Hamed, Bowe, Mancini Elected To HOF

Hamed finally made it then. Does he belong? What about Bowe and Mancini?

Hamed is a definite but I can't see how the other two get in using any sort of criteria.

Im actually glad Naz made it even though i dont like some of the things hes done outside the ring

I guess this increases Benn and Eubank's chances? Although I asked some of the voters and they scrubbed Benn off straight away.

The system needs changing if you ask me. Hamed is in as a direct result of internet chattering/outrage.

He's far more deserving than say Mcguigan and did a lot to increase the popularity of boxing over here, carrying on from Benn, Eubank and Bruno.

My poor old Don..........scandalous..

Will he always be screwed over !!

Ray Mancini.....FFS !!!!!!............

Hamed is a better candidate than Mcguigan but still behind Curry.....

What a joke !

In a word...........disgusted.


It's a bad day to be me.

Hamed is long overdue.

Have no problem with Hamed

The first great fighter Hamed fought retired him.

At least McGuigan beat a well regarded long standing champion.


The only consultation would be the ex-con doesn't get a visa to travel to the US. A bit like the Queen taking back the MBE.

Lot's of hall of famers haven't beat anyone great..

Zaragoza, Canizales, Mancini....To name a few !!

The only two great fighters Louis fought beat him...

Your argument sucks...If Hamed was Irish you wouldn't have a problem...

Mcguigan was retired by a couple of average fighters, and would have been retired earlier if he'd fought nelson. I liked Barry but he got pedrosa at a good time.

If it wasn't for the big Irish American following he wouldn't be in. Gerry cooney must be knocking on the door.

Mancini being in ahead of other fighters is a joke. Its a boys club which makes it worse they didn't keep Hamed, one of the most dispecable people you could ever meet, out.

Louis beat Walcott, Conn, Schmelling etc who still feature on ATG lists and are much more highly regarded fighters  than anything Hamed beat.  You can also add in beating up fighters bigger than Wlad and 25 defences and we are talking about a whole different level of fighter.

Conn was maybe an alltimer but he was 170..and he outboxed him..

The other two..

Do me a favor...

Barkley beat Hearns lets stick him in there..

Hamed lost to somebody better than all the names you mentioned there Strongy and to be honest Walcott and Schmelings apparent greatness baffles me while Conn was a light Heavyweight. We don't exactly proclaim the virtues of Ali and Frazier based on beating Bob Foster do we.

Hamed whether you like him or not was a great featherweight and for a prolonged period of time was the undisputed champion in the division, he beat each and every one of the champions.

milkyboy wrote: Mcguigan was retired by a couple of average fighters, and would have been retired earlier if he'd fought nelson. I liked Barry but he got pedrosa at a good time.

If it wasn't for the big Irish American following he wouldn't be in. Gerry cooney must be knocking on the door.

McGuigan didn't retire at 28.  I'd have no issue with him not being in but Hamed shouldn't be in either.

McGuigan helped people in a war torn region celebrate together through sport. He has also been a good ambassador for the sport and continues to try and help fighters get a fair deal and looks out for  their welfare.

Hamed by comparison beat no great fighter and was lucky against Kelley.

Hamed was always a dipicable piece of sh!t and nothing has changed in recent times.

I'm surprised the club wanted Hamed in. Figures like Tyson are more understandable given he was such a big name.  Hamed is a bad egg and there are better fighters than him not in.

Dipicable?

Here's the IBRO list.  

Joe Louis
Muhammad Ali
Jack Johnson
Jack Dempsey
Rocky Marciano
Larry Holmes
James J. Jeffries
George Foreman
Sonny Liston
Joe Frazier
Gene Tunney
Lennox Lewis
Mike Tyson
Evander Holyfield
Sam Langford
Jersey Joe Walcott
Ezzard Charles
Harry Wills
James J. Corbett
Bob Fitzsimmons


Just missing the cut: Riddick Bowe, Max Schmeling, Joe Jeannette, Peter Jackson, John L. Sullivan, George Godfrey, Max Baer, Ken Norton, Sam McVey and Jack Sharkey.


It's also interesting that historians rate Pedroza higher than Barrera.


Maybe people see want they want to see.

Kareem61 wrote:Dipicable?

Got anything else to add?

Which historian in their right mind would rank Pedroza higher than Barrera, I really would like to know, Kieran Mulvaney for instance has Barrera at 43 in his top 50 but no place for Pedroza.

Hammersmith harrier wrote:Which historian in their right mind would rank Pedroza higher than Barrera, I really would like to know, Kieran Mulvaney for instance has Barrera at 43 in his top 50 but no place for Pedroza.

IBRO, check it out. That's a consensus of historians as I'm sure you know.

Truss has done a good job of rubbing Pedroza's name into the dirt over the years.

You are aware Strongy that with only a handful of fights at Featherweight and being post 1970 Barrera isn't going to feature too highly in a divisional listing on that site but is without a shadow of a doubt a far better boxer than Pedroza. Remind me what his signature win was again?

The IBRO lists are a bit haphazard to say the least, Arguello at six, really?

An interesting analysis of Naz's appeal to those who aren't boxing aficionados


http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/the-agony-and-the-ecstasy-of-prince-naseem

Strongback wrote:

milkyboy wrote: Mcguigan was retired by a couple of average fighters, and would have been retired earlier if he'd fought nelson. I liked Barry but he got pedrosa at a good time.

If it wasn't for the big Irish American following he wouldn't be in. Gerry cooney must be knocking on the door.

McGuigan didn't retire at 28.  I'd have no issue with him not being in but Hamed shouldn't be in either.

McGuigan helped people in a war torn region celebrate together through sport. He has also been a good ambassador for the sport and continues to try and help fighters get a fair deal and looks out for  their welfare.

Hamed by comparison beat no great fighter and was lucky against Kelley.

Hamed was always a dipicable piece of sh!t and nothing has changed in recent times.

I'm surprised the club wanted Hamed in. Figures like Tyson are more understandable given he was such a big name.  Hamed is a bad egg and there are better fighters than him not in.

Erm. He did retire at 28. In fact he retired after the Cruz fight for two years at 25 and then again at 28 after the McDonnell fight. Hence my retired by two average fighters comment.

That said, I like Barry and think naz is a complete bell, so I have sympathy with your perspective. Depends what criteria they have for the HOF... And I doubt anyone involved could give you a straight answer on that.

I don't think McGuigan quit as much as injuries and tough fights caught up with him. Haz was barely in a tough fight and it was more a case of a bully not being able to deal with a better fighter bouncing his head off a ring post whilst shouting in his ear "Who's your Daddy".

We don't know with naz really strongy. It's just conjecture. Did the Barrera fight finish him mentally? Possibly. Was he disappearing further up his own 'arris long before the Barrera fight. It looked that way.

He did have one more fight, which people tend to forget, but he clearly had lost his hunger for the sport and was acquiring it for hamburgers.

milkyboy wrote:We don't know with naz really strongy. It's just conjecture. Did the Barrera fight finish him mentally? Possibly. Was he disappearing further up his own 'arris long before the Barrera fight. It looked that way.

He did have one more fight, which people tend to forget, but he clearly had lost his hunger for the sport and was acquiring it for hamburgers.

Naz I think may have believed he was invincible and could knock anybody out if he connected but he let these these kind of thoughts dictate how he approached the game. My own opinion is Naz was a confidence fighter and when he lost it took everything away from him mentally. It wouldn't be the first time a big puncher fell to pieces when he got exposed.

Strongback wrote:

milkyboy wrote:We don't know with naz really strongy. It's just conjecture. Did the Barrera fight finish him mentally? Possibly. Was he disappearing further up his own 'arris long before the Barrera fight. It looked that way.

He did have one more fight, which people tend to forget, but he clearly had lost his hunger for the sport and was acquiring it for hamburgers.

Naz I think may have believed he was invincible and could knock anybody out if he connected but he let these these kind of thoughts dictate how he approached the game. My own opinion is Naz was a confidence fighter and when he lost it took everything away from him mentally. It wouldn't be the first time a big puncher fell to pieces when he got exposed.

Think he had one eye on retirement anyway so maybe an element of what you believe was present, bad hands and long times away from his family, plus the hard work entailed in rising back to the top probably hastened his decision. Think he might have benefited from a shock loss early on. I would put Naz in the HOF simply for his knockout of Sanchez.

I've never been one for lists or rankings, tend to just give appraisals for boxers I've seen and rate them by the eye test.

Naz, for me, was brilliant. A genuine highlight reel fighter and even though I thought he was generally a cringeworthy personality, I loved the reactions he'd get out of people. So many wanted him to lose and that's a powerful tool. When these 'love to hate' fighters do get beat however, it's always an underwhelming feeling.

I get what Strongaback is saying about Naz relying on his confidence. I don't know if in his later fights he was cutting corners in going for the early finish or just over estimating his KO abilities but it seemed like he was ony ever throwing shots to knock his opponent out. He fought like an absolute trumpet in the Barrera fight and didn't do himself any favours at all.

Have huge issues with Hamed. The first true class opponent he comes up against and he gets embarrassed and then instead of coming back bigger and stronger instead sulks away. Mentally weak. Built up a list of decent divisional names, but no more than what Hatton did in my eyes and also never had the charming charisma that Hatton did either. Instead he was (and still is) and arrogant little (now a fat one) git.

And before anyone jumps on the "Oh but he's in the HoF as well" - The hall has become a joke for who they let in.

How was Hamed lucky against Kelley...??

Didn't Hamed fight some decent/Top class fighters and just made them look ordinary?

Yeah beating up divisional talent is one thing (funny how some people will claim that having nigh on all the belts was a big plus for Hamed but then mock the alphabet nature of them in other arguments), facing elite level and being found out MASSIVELY is another kettle of fish.

Derbymanc wrote:Didn't Hamed fight some decent/Top class fighters and just made them look ordinary?

Yes. There seems to be a disconnect here between what the Hall of Fame should be and what it is. What it should be is a place for the true elite, where Armstrong rubs shoulders with the Leonards, Fitzsimmons and Ali etc, a place where the very strictest induction criteria are applied and there are frequent years where either no or one person is inducted. In reality that is not the Hall we have, we have a hall where at least three or four fighters are inducted every year irrespective of the quality of those eligible and where the likes of McGuigan, Zaragoza and Johannsen or indeed any fighter who wins more than three on the bounce at heavy appears to get in.

Against the former criteria Naz does not make it, against the latter (real) criteria he sails in. Undisputed champion, in all but name, genuine fixture of the pound for pound lists, the premier feather in the world for a good few years and a guy who delivered excitement and purses rarely, if ever seen in such a low weight class. He might be a horrible person, but no more so than countless others already in there, but Naz is a shoo in and in reality should have made it ages ago.

Cheers for that Rowley.

Maybe there should have an elite section in the hall for the truly great fighters.

Kirk, people might deride the nature of alphabet straps in many cases, but there's a difference between someone getting their slice of the 'world title' pie and then dining off that forevermore, which is generally what annoys people when it comes to the titles. Naz unified and showed that he was THE champion, rather than A champion. Big difference. He effectively cleaned out one of the original weight classes and did so in a pretty dominant manner.

Hamed beat plenty of good, sometimes very, very good fighters. Unfortunately for him, in come cases (Vazquez, Kelley) these guys were a little past their best or had seen their stock fall slightly from their absolute primes - but they were still impressive and legitimate wins.

He won the WBO, IBF and WBC belts at one stage or another, beat the guy who would have still been the WBA champion had he not been stripped just beforehand (Vazquez, who incidentally was also the 'man who beat the man' at 126), vanquished a good Super-Bantam title holder in Bundu who stepped up to challenge him, beat guys who would go on to win belts after they lost to him such as Ingle, Medina etc. Aside from perhaps accommodating Marquez at some stage (to be honest, I've never really known who wasn't keen on the other one in that case, so I'm willing to be enlightened there) it's hard to see what else Hamed could feasibly have been expected to do between 1995 and 2001.

The Barrera fight was always likely to be defining whatever the result. Yes, Hamed lost to the best fighter (and only really great) fighter he fought, but there's a difference between that and losing to the first world-class fighter you fought, which is a line Naz's biggest critics like to roll out. I personally think that people are getting a little carried away with themselves when they nonchalantly say that a focussed, hungrier Naz of a couple of years beforehand would definitely have beaten Barrera, but at the same time I have to acknowledge that he'd almost certainly have made a much better fist of it, and could have potentially won that fight - Hamed was well beaten by Marco, but he didn't do himself justice with that performance by any means.

As for his Hall of Fame claims, Rowley has basically summed it up. Naz wouldn't make a Hall of Fame designed by us, but that's not the paramater he's being measured against here. By rights, he should have been in Canastota quite a while ago.

Hamed is head and shoulders above Hatton, his overall record is superior in every way. It's almost as if Vasquez, Kelley, Johnson, McCullough and Bungu were nobodies, all of them were genuine world class fighters. That's then topped up with Medina, Ingle, Hardy, Robinson, Soto and Sanchez.

Many seem to overlook how good he actually was, how much he dominated his division and the quality of his opposition.

He was vulnerable to flash knockdowns but the majority were him touching down with a glove off balance. Yes he lost to the best boxer he ever fought but so do 99% of boxers so not sure why he gets more flack than others.

Will echo what Shah said as well, the combination to take Sanchez out is one of the finest you'll ever, beautiful in it's brutality.

Looking back at Naz's ring entrance versus Barrera I wonder how many times Naz will mention Allah in his IBHOF acceptance speech, that is of course if he can obtain a visa to America given he is a convicted criminal.

Naz's more pressing concern would be to find an airline seat big enough for him to travel over in if he DID get a visa

Oh come on HH, clutching a bit there with the "World Class" tag. As is my want my breakdown of why that tag is a bit hyperbole like:

Vasquez: Common knowledge he was pretty much finished by the time Nas got to him
Kelley: Bit above journeyman level done good sort of fighter but not much more than that
Johnson: See above
McCullough: Good hard trier but constantly found out at the top level, see above
Bungu: Same as Vasquez - well past his prime

Thing is with all the fighters he fought they all never reached levels of greatness (beating someone like a MAB, Morales etc) - they were all 'good' divisional fighters but lest we not forget the division Nas was in was hardly stacked with elite talent. Yes, beat what was there infront of him but it's not like he ran through a list of fighters that were anywhere near the level we have in the 140-147 classes we have today, did he?

And you can't excuse the amount of times he got knocked down because he was "off balance" - it's a major part of boxing to have excellent balance ffs!! Perhaps because he was technically poor he got found out at the highest level, ever think about that?!?!?

Nostalgia of a nice long run of weird angled knockout punches against 'good' divisional fighters seems to be getting in the way of taking a slightly more factual based approach of:

1) How many fighters did he beat in their prime that will make it in to the HoF? Zero.
2) How many times did he face and "elite" (as you call it) fighter and was the underdog? Zero.
3) Were all of fights massive odds on because the bookies see it how it is and didn't hype the oppo to be something they weren't? Yes.

Glossing over poor training, loss of interest etc is just a smokescreen for "oh he could have been this, beaten that person" - nonsense. Part of being one of the best professional athletes is that they are the perfect athlete - Mental and technical. He was simply mentally weak and no amount of excuse making hides the fact that he was never an elite fighter or should be remembered as one as his own shortfallings consigned him to being not a lot more than a divisionally good fighter but not at the next level above.

Captain Kirk wrote:

1) How many fighters did he beat in their prime that will make it in to the HoF? Zero.
2) How many times did he face and "elite" (as you call it) fighter and was the underdog? Zero.
3) Were all of fights massive odds on because the bookies see it how it is and didn't hype the oppo to be something they weren't? Yes.

 

Shall we apply the same test to recent inductee Mike Tyson, see how he gets on.

Funnily enough Jefferz I don't rate Tyson either.

Doesn't matter, he is in the hall, and far away from being one of the less deserving inductees. For as long as there are countless people in the hall with less compelling claims than Naz he deserves to get in, surely that is just common sense. As I said previously whether the hall is a deeply flawed institution is a completely different debate, and I dare say, was you to put it forward as an argument few, if any, would disagree with you.

Surprised Trussy isn't in the hall, 26k+ posts is probably more deserving in service to his sport than others in there as you say.

You never know the way you go in about it I've got half a chance....

Got more chance than Curry seemingly..

Tyson properly unified the division and defended it 7 times, he beat the lineal champ and here's a major point he came back from defeat and won a world title strap again.

I'm not that keen on Tyson as an individual but as a fighter he's streets ahead of Naz.

Tyson is a no brainer.....Dominated totally for three years and came back and part unified...

Also gets in for services to Boxing....He made sports fans flock to the sport.

I agree Tyson is a no brainer, but for me Naz is as well. It all depends how you want to frame the arguments, the common criticism thrown at Naz against his inclusion is he lost to the first great fighter he fought. Tyson did not even bother waiting that long to get his arse handed to him.

As I said at the start of this debate for as long as the likes of Zaragosa, Johannsen and McGuigan are in there Naz should be a shoo in.

But is the IBHOF a popularity contest or is it based on achievements. I can see why some fighters get in because of what they have done for boxing, which personally I think is a bit of a soft way to be inducted. With Naz he has neither the achievements of a great fighter or has been a goodwill ambassador. I have no idea why anybody would want him in their club.

Haz in his earlier post alluded to an internet campaign getting Naz in and if that is the case then the hall has let itself become a truly meaningless organisation.

I can see why the people at Canastota would want to bring the great fighters and the good guys of the sport for a weekend gathering once a year but I don't see where Hamed fits in. The guy is basically a sh1t stain on humanity.

For as long as Monzon and Tyson are in the hall of fame, Hamed being a bit of a berk doesn't really come into.

Coxy, that evaluation of his opposition is so far away from the truth it barely deserves a response. Hamed was never the underdog because he was that good and when was Tyson ever an underdog during his reign.

Strongy for all intents and purposes Hamed was the fully unified lineal champion.