Most underrated boxers in history

Elbows McFadden
Mike Gibbons
Jeff Clark
Packey McFarland
Jack Blackburn
Newsboy Brown
Dave Holly
Jeff Smith
Mysterious Billy Smith

Too many to be honest.

 

Bud Taylor
Tommy Ryan
Packey MacFarland
John Henry Lewis
Joey Giardello
Joe Brown

 

Jeff Chandler
John Henry Lewis.

 

Sonny Liston anyone ?

 

Don't know if "Hurricane" Jackson qualifies as "underrated," but curious what classic posters think of him?

 

"'Ol'Bones" was my MAN. Gave me boxing tips at Stillman's.

 

I think that he simply must have had something to him, just to beat the people he did.

 

Not much. I've seen articles from his day that suggest my low opinion is about right.

 

I think Gianfranco Rosi deserves more credit. He held the jr. middleweight title twice and turned back some decent fighters along the way. I know his loss to Curry was pretty embarrassing, but I think he came back from it pretty well.

 

You can approach this from several directions, but I've chosen two parameters. You can either have fellas who should be considered for being considered nut) for all time greatness at their weight and in that bracket from the top of my head I would cite Yuri Arbachakov and Myung Woo Yuh. Incientally, what a fight that would have been. Yuh really reminds me of a prime Chavez, the take two to give one good one, the sharp uppercuts and crosses close in. There is a fight out there on Youtube versus OK Kon Son or something like that which features a murderous display of body punching. Arbachakov is one of the most balanced boxers you'll see and really is a good person to wtahc for the aspiring boxer-puncher. He really had it all (though I have fights of his where he was hurt) and it would have been terrific to see him up against a Mark Johnson or Carbajal.

Secondly, you can pick boxers who were solid and workaday but probably unspectacular champions who never grabbed headlines or shocked anybody but did good, consistent work and flew under the radar somewhat. According to those criteria, I nominate Eloy Rojas and Daniel Zaragoza.

 

or you can more accurately consider great fighters so feared they just weren't getting in...

Britain had two of them at middleweight,

first Jock McAvoy who made such light work of his American "tests", including world champions, and a 'feared' L-HW cum HW contender himself in Al kid McCoy,

- and of course McAvoy's good showing against the already mentioned L-HW great John Henry Lewis.

How would the other then middleweights have done against Lewis?

and then of course there was McAvoy's homegrown nemisis,
the feared Scots/Italian Bert Gilroy, who was 'thee' most feared fighter in British boxing,
favourite to beat McAvoy (1938-43), so completely denied title shots it's still possibly a criminal offence!

Jock McAvoy
Bert Gilroy

both these great middleweights are so underrated, marginalized and forgotten!

 

Rudy koopmans
Bep van klaveren
Gary mason
terry march
Duane Thomas

 

Virgil Hill, Johnny Tapia, Gerry Penalosa, Orlando Canizales.

 

Ricardo Lopez
Mike McCallum
Ezzard Charles
Sumbu Kalambay
Mark "Too Sharp" Johnson
Yuri Arbachakov
Herol Graham
Larry Holmes
Winky Wright
Donald Curry