Jose Napoles.........Am I missing something?

[Ron Lipton]

Napoles was a great fighter to be sure.

I've posted pictures of him, me and Emile together here before from 1993 in Las Vegas. He seemed to be hurting pretty bad mentally at the time, and when approached by Emile who said hello, he did not know who he was for about a minute.

Emile, grabbed his shoulders and said in his high pitched Virgin Island sing song voice, "What's wrong with you man, don't you say hello to me anymore,???"

Jose then realized it was Emile, and was so delighted to see him he was almost tearful with apologies and anger with himself, giving Emile a big hug and kiss on the cheek. He really impressed me with his affection for Griffith and vice versa as always with Emile.

As to the fight, I saw it and with no excuses, just the truth Emile's body was so dehyrdrated, that losing weight for him with no fat only muscle to begin with had him so weak, he could do nothing that night. That is boxing and the win goes to Jose, who earned it.

From 155 to 144 was like a torture for Griffith back then. To this day I don't know where the weight came off his body for that fight. He was a shell of what he could do.

Emile who was so damn strong just went down too far on the scale for his type of body. He was as effective as Ali was against Holmes.

My favorite fights with Jose was the way he handled Clyde Grey and Curtis Cokes.

Just a great warrior.

[gregbeyer]

rons analogy of griffith being ali against holmes when he fought napoles is a good one with the exception that once he went back to middleweight griffith was still competative while ali showed against berbick he was never again to be anywhere near his old form.

i saw griffith in the gym before this fight and like ali vs. holmes his body looked great but as ron said losing weight off muscle depleted him severly. i have never held that fight as a black mark on his legacy. it was more a case of a great athlete asking too much of his body. he should instead be given credit for the great effort he put forth in making the weight. he could have, in retrospect, pulled a corrales/castillo and come in overweight and much stronger but the game was better than that then and griffith was just a better man period.

napoles career at lightweight reminds me much of ray robinsons at welter. there is little in the way of film on thier early careers but the fact that they excelled in a higher division against that divisions best lends credence to thier greatness regardless of the lack of footage. i do have tape of lightweight napoles' one round demolition of alfredo urbina. his attack in that fight much resembled ike williams taking out beau jack. devastating.

hi ron.
greg

[Fat Abbot]

hey fat you can just consider me another dinosaur weighing in here.

calling napoles a poor mans version of donald curry is very laughable.

he dominated the welterweight division in the days of one title one champ and he honestly was more a lightweight or jr. welter. carlos ortiz's trust avoided him like the plague and in those days the 140lb division held little prestige for such a great fighter. these days of super middleweights fighting at welter it may be hard for you YOUNG guys to understand. even lightly trained mantequilla barely filled his welterweight trunks.

matter of fact it hurts to hear he and curry mentioned in the same breath.

i would love to have seen curry in against cokes, muniz, griffith, lopez, hedge or even alfredo urbina. maybe the past always looks better to us dinosaurs but at least i have the advantage of having seen napoles train, spar, beat up lightheavyweights in the gym and ko his top rated contenders in person to be able to say the guy was one of the greatest i ever saw. i saw curry too...but i can't say the same about him....take it or leave it.
greg

Why would I call you a dinosaur? Kikibalt goes out of his way to insult me, you have not.

I may not agree with everyone on this board, but that's what I like about it, differing opinions make for good discussion. I try to be cordial with everyone I speak to.

I compare Napoles to curry because they both walked in patiently looking fr openings and used straight, accurate punching.

I think Curry was better because imo he hit harder and had quicker hands, I also think his defense was a bit tighter. Imo Curry would have beaten any of the fighters you mentioned. I think Napoles vs Starling woukd have been a great matchup too.

Curry's prime years were short because of drugs and partying, but at his best I think he'd have given most any welterweight a tough fight and beaten most of them. He was incredibly well schooled, totally calm and threw super accurate darts that carried serious power.

About Napoles size, not all the welterweights today are cutting down, Mayweathers the king at welter now and he's a natural 130, a year ago Zab was the real champ and he's only 5'7 and more of a natural lightweight. It must have been awesome to watch Napoles train and fight in person, I'm not surprised that he beat up lh's in sparring.

[gregbeyer]

its all cool fat.

you know watching tapes and knowing the outcome is a major drawback in the drama dept.

when i saw napoles spar..to me ..its was like laying on my back and watching micheal angelo anoint the systene chaple (spelling? ).

it may seem that i jumped on you here but please understand the high regard i hold for frank. he is a treasure here. to call him a dinosaur is to undercut his value as someone who goes all the way back to aragon-bolanos. frank has always been honest in his opinion of his own sons. he knows fighters and if he defends napoles ..well it says a lot.

mantequilla was a great handle for napoles. watch closley. he slips punches , he doesn't block. his hands are always free. his most damaging shots are sometimes imperceptable. backus' face came apart while it seemed jose was just tapping him. few could hurt lopez that way, and muniz...well at that time it was almost impossible.

i been watching fighters for a lot of years and napoles made a great impression....for what its worth.
greg

[rocky111]

Got to cosign that Greg. Napoles the first time i saw him in his prime (hell he was a great great lightweight and Eddie Perkins told me so) as a welter, also made a great impression on me. Master boxer for real and a real test for ANY WELTERWEIGHT IN HISTORY. His first bout with a very motivated Earnie Lopez is a real classic.

[hawk5ins]

Personally, I like my comedy writers to be funny. Not purposefully annoying and disruptive.

Granted, many threads are going to get sullied up for a while here, but if you ignore it, it will eventually go away.

In the meantime, it's going to be like going to the dentist without novacaine for a while.

Wake me when it's over.

Hawk

[Zevl]

[Zevl]

[raylawpc]

Personally, I like my comedy writers to be funny. Not purposefully annoying and disruptive.

Granted, many threads are going to get sullied up for a while here, but if you ignore it, it will eventually go away.

In the meantime, it's going to be like going to the dentist without novacaine for a while.

Wake me when it's over.

Hawk

I have learned that you have to be pretty thick-skinned to participate on this board. We are all too macho. It comes from getting hit in the head during our formative years. At some point, Fat will learn that a little razzing isn't a personal insult.

By the way, Zevi, those are great shots. I thought only Kiki had the good photos.

[hawk5ins]

What you say may be true from the standpoint of yours or Kiki's delivery.

The concern I have is that as it applies to the individual in question here, it really isn't playful razzing. Rather it is indeed intended to insult....personally. That and disrupt and irritate.

I have unfortunately been exposed to this for far too long. And the nature of the current dialogue doesn't seem to have changed all that much.

The only thing I can lend, based on my experience here, is that if it is ignored, it usually does go away.

Eventually.

Hawk

[raylawpc]

Hawk, I am convinced the problem is that, with message boards and e-mails, there is no inflection in the language. A statement like Kiki's - which I know he meant merely to disagree with Fat in a humorous fashion - might seem quite harsh to Fat without hearing the words spoken. (I haven't been on this board all that long, but my exchange of messages with Kiki leds me to the solid conviction he is nothing less than a gentleman.)

So, it is just easier not to let the apparent tone of a message bother you, because chances are the writer didn't mean for you to take it that way. It is just easier to look at the content of the message and respond from there.

Besides, its not like we are writing about anything that is life-or-death. Its just boxing, for Heaven's sake. The world will not end tomorrow if Kiki and I are mistaken in our assessment of Jose Napoles v. Donald Curry. (Although we are clearly right on, and Fat is full of it. )

[raylawpc]

And yes, Hawk, Fat may have intended to insult Kiki. But I am already sure that, if he did, he regrets making an unkind statement of that nature about Kiki. Another problem is that we are all a little quick with the "post quick reply" button, and regret it later.

[kikibalt]

Hey guys
It was never my intend to insult Fats, but when he say that Napoles was a poor man version of Curry, I think that 99.9 % of the posters here would think that was funny/wrong, if he feel insulted then I'm sorry.

What he say about me doesn't matter, I learned a long time ago not to take statements like his personally.
Now I hope that he doesn't feel insulted when I say that I just consider the sources.

Frank

[raylawpc]

Fats also thinks James Toney would have flattened Joe Frazier in a few rounds. Now that's comedy. (BTW, Fats, I'm not insulting you - I'm just an old dinosaur giving you a bit of a hard time. You have every right to your opinions.)

[Fat Abbot]

Actually I said that Toney would lose a close decision. But I would not rule out a decision victory for James, afterall James has never been seriously hurt and he has skills Joe never saw before.

Kikibalt started insulting me in anothe thread,after I was nothing but amiable with him. I don't mind burying the hatchet, we'll never agree, but I suppose insults are a waste of time.

[PeteLeo]

Toney was shaken up pretty badly on several occasions by Reggie Johnson. He also did the "slack-jawed rollerskater" once or twice with Peter, though he recovered well. If Peter had had the work ethic and stamina of a Frazier ("if, if, if . . . ."), James would have been luncheon meat. I'm interested in the rematch. PeteLeo.

[Fat Abbot]

Toney was never shaken badly by Johnson, he was dropped with a good shot he didn't see coming, but got up easily and was fine just as quickly.

Toney was never badly hurt against Petrer, nor was he ever close to going down, Peter only stunned Toney with punches to the back of the head.

If Frazier had Peters size, chin and power he would have beaten Foreman. If if if...

[PeteLeo]

We've been through this before. If you refuse to admit what the tapes show (Toney floored hard by Johnson, shaken throughout the match, badly cut, barely gaining a decision -- Toney bent over and holding onto the ropes for support, his head jerking up and back as he's pinned against the ropes, clutching Peter like a fugitive from the Titanic must have clutched a lifebuoy), there's really no room for discussion, is there?

You remind me of the the guy in the classic "Monty Python" routine who sells "Arguments" to his customers and then cheats them out of their money by simply contradicting everything they say. I say when a man is floored, cut, and ekes out the thinniest of split decisions (the deciding vote was one point in Toney's favor) he went through some pretty rough rounds, and you respond with a breath-takingly incisive, "No he didn't."

I wonder . . . could it be that you utilize this kindergarten tactic simply because most of the time you don't HAVE any other case to make?

Oh, but I'm mistaken, you DO have one other overwhelming battleplan: whenever confronted by the record of a fighter you're not fond of (which seems to be every fighter who's been out of the ring for more than five years), you blithely reduce his career to worthlessness by pointing out that all of those people he beat were just bums. In this way, Bob Foster -- who's rated as a top ten lightheavy by virtually every other boxing observer in the world -- is a fraud. Joe Frazier gets no credit for beating Ali because Ali had a complete nothing resume. Dempsey? Louis? Marciano? Walcott? I guess under your system, if you add together ALL of the men these guys faced in their entire careers, that aggregate being would equal neither the size nor the talent of, say, a Jameel McCline? Am I right?

And yet, somehow, Dwight Qawi, with his 41-11 record, who lost to Tony Fucking LaRosa, who beat not one well-regarded oppponent over 200 pounds, would be "Da Man" at cruiser or heavy if he were still around today. (I know, I know, the LaRosa fight was Qawi's swan song, but so the hell what? Aren't you the genius who holds Ali's losses to Holmes and Berbick against his legacy?)

You know, if there really were a college of bullshit, I would be honored to pay the tuition to learn at the feet of the master, but here I am getting an education for free.

Here's a hint: if you ever get mad at the law of gravity, think twice about trying to defy it by walking out of a tenth story window. Not every iota of reality bends to your massive ego. PeteLeo.

[Sharkey]

Pete,

who are you talking to.

[raylawpc]

Sharkey:

Pete has now joined the list of folks who are upset at Fat Abbott's postings.

[raylawpc]

I do wish that Pete would stop mincing his words and tell us how he really feels.

[hawk5ins]

I think Sharks is merely trying to remind us all, that if you include certain posters, whose sole intent is to irritate and ruin threads, in your "ignore" list, then said poster will be talking to no one.

Yes it messes up threads becuase he will for a while, continue to respond to nearly everything anyone has to say in hopes that someone, ANYONE will respond to him so that he can get under their skin and ruin the thread. It's what he lives for.

But if NO ONE addresses or responds back to him, yes EVENTUALLY, he will become bored and stomp away, and informing all us "old timers" and "morons" that he can't be bothered.

Engaging him only encourages him. Ignore him, Put him on IGNORE, and yes, he will find the rock from which he came.

Hawk

[raylawpc]

Oh okay - I get Sharkey's joke now.

[theironbar]

So now that Fat Abbott is gone, does anyone have anything to add to this otherwise great thread? I love reading other's thoughts about Jose Napoles or hearing stories... I watch the tapes I have of 4 of his title fights quite frequently and am constantly amazed, even going in with higher and higher expectations from the last viewing... he was a maestro of the ring...

[raylawpc]

Nah. Without Fat to ridicule, the thrill is gone.

[theironbar]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

OK, I'll make some outrageously inane remarks and we can go from there...

[raylawpc]

Maybe you could say "Jose Napoles was a poor man's version of Donald Curry at his best." Oh wait . . . Fat already said that.

[theironbar]

Any Napoles stories for me gents? Does anyone know if he attends the IBHOF inductions at Canastota? I'm going this year -- finally! Hope some CBZers will be there to hook up! The first round is on me!

[theironbar]

I thought this was a good clip of Jose Napoles v. Ralph Charles:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ji70VDcaq0A

[Obama fan]

Back in the days Ross was fighting, most of those guys didn't really even know what they were doing.

Is that so.

LOL.