Orlando Canizales

[mhager91490]

Where do you rank him in the pantheon of great bantamweight champions of the past. What o you think his best and worst performances were and how do you think he would do in H2H match ups against these following fighters over 15 rounds each?

Eder Jofre
Fighting Harada
Ruben Olivares
Carlos Zarate
Jeff Chandler

[tyger]

Orlando was good, and an underrated boxer but his lack of meaningful competition makes it hard for me to pick him over any of these guys in their primes.

[TOBYLEE1]

Orlando didn't shine in any category in power, speed or extraordinary defense but was a very solid fighter. He had power, above average defense, excellent chin and good boxing ability. Only when he went up in weight is when he started to struggle a bit a also his age. He would had been a solid matchup against any cause he also had a lot of mental toughness

[Silencers]

Canizales was a very good fighter, had some of the best footwork I've ever seen to be honest, without that footwork he'd be an ordinary fighter though. I wouldn't pick him over the guys listed in the first post but I think he would've given a good account of himself.

As for his best and worst performances, I can't say I've seen all his fights but from what I've seen the one that stands out as his best performance I'd say is the first Kelvin Seabrooks fight, he took apart Seabrooks. His worst, personally I thought he fought a very ****** fight against Billy Hardy in their first fight, it made the fight very entertaining but Canizales didn't look like himself that night and made the fight much tougher for himself than it should've been. Haven't seen his losses to Paul Gonzalez and Junior Jones though so maybe those were worse.

On a sidenote, I thought he edged out Vazquez in their fight.

[mhager91490]

Canizales was a very good fighter, had some of the best footwork I've ever seen to be honest, without that footwork he'd be an ordinary fighter though. I wouldn't pick him over the guys listed in the first post but I think he would've given a good account of himself.

As for his best and worst performances, I can't say I've seen all his fights but from what I've seen the one that stands out as his best performance I'd say is the first Kelvin Seabrooks fight, he took apart Seabrooks. His worst, personally I thought he fought a very ****** fight against Billy Hardy in their first fight, it made the fight very entertaining but Canizales didn't look like himself that night and made the fight much tougher for himself than it should've been. Haven't seen his losses to Paul Gonzalez and Junior Jones though so maybe those were worse.

On a sidenote, I thought he edged out Vazquez in their fight.

Agree as far as the footwork goes though you can't discount his offensive counterpunching though his success in doing so was mostly due to his amazing footwork.

My pick for his best performance was his second encounter with Billy Hardy, he was squarely at his peak at that point an that was his most superlative performance and everything came together for him in that fight. He had Hardy confused the whole fight and had him apprehensive to do anything because he kept getting popped with punches he couldn't see, most notably Orlando's signature slide to the right then the cross. The KO was absolutely devestating, this is probably my favorite offensive devestation to watch.

His worst performance I would say was his first fight with Sergio Reyes which is one of my favorite fights but not a good performance from Canizales. Orlando started strong but Reyes buckled down and started backing Orlando up an he never could fight off the backfoot as well as going forward. It's been a while since I scored it but I think I scored it 8-4 in favor of Reyes, he just slugged his way through it.

The first Seabrooks fight was for one an excellent action fight but I think Orlando could of gotten him out of there earlier had he not taken rounds off like he did. He would outclass him badly at times but then just let Seabrooks back in the fight though some his lapses could be due to the cut he sustained. In Azumah-like fashion though he was destructive in the rematch against Seabrooks (and Reyes for that matter but Reyes was past it by then).

His first fight with Paul Gonzalez he was pretty much outboxed all the way through though he scored a highlight reel knockdown. Paul for a short time was an excellent fighter but him like Reyes faded quickly. In his fight with Jones it was obvious he wasn't the Canizales of old, he put up a spirited effort but Jones was just too talented for him at that point. I haven't ever sat down and scored the Vasquez fight but from just watching it I thought Canizales won with his late surge.

Canizales' biggest problem is that he fought down to his competition's level at times, when he fought a concentrated and intense fight he could blow through people but at times he was just content with just controlling his opponent.

[Canada]

Orlando Canizales is one of my favoruite fighter of all time incidentially, but I couldn't justify ranking him that highly at Bantamweight despite his successful title defenses. You look at the competition he fought at 118lbs and it's a little underwhelming even my contemporary standards. He didn't fight Vasquez at this weight, and maybe he should have fought Junior Jones at Bantamweight too. He was given real tough fights by the likes of Bill Hardy who was nothing special by any stretch of the imagination. Lack of real quality in his win column stop him from denting a top 10 list, really.

As far as his most accomplished performaces, I'm not claiming to have seen everyone of Orlando's title defeneses but I've always been particuarly impressed with his showing in the Kelvin Seabrooks rematch. It's true, when they first fought though 4-5 rounds, Orlando was pitching a masterpeice on combination punching. He slowed down after that, he claimed to have hurt his hands and he did indeed reveal two badly sprained hands in the post fight interview. In the rematch he set high standards early on but this time carried it through to the stoppage, really punishing Seabrooks, demonstrating his tradmark lateral movement and two-fisted combinations to head and body. Beautiful work.

His poorest performance was most likely the aforementioned first fight with Bill Hardy, but to his credit, Orlando set the record straight in the return bout - punishing Hardy throughout before the brutal stoppage came.

Orlando was a great offensive fighter who let himself down on occasions by letting his opponents off the hook. I like to think he would have really excelled if there was any marquee match-ups available to him, but as things stand, he's still one of the outstanding Bantamweights, 118lbs is just a division filled with quality throughout it's history - no shame not to break into a top 10.

[Silencers]

Agree as far as the footwork goes though you can't discount his offensive counterpunching though his success in doing so was mostly due to his amazing footwork.

My pick for his best performance was his second encounter with Billy Hardy, he was squarely at his peak at that point an that was his most superlative performance and everything came together for him in that fight. He had Hardy confused the whole fight and had him apprehensive to do anything because he kept getting popped with punches he couldn't see, most notably Orlando's signature slide to the right then the cross. The KO was absolutely devestating, this is probably my favorite offensive devestation to watch.

His worst performance I would say was his first fight with Sergio Reyes which is one of my favorite fights but not a good performance from Canizales. Orlando started strong but Reyes buckled down and started backing Orlando up an he never could fight off the backfoot as well as going forward. It's been a while since I scored it but I think I scored it 8-4 in favor of Reyes, he just slugged his way through it.

The first Seabrooks fight was for one an excellent action fight but I think Orlando could of gotten him out of there earlier had he not taken rounds off like he did. He would outclass him badly at times but then just let Seabrooks back in the fight though some his lapses could be due to the cut he sustained. In Azumah-like fashion though he was destructive in the rematch against Seabrooks (and Reyes for that matter but Reyes was past it by then).

His first fight with Paul Gonzalez he was pretty much outboxed all the way through though he scored a highlight reel knockdown. Paul for a short time was an excellent fighter but him like Reyes faded quickly. In his fight with Jones it was obvious he wasn't the Canizales of old, he put up a spirited effort but Jones was just too talented for him at that point. I haven't ever sat down and scored the Vasquez fight but from just watching it I thought Canizales won with his late surge.

Canizales' biggest problem is that he fought down to his competition's level at times, when he fought a concentrated and intense fight he could blow through people but at times he was just content with just controlling his opponent.

I thought about putting the second Billy Hardy fight as being his best performance as well but I thought that Seabrooks was arguably at his best when he fought Canizales and Seabrooks at his best was better than Hardy was, I also discounted the second Seabrooks fight because I thought Seabrooks was starting to slide by that point.

I don't know about his ability to take Seabrooks out earlier if he wanted to, Seabrooks was a warrior, the guy almost always came back when he was hurt making him somewhat of a lighter version of Matthew Saad Muhammad, the guy had great heart.

Thanks for the description of the fights and I agree that Canizales sometimes fought down to his level of opposition, making fights harder than they had to be.