The Top 100 Pound for Pound All-Time Greats

Your worryingly obsessed. Lopez is behind Calzaghe, of course, so he's around 115

Yeah, i'm fast as a **** man. I mean when I get going I am really really quick. But you get paid, so you win.

 

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#97 James Toney (74-7-3)

James Toney was and remains one of the more compelling characters in boxing, a comic-book anti-hero with just enough moments of real danger tossed in to what has been a tumultuous career to prevent his becoming a caricature of himself. Still calling out each of the heavyweight strapholders whenever someone waves a microphone in his general direction, that same braggadocios birthed one of the most beautiful moments of the 1990s when, clearly being outboxed by superb IBF middleweight titlist Michael Nunn, Toney returned to his corner and told them there that he was going to win by knockout. Nunn was starting to puff; the workrate necessary to keep the slippery Toney in his place was proving too much. Like all displays of arrogance in the ring, it is only arrogance if you don’t deliver and Toney did, stopping a newly befuddled Nunn in the eleventh round to lift the strap.

A handful of successful defenses followed including two against the superb Mike McCallum (a draw and a split decision win), the only slip being a gift decision over the workmanlike Dave Tiberi who found the machinations of world-title boxing so unfathomable he quit. Cementing a legacy at 168 lbs. where he annexed an additional title, Toney was matched with a fighter we now know was close to unbeatable in Roy Jones. He was outclassed.

After, there were good nights and bad but the stoppage of light-heavy Anthony Hembrick, cruiserweight props culminating in the domination of the superb Vassily Jirov and some heavyweight jollies the pinnacle of which was the stoppage defeat of Evander Holyfield, the tainted victory over John Ruiz and the life-and-death go with Samuel Peter, does plenty to enhance his all-time standing. He swapped punches with fighters weighing between 160 and 260 lbs. and was never stopped, but it is for that original run that he should be most remembered, stepping into the ring against Roy Jones at 44-0-2, regarded by many as the greatest fighter on the planet.

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I bet.

**** yeah!

 

The thing is, it's a hobby. I have an ambition to get paid for something I write in boxing once but that's it. I do as much or as little as i like.

And the main thing for me man: I wrote something like 3,000 words when Chucho died and people read that ****. You got to write only 200. **** that. They can keep their money.

It does teach discipline though and I overwrite horribly.

 

Can always happen, but I like it as it is. One day some poor ******* is going to read through this whole thing; it's a wee treat for them.

And anyway, this is the thread that is getting stickied, warts and all.

 

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#96 Philadelphia Jack O’Brien (93-8-14; 53-8 Newspaper Decisions)

Jack O’Brien is one of the few fighters in history to have an attempted fix completely exposed; his involvement in the conspiracy surrounding his 1906 fight with Tommy Burns creating quite the stink. As a fight it is a fine demonstration of the difficulties in appraising an era where very few of the fights were filmed, where no governing body existed to enforce the rules. But we are not picking and choosing times and places in the construction of this list; if a fight was fought under a version of the Marquis of Queensberry rules we are interested in it.

O’Brien’s record, then, is to be respected. In fights where decisions were to be rendered in the eventuality that nobody scored the knockout, he lost just eight times. Fighting in a time where a boxer making five fights in a given year was not considered busy, this is impressive and permits us to forgive his numerous draws.

A brief look over his record reveals two results in particular that impress: the 1905 stoppage of Bob Fitzsimmons and the 1909 disputed draw with Jack Johnson. In stopping the aged Fitzsimmons (then 44), O’Brien became the recognized light-heavyweight champion of the world and took a tilt at claiming the heavyweight title too, a claim that was heralded in some corners such was the confusion caused by the retirement of Jim Jeffries. Whilst Fitzsimmons was old, he had beaten O’Brien himself in 1904 and the excellent George Gardner in 1903, and was still regarded as a scalp. It was an impressive result and the Johnson draw was perhaps even more so. Johnson was in his pomp, and although he arrived out of shape for the fight, he was still by far the bigger man, a legitimate heavyweight to O’Brien’s super-middleweight. No fight provides more insight into O’Brien’s style and strengths.

According to The Times Dispatch O’Brien was “in and out in a flash, stabbing Johnson in the face [with his left]” whilst his “fast footwork and superior blocking saved him from damage in close.”

O’Brien boxed beautifully on the back foot, but even against Johnson he was happy to mix it on occasion, his cleverness sparing him the worst of Johnson’s abuse. Such was his display that some papers, including The New York Sun, had O’Brien shading the reigning heavyweight champion but the overall picture is a mixed one.

These two results aside, O’Brien offers up plenty. Famed as a light-heavyweight, he made his bones in a middleweight division being dominated by Tommy Ryan and the Barbados Demon, Joe Walcott. O’Brien met both of them over the six-round distance, fighting a disputed draw with Ryan and beating Walcott. But it was the four-fight series with Jack Sullivan that really underpins his resume. As late as 1907, Sullivan was still being listed amongst the very best fighters on the planet, but 1903 through 1905, he couldn’t beat O’Brien in four tries, going 0-1-3. In many ways Sullivan was O’Brien’s direct peer; clever, quick, cerebral and trapped between weights. O’Brien’s clear superiority to him indicates the quality of fighter he was.

Toss in such notables as Joe Choynski, Tommy West, Jack Blackburn, heavyweights Al Kaufman and Jim Flynn, Young Peter Jackson, Hugo Kelly and a (legitimate) six-round win over future heavyweight champion Tommy Burns and you have a fighter who clearly belongs.

 

Plus, I can link all the articles when I tidy the OP.