The Top 100 Pound for Pound All-Time Greats

The more I look at 82-100 the more i like it.

 

Yeah, snap, I was just thinking that same thing...it's starting to feel ok, it went a bit wobbly there and I was alarmed by the great champions I was junking and the high ranking of the three amigos/Lewis. But it's ok...

 

The case for Fritzie Zivic.

Zivic lost a lot post 1942 and has more than a smattering of losses prior to that, in his prime, which I admit have disuaded me from ranking other fighters with the problem, Jack and Mandell the foremost examples. But Zivic fought, arguably, the highest level of competition out of anyone on the list outside the top 25. He fought anyone between lightweight and middlewight. He didn't give a ****. He has four absolute jewels in h is crown that go underated even by those who know about them, imo.

Eddie Booker
Booker, who is most certainly to be ranked 101-120 was on a crazy hot sterak when he met Zivic in Febuary of 1939. Booker was coming off a draw with Holman Williams no less, and was completely unbeaten. Although still a welterweight, Zivic was fightinga t around 140 (listed 137). Outboxed early, Zivic turned aggressor and literally charged the much bigger man, who had proven himself the better boxer, and beat him up, even dropping him in the process. Booker was pre-prime but it's still an exceptional win.

Henry Armstrong
There are other guys on the list who have benefited from nicking a past-prime win over Armstrong - but Zivic did it against the reigning welterweight champion of the world. I think Amrstrong had begun to slip at this point, but he was still good enough to KO Phil Furr, Lew Jenkins, Ralph Zanneli and Paul Junior in the few months prior to their first meeting. In fact he had lost one fight during an insane schedule since 1936, down at lightweigh to Lou Ambers. At welterweight he had remained invincible.

People tried to say he fought dirty; he did fight dirty. So did Armstrong. And people forget that it was an Armstrong foul that triggered the famous Arthur Donovan refrain, "if that's the way you boys want it, I won't stop you", not a Zivic one.

Fritzie fought the round of his life in that 15th and nearly stopped Armstrong in what was then a tied fight. Three months later he did stop him in a rematch. Lou Ambers might have snapped him off, but it is Zivic who ended the party. Neither man was quite the same, arguably.

Charley Burley
Hardly the finished article, Burley was more powerful, faster, stronger and longer. There's basically no way Zivic should have beaten him. He did though, even though he lost a series to the growing Charley.

He also lost the series to Jake LaMotta. But what the hell was he doing even fighting LaMotta? Even Armstrong might have baulked at fighting LaMotta. A huge middleweight pressurefighter with every concievable physical and style advantage going and Zivic managed to nick one against him.

Even the guys who beat him like Conn (who beat him by one round) and Robinson (some papers called it near to a draw first time around) named him a genius. He also has:
Chuck Woods (beat Canzoneri and Holman), Jannazzo, Furr, Jenkins (A draw and a win against the shot version), Davis, Angott, Kid Azteca (x3 i think), Cochrane.

He belongs.

 

Super. I wish i had some bunting I could put out.

 

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Barrera is in, Tyson is not in.