In many ways, this was classical Saad Muhammad, but this one was special because it got to show that he wasn’t simply a man gifted for his physical toughness, but genuinely the best boxer of his generation of light heavyweights. It just took an old master’s one last effort to give him that chance to show it off.
This concludes part four. Thank you for reading. The next part is where you may start recognizing some popular choices - as well as where some my controversial, non-mainstream views start to appear. Stay tuned.