Good chins and bad chins have a way of not being an easy concept to pin down. There are the men of iron like McCall, Tua and Hagler, for which stopping them should not even be a part of your game plan. There are the Roger Mayweathers, Junior Joneses and Amir Khans, for which where every fighter is live if they can just touch the chin. Most lie somewhere in the middle at the championship level, and some fighters may often touch the canvas, but end up harder to stop than even the iron chinned. Mike Tyson was durable, but once you broke him, you stopped him, and he was stopped in every loss. These 3 men are the opposite.
Ike Quartey - Quartey was a victim of his own hype. Choosing to fall in love with his long armed African defense, he often went dormant and lost close fights. He was also not very active, fighting his big fights with no tune-ups, 15 months apart. There was no conspiracy, as he often thought (although his loss to Vernon Forrest was pretty bad), it was just that when a fighter gets hurt in almost every round, and doesn't dominate, it's hard to win. He was dropped twice by Oscar De La Hoya and Jose Luis Lopez in fights where he otherwise boxed quite well. Both times, it cost him victory. Fernando Vargas hurt him in nearly every round, and handed Quartey his first unquestionable loss. However, as many times as he wobbled, and hit the canvas, it was impossible to put him away. He was never stopped in anyway, except momentum, which was his biggest opponent.
Felix Trinidad - For a while there, it seemed to be a regular part of a Tito Trinidad welterweight title defense. Tito would get hurt, or dropped, and it would wake him up. He was even wobbled by such also-rans like Kevin Leushing, but always got back up to win. he usually did so in style, and by KO. As easy as Trinidad was to hurt, the only man to stop him was Bernard Hopkins, and you got the feeling that was more out of hopelessness and futility than anything else. Like Michael Moorer before him, if you hurt him early, he'd get up and win, but if you chopped him down slowly, he'd stay hurt. His other two losses were also due to futility: Winky Wright and Roy Jones dominated him, but they were smart enough not to hurt him too badly.
Juan Manuel Marquez - It is hard to believe that a fighter who has battled at the championship level for nearly a decade and a half, and been dropped 10 times has never been stopped. However, that is the case for yet another future hall of famer. In fact, if a surprise KO shows up in a Marquez fight, he is the winner (Pacquiao, Diaz 1). His counterpunching mastery has allowed him to often catch opponents coming in to finish him. Marquez has also been helped by often being dropped by the lighter hitting fighters he has faced, who are not natural finishers in the first place. The referee would not have been wrong to stop his first Pacquiao fight after the 3rd knockdown. However, he did not, and Marquez rose to win the next 7 rounds. Good luck getting anyone to stop a Marquez fight now.
Chris Strait
www.convictedartist.com
