Call to arms: The Bad Left Hook Top 20

by SC on Aug 4, 2008 8:24 PM EDT

Alright, dudes, ladies, and general boxing fans, we're putting out the call. We need to update our pound-for-pound top 20, and I'm just not a fan of doing one that's all my opinion, and I'm not sure how many ballots I can get filled out in a reasonable amount of time. I'm thinking we have three right now, but I want more. In fact, I want many.

Here's the deal, though: we're trying to take it fairly seriously and present a good top 20, so don't vote if you are going to try to scam it to get your favorite fighter near the top or something of that nature. Do vote if you really want to -- I don't consider myself any great expert, as I've said before, just a big fan. So if you're a fight fan and your initial thought is, "Well, I don't know enough," then forget about that, because you probably do know plenty enough.

BLH is designed to have lots of interaction between our bloggers and our readers, up to the point that we want to have you guys blogging along with us in the FanPosts (so get on more of those!).

Now, I really want everyone that stops by regularly (or you, if you just happened to stumble along here) to get a ballot in.

Here's how it works:

Fill out your top 20.
Put one paragraph or so (a little less, a little more) by as many fighters as you want. You can do all 20 of your guys, 10 of them, 15, 12, 8, 3, 1, or 0. Comments are encouraged, but not necessary. If you're not super with writing, don't worry, we'll clean it up and edit it for you without changing your thoughts.
E-mail your list to me. My e-mail link can be found on the bottom of the site, or in my SBN profile.
Make sure you let me know what your username is so I know who I'm crediting when we post the final tally. Also, if you want your real name posted, indicate if you just want first name, or if you want first and last. Only your username is really required.
Additionally, if you have a blog of your own or something like that that you want linked with your name credit, let me know and I'll be more than happy to do so.
HAVE FUN! WINNERS NEVER QUIT!

An example of the ballot would look something like this:

1. Little Mac: Despite his very small frame, has repeatedly conquered much larger men over the course of his championship career. You cannot take lightly the contributions of Doc, either.

2. Mike Tyson: Lightning-fast combinations and brutal speed make him the most dangerous fighter around.

3. Piston Honda: Highly underrated, in my opinion. Gets a bit predictable thanks to his eyebrows, but the raw talent is there.

4. Soda Popinski: Though you might question his training habits, he comes to fight and has had a pretty great career. Attitude has always been the only real knock on him.

And so on. You can write more than that, obviously. If you want a primer on the sort of length we generally do for the list, you can look back at our last P4P Top 20 -- you can also see why it badly needs an update.'

Do your patriotic chore, everyone. Get voting!

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Bad at following directions

Or I just don’t feel like sending this out from a work e-mail account…

My vote, which is based on a mix of pure accomplishment and H2H:
1. Manny Pacquiao – I don’t see a way around this, unless you think Marquez was robbed.
2. Joe Calzaghe – Number two by default. Still has a weak resume, and there’s probably no way to rectify that at this point.
3. Israel Vasquez
4. Juan Manuel Marquez
5. Rafael Marquez – The fact that he moved up from his natural weight to win one of three extremely close fights helps him.
6. Kelly Pavlik
7. Christian Mijares – 115 is the best weight class nobody’s talking about.
8. Ivan Calderon
9. Joan Guzman – Making a living out of beating high-risk low-reward fighters and making it look easy.
10. Ricky Hatton – Is looking old lately, but his resume is underrated if anything.
11. Antonio Margarito – I don’t see much of a way to separate these three.
12. Paul Williams
13. Miguel Cotto
14. David Haye
15. Arthur Abraham
16. Chris John – Annoying that he won’t leave the eastern hemisphere, but he still has a very solid resume, and has a style that would give most elite fighters fits.
17. Nate Campbell
18. Fernando Montiel
19. Bernard Hopkins – He can still give lots of great fighters a tough night, but I’m not sure he can actually beat them anymore. Also, the LHW senior division is just supremely overrated.
20. Hozumi Hasegawa – Has beaten quite a few good opponents, just not ones that usually fight on this hemisphere.

Just missed: Nonito Donaire, Shane Mosley, Winky Wright, Antonio Tarver, Mikkel Kessler

Vogt early, Vogt often.

by Brickhaus on Aug 5, 2008 5:15 PM EDT reply reply 0 recs

More complete descriptions

I’ll do more as I have time.

If Shane Mosley comes up, he was really hurt by the Cotto loss. While he’s looked pretty decent lately, his recent resume is overrated, other than the loss to Cotto, and now that Cotto doesn’t look like an indestructable force, his stock took a major hit.

To elaborate on Guzman, I do think he has flaws, and he hasn’t always fought the toughest fighters (in part because he’s been ducked by everyone and their mother), but he gets underranked by a lot of people because the guys he’s faced have a lot of losses.

Abraham has a similar quandary. He’s beaten a lot of good, but unheralded fighters. Part of his issue is that I feel like he fights down to the level of his opposition, and thus it’s hard to get a great read on him. I might be overranking him a bit, especially since Demers just lost to a no-name.

As for Haye, I’m still rating him at cruiserweight in terms of P4P. As a HW, he’d be off the list.

Vogt early, Vogt often.

by Brickhaus on Aug 5, 2008 5:25 PM EDT up reply reply 0 recs