The Top 100 Pound for Pound All-Time Greats

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#3 Sugar Ray Robinson (173-19-6)

“He didn’t knock me out did he?”

“Nobody knocked you out. It was the heat, the heat beat you.”

“It wasn’t the heat. It was God.”

So said Sugar Ray Robinson concerning his failed 1952 tilt at the world light-heavyweight champion, Joey Maxim. By this stage past his very best, a combination of a soaring temperature and a larger, stronger opponent inflicted upon Robinson the only stoppage defeat of his career. During his prime, it is very likely that God wouldn’t have got anywhere near him. So synonymous is he with greatness in the field of pugilism that he has become the de facto #1 on lists such as this one, and this, perhaps, is no bad thing. He is qualified for the spot and carelessly inserting him on the biggest of boxing thrones spares the eyes the pain of looking directly at such deities for prolonged periods. Putting Robinson under a microscope is akin to studying the surface of the sun with a magnifying glass.

Joe Gnouly was faded when they tossed him in with the young lion that was Robinson in in 1941, a 15-0 lightweight of length and speed but very far from the finished article. Such fighters are vulnerable to the machinations of ring veterans and Gnouly was still good enough in that year to have taken on and beaten coming contender Willie Joyce and likely believed himself the equal of the raw-boned youth set down in front of him for the younger man’s Washington debut. Robinson slashed him to ribbons in three, faster than he had been stopped at any time in his career, faster even than Henry Armstrong had managed a year before. The fight that would set him on the road to stardom—the fight after which he would make the greatest call of any boxer’s career, telephoning his mother to tell her she need never work again—came just three months and five fights later. It was a non-title matchup between Robinson and NBA lightweight champion Sammy Angott, who stepped up to the ring a champion stung by the unsightly business that was his underdog status and left it with his tail between his legs, having been dropped and battered by the fighter now being named “the clean-up hitter” for the lightweight division. Angott defended his title against Lew Jenkins and twice tamed Bob Montgomery and then met Robinson again the summer of ’42. Robinson dropped and outpointed him once more, and once more the title was not on the line. In the interim, Robinson battered future welterweight champion Marty Servo and former welterweight champion Fritzie Zivic. This meant two things. Firstly, the Sugar Man had arrived, secondly he wasn’t going to get a title shot at lightweight. Like so many great ones before and after, he headed north. Through ’42 he twice defeated former welterweight champion Izzy Jannazzo and went 3-1 with the great middleweight Jake LaMotta. These were the fights that really made Robinson, pressure cooker wars that taught him to utilize those lightning fast feet, sit down on his punches and vanish, hit, move, slash, batter, brutalize, move, dance, kill. By the time of his domination of Henry Armstrong in the summer of 1943, Robinson had perfected this art as completely as any man ever has, and likely ever will. One of the great reigns of the welterweight division had now begun, hampered only by the detail that nobody had put a title on the line against him yet.

American history is replete with fighters, mostly black, who were excellent, but held no title. Robinson did not become one of these for several reasons and perhaps unsavory connections number amongst them, but most of all it was his sheer unadulterated brilliance coupled with an exciting, punching style that meant the fans loved him. Robinson lost not a fight between his four times avenged defeat to Jake LaMotta in early 1943 and his 1951 loss to Randy Turpin. To say he was busy during that time is an understatement. After Armstrong, he brushed aside Jannazzo in two, decisioned Tommy Bell over ten, brushing aside contenders like George Costner and Jimmy McDaniels on the way through, as though they were nothing. There were occasional scares, like the one against Artie Levine who came extremely close to changing boxing history before succumbing to the inevitable, and then Robinson finally got his shot, against Bell, who had miraculously shot to the front of the queue despite Sugar’s earlier outclassing of him. Bell actually made a much better match of it in their title fight, which was for the crown vacated by Marty Servo, whom Robinson had beaten twice, but was defeated nonetheless by the man who had been regarded by many as the uncrowned welterweight champion for years.

Robinson held the title between 1946 and 1951 and amongst his defenses is the jewel of his welterweight resume, a fifteen-round defeat of Kid Gavilan. It can be argued successfully that this was a fight between primed versions of the two best fighters ever to make 147 pounds and that Robinson won, if not quite at a canter, then without digging in the spurs. A close opening seven was contrasted by a back eight firmly controlled by the champion. Gavilan is in an argument with Thomas Hearns, Charley Burley and Ray Leonard over who is the second best fighter ever to weigh 147 pounds, but it is my opinion that the number one birth cannot be disputed. That belongs to Robinson, and to find meaningful competition he would have to step up to 160 pounds.

It is here that a modern observer gets to know him for there is much more footage of Robinson at middleweight. Perhaps most instructive is his unique stoppage of Jake LaMotta, a TKO in the thirteenth round of their sixth encounter in February of ’51. With the world middleweight title on the line, LaMotta showed everything there is in a bull’s repertoire to try to keep Robinson under control but when he blasted his last surge into Robinson’s midriff in the eleventh only for Sugar to come back at him again, he wilted and was smashed to a stoppage against the ropes by exalted violence rarely seen in the ring. This is what is often forgotten about Robinson. Seen here at the end of the welterweight run and the beginning of his middleweight one, we find him at or close to his savage best and the violence inherent in his style. Yes, he was a boxing genius, but he was also a terrible ring savage who held ring violence in hand. It was a combination of attributes that left great champions wanting at both lightweight and welterweight, but that would also make him a five-time middleweight champion of the world. Past his peak almost as soon as he had stepped out of the St. Valentine’s Day ring he butchered LaMotta in, he lost and regained his title against Randy Turpin, retired, made a comeback and re-took his title with a brutal second round knockout over Bob Olsen, lost and regained his title from Gene Fulmer, lost and regained his title to Carmen Basilio. Other middleweights he brutalized included Holly Mims, Luc Van Dam, Robert Villemain, Jose Basora, Rocky Graziano, Rocky Castellani and Denny Moyer. His form was inevitably patchy at the higher weight but was and remains one of the greatest middleweight warriors of them all. He retired well into his forties in 1965, and is deemed the greatest fighter to have boxed in both the forties and the fifties—arguably the two deepest decades in the history of the sport.

The opinion of their shared peers which seems to be just in favor of Robinson sees him perched on his toes and ready to hit just in front of Armstrong at #3.

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#2 Harry Greb (104-8-3; Newspaper Decisions 158-9-16)

I had a dream last night that Harry Greb awaited me at the pearly gates having swarmed St. Peter into a surprised and dramatic repose on the cloud and I had to explain to him just why I saw fit to rank him outside of the top one, where he so clearly belongs. Upon waking I resolved to address the issue post-haste but in the cold light of morning the realization that placing Sugar Ray Robinson at #3 had likely already damned me so to hell with it (and me, probably).

Greb has the best paper resume in the sport’s history, and most of the men he defeated were at or near their absolute best when he trounced them. The men from this list who he defeated are Tommy Gibbons, Mike Gibbons, Mickey Walker, Gene Tunney, Jack Dillon and Tommy Loughran. Men like Gibbons, Tunney and Walker were at one time or another heartily thrashed by him in non-competitive bouts that underline just how much better Greb was than most of these men—as a middleweight, the great Mickey Walker clearly was not in his class. When he first encountered Gene Tunney, the fighting marine, he beat him as though he was a thief and finished the fight covered in the future heavyweight world champion’s blood, himself almost unmarked. Meeting Tommy Gibbons in what was billed as a world title eliminator in their final fight in 1922, Greb beat him so completely and inarguably that Gibbons was considered by the press to have been removed from the title picture having previously been the man deemed most likely to challenge Jack Dempsey. For each of these fights, Greb was suffering from varying degrees of blindness in his right eye.

When he moved up to heavyweight in search of the ultimate of sporting honors, he continued to outclass opponents despite their vast size advantages. There has been conservative enhancements made to a fighter’s all-time standing on this list due to his being able to prove his brilliance in multiple weight classes but as a rule such a fighter will be weighing in at or around the limit for that new weight class. Not Greb. When Greb stepped up to heavyweight, he continued to box as a middleweight or small light-heavyweight. Standing just 5-foot-8 and boxing with the style of a speedster, he had little choice.

Greb attacked with a “sea of gloves,” and was the fastest fighter of his generation and according to those that saw him, was faster than the fastest fighters of the next generation. “He was always on the move – side-stepping, retreating, advancing…” said Gene Tunney of their five battles, “…a memory still terrifying…he was the greatest fighter I ever saw.”

“He’d never stop throwing punches,” confirmed Tommy Loughran. “He had extraordinary ability along the lines of endurance. He never seemed to run out of wind.”

This terrifying speed, grindless engine and astonishing workrate made him all but invulnerable even at heavyweight. Title challengers Bill Brennan and Billy Miske were both entirely outclassed at one time or another as well as numerous journeymen and contenders, some of whom outweighed “The Pittsburgh Windmill” by nearly forty pounds. It made no matter. He tore through the best in the middleweight, light-heavyweight and heavyweight divisions who would entertain him He took no notice of the color-line and met many of the top black contenders of his time, although in the form of the champions of the three divisions he terrorized he found that he himself was avoided. In 1919, he went 45-0 against all comers from those three divisions, including light-heavyweight champions Battling Levinsky and Mike McTigue fighting dozens of world-class opponents at the rate of almost one a week.

Greb edges out Robinson along the simplest of lines: quality of opposition beat. He beat more great fighters. It is also a fact that in Charley Burley and Cocoa Kid, Robinson, known to be a hardline negotiator, left behind two messes that he should have cleaned up in the form of fighters who sought an engagement with him, were good enough to test him, but were denied the right to meet him, whilst Greb met everyone in his era who dared to fight him, usually more than once. In counterweight stands Robinson’s brilliance on film, whilst no film of Greb is said to exist. Rightly or wrongly, a counterview is formed in the mind of Greb’s abilities and skills—simply put he cannot be far behind Robinson, if at all.

Watching fighters like Tommy Loughran, Tommy Gibbons and Mickey Walker and imagining such men thrashed in one-sided encounters by a man of some otherworldly class in dramatic excess of the ability of the best fighters in the era is enough to get him over the line.

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#1 Sam Langford (179-30-40; Newspaper Decisions 32-14-15)

In his masterpiece Sam Langford: Boxing’s Greatest Uncrowned Champions, Clay Moyle tells the story of Langford’s June 1917 clash with heavyweight contender Fred Fulton. Meetings between the pair were said to draw laughter from the audience because of the eleven-inch height advantage enjoyed by Fulton, but his manager, Mike Collins, knew better than to take any perceived advantages for granted. In the weeks approaching Fulton’s fight with “The Black Death” Sam Langford, so named for his being credited with stopping more men than the worst pandemic in human history, Collins had drummed into his charge the necessity for extreme caution in boxing Sam: he was to avoid throwing the right hand at all costs. He was to jab, jab, jab and keep Langford at a literal arm’s length.

Fulton took it upon himself to obey these instructions during the opening round, but the sight of Langford’s bloated frame, “layers of extra weight” covering his once muscular frame, slow, stuck on the end of Fulton’s jab, “far from the fighter of old” (The Boston Herald) convinced him that he was safe to throw the right, maybe get the little fat man out of there. In the second, he tried it. Sam slipped the punch, covered the distance between them in a single step and cracked a left hook in behind Fulton’s ear, staggering him. Fulton recovered and in the fourth round, he did land a right hand. The punch immediately blinded Langford in his left eye. As the rounds wore on, the vision faded from his right eye, too. In the sixth, he fought in complete blindness, feeling for the giant he shared the ring with before being pulled by his corner before the seventh could begin.

Hospitalized after the fight, Langford never recovered he sight in his left eye, though he would be able to see out of the right one within a week. Fat, past his peak and now blind in one eye, Langford should have retired. Instead, he boxed on for nearly a decade, losing twenty-five fights as his increasingly sad career wound down. A lavish spender in his prime and lacking a talent for anything but fighting, he was locked into a profession that would see him literally fighting in darkness before he retired. Even in such a condition, he was a dangerous opponent, able to beat Joe Jeannette by knockout, something that neither the dynamite puncher Sam McVey nor the great champion Jack Johnson was able to do in multiple attempts, the great light-heavyweight and colored heavyweight champion claimant Kid Norfolk, who he knocked out in two, world title challenger Battling Jim Johnson, Bill Tate, Jeff Clark, Sam McVey, George Godfrey, Bearcat Wright, Jim Flynn and an astonishing second round knockout of a young Tiger Flowers, a fight in which he was peering through a “good eye” which was giving way to a cataract. His career from 1917 until his retirement in 1926, sad as it was, would alone have been enough to see him included upon this list. These fights speak of the quality of his skill and ring generalship, his incredible durability, his great heart and his terrible punching power. They speak of the lessons learned in a career that saw him beat great fighters from the lightweight all the way to the heavyweight division. They speak of two specific lessons taught to him by two fighters on the same night, one a great, one not. That night was the eighth of December, 1903 and the first lesson was learned at the hands of The Old Master, Joe Gans.

“Gans was the coolest, calmest fighter I ever met,” Langford would later say. “No matter what was happening to him, he never lost his temper…many fighters, when they’re ready to hit, tense their lips or half close their eyes or give a tip-off in some way…Joe never did. A wonder of wonders was that Joe Gans.”

Langford was only seventeen for his fight with Gans who was not at his best, keeping to a hairpin schedule that had seen him fighting the night before. He also carried either a stomach ailment or a stomach injury into the fight, which was originally to be for the 135-pound title which Gans, then in his absolute prime, was defending. Sam weighed in at 136 pounds, denying him the right to fight for it. Langford fought for it anyway and turned in a performance for the ages. The New York Evening World:

“Sam Langford astonishes all…[he] outfought and outgeneralled Joe Gans, the lightweight champion of the world in every round of the fifteen they contested last night.”

Other reports have it closer; all have it for Langford. What Sam learned in the ring that night can only be guessed at, but after the fight he spoke in detail with sometime middleweight and light-heavyweight contender George Byers on how to improve his punching form. “I didn’t know nothing,” Langford would say of their meeting. “I used to chase and punch, hurt my hands. After George taught me I made them come to me. I made them lead.”

Langford became one of the greatest punchers of all time and like Joe Louis after him and Bob Fitzsimmons before he would develop great subtlety in skill to buy that lead. Moyle’s telling of the Fulton fight would illustrate perfectly how dangerous he would become, and remain, even past his best.

After Gans, Langford beat George McFadden and was then matched for the welterweight title against Barbados Joe Walcott. Still a teenager, Langford “completely outboxed” the champion, but the decision was a draw, based almost entirely upon Walcott’s aggression in making the fight. Dave Holly, Young Peter Jackson and Jack Blackburn were the top names Langford tied up through ’05, and then the strangest thing happened. Langford stepped up to heavyweight and lost in eight rounds to Joe Jeannette. Just 5-foot-7 and weighing in under the middleweight limit, Langford obviously found this division to his liking and he rematched Jeanette four months later, this time outpointing him over fifteen. It was the beginning of his domination of the “The Black Dynamite,” a group of black heavyweights who fought each other regularly for walking around money because white contenders avoided them like the plague.

Easily the smallest of them, Langford was also the best of them between 1906 and 1915 when the youth and size of Harry Wills began to wear upon him. Wills, unquestionably one of the great heavyweights, finally got to grips with Langford, but would remain vulnerable to his astonishing punching ability throughout their epic series, losing by knockout in the 19th round of a scheduled 20 after walking onto a Langford left hook in their February 1916 contest.

What sets Langford apart, if he is to be set apart, is his domination of the heavyweight division which saw him beat, amongst other, Wills, McVey, Jeanette, Stanley Ketchel, Jim Flynn, Iron Hague, Gunboat Smith, Jim Johnson, Dan Flynn, John Johnson, Jim Johnson and Jack O’Brien. He was never the champion, but Jack Johnson’s refusal to meet him in the ring for the title, having previously beaten a middleweight Langford whilst enjoying a thirty-pound weight advantage, speaks volumes. Langford’s heavyweight resume is vastly superior to that of Harry Greb, and although Langford is naturally a bigger fighter if not a taller one, he also sports the better wins below middleweight. Greb cannot equal Sam’s best wins in either the biggest or the smallest divisions they fought in, and this is the cornerstone upon which ranking Langford above Greb—above everyone—rests.

It is not a new idea. Both Harry Wills and Jack Dempsey ranked Sam Langford as The Greatest, as did historian and promoter Charley Rose. Hype Igoe, the legendary New York boxing writer and cartoonist who covered the fights between 1907 and 1937, rated him the best fighter he ever saw. His peers Joe Williams and Grantland Rice agreed with him. Existing film gives clues as to why he was and is so highly thought of it, but there is simply not enough of it to ever satisfy. One thing all of those precious fights have in common is the opponent—each and every one of them looks absolutely terrified.

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And that gents, is that.

 

01 - Sam Langford
02 - Harry Greb
03 - Sugar Ray Robinson
04 - Henry Armstrong
05 - Ezzard Charles
06 - Bob Fitzsimmons
07 - Muhammad Ali
08 - Joe Gans
09 - Joe Louis
10 - Roberto Duran.
11 - Benny Leonard
12 - Mickey Walker
13 - Willie Pep
14 - Barney Ross
15 - Archie Moore
16 - Ray Leonard
17 - George Dixon
18 - Terry McGovern
19 - Packey McFarland
20 - Pernell Whitaker
21 - Tony Canzoneri
22 - Jimmy McLarnin
23 - Sandy Saddler
24 - Stanley Ketchel
25 - Charley Burley
26 - Holman Williams
27 - Billy Conn
28 - Gene Tunney
29 - Roy Jones
30 - Joe Walcott
31 - Carlos Monzon
32 - Jimmy Wilde
33 - Eder Jofre
34 - Marvin Hagler
35 - Julio Cesar Chavez
36 - Tommy Gibbons
37 - Kid Gavilan
38 - Jack Britton
39 - Emile Griffith
40 - Jose Napoles
41 - Alexis Arguello
42 - Michael Spinks
43 - Tommy Loughran
44 - Thomas Hearns
45 - Jimmy Bivins
46 - Ike Williams
47 - Floyd Mayweather
48 - Manny Pacquiao
49 - Tommy Ryan
50 - Jack Dillon
51 - Bernard Hopkins
52 - Carlos Ortiz
53 - Fighting Harada
54 - Ruben Olivares
55 – Evander Holyfield
56 - Young Corbett III
57 - Mike Gibbons
58 – Ted Kid Lewis
59 - Freddie Welsh
60 - Freddie Steele
61 - Lou Ambers
62 - Salvador Sanchez
63 - Wilfredo Gomez
64 - Vicente Saldivar
65 - Rocky Marciano
66 - Abe Attell
67 - Manuel Ortiz
68 - Harold Johnson
69 - Dick Tiger
70 - Luis Manuel Rodriguez
71 - Carmen Basilio
72 - Carlos Zarate
73 - Miguel Canto
74 - Oscar De La Hoya
75 - Azumah Nelson
76 - Mike McCallum
77 - Lary Holmes
78 - Bob Foster
79 - Teddy Yarosz
80 - Jim Driscoll
81 - Panama Al Brown
82 - Pascual Perez
83 - Lloyd Marshall
84 – Jake LaMotta
85 - Juan Manuel Marquez
86 – Wilfred Benitez
87 – Nonpareil Jack Dempsey
88 – Erik Morales
89 – Marco Antonio Barrera
90 - Young Griffo
91 - Fritzie Zivic
92 - Joe Frazier
93 - Pete Herman
94 - Lennox Lewis
95 - Jack "Kid" Berg
96 - Philadelphia Jack O'Brien
97 - James Toney
98 - Nicolino Locche
99 - Jung Koo Chang
100-George Foreman

The Details: Part One, 100-91
http://www.boxing.com/the_100_greatest_fighters_of_all_time_part_one_100_91.html

The Details: Part Two, 90-81
http://www.boxing.com/the_100_greatest_fighters_of_all_time_part_two_90_81.html

The Details: Part Three, 80-71
http://www.boxing.com/the_100_greatest_fighters_of_all_time_part_three_80_71.html

The Details: Part Four, 70-61
http://www.boxing.com/the_100_greatest_fighters_of_all_time_part_four_70_61.html

The Details: Part Five, 60-51
http://www.boxing.com/the_one_hundred_greatest_fighters_of_all_time_part_five_60_51.html

The Details: Part Six, 50-41
http://www.boxing.com/the_100_greatest_fighters_of_all_time_part_six_50_41.html

The Details: Part Seven, 40-31
http://www.boxing.com/the_100_greatest_fighters_of_all_time_part_seven_40_31.html

The Details: Part Eight, 30-21
http://www.boxing.com/the_100_greatest_fighters_of_all_time_part_eight_30_21.html

The Details: Part Nine, 21-11
http://www.boxing.com/the_100_greatest_fighters_of_all_time_part_nine_20_11.html

The Details: Part Ten, 1-10
http://www.boxing.com/the_100_greatest_fighters_of_all_time_part_ten_10_1.html

 

Cheers Max and Orr. Of course there are a few dudes in the thread who pitched in and then some. A special word for flea and senya, who both took a look over an entry for me in detail.

 

Yeah, I remember your 138lb figure from before, and I know that boxrec has 140 listed. I went with Clay Moyle on this one, who has it as above.

 

I understand, and I do trust you but I also believe in an historical standard - Moyle sets the historical standard as far as Langford is concerned and whilst you set the standard as far as Gans is concerned, I look to Moyle first at this time as far as write up of Langford goes.

I don't doubt that there are multiple disputable points throughout these articles that will come to be ironed out in coming years, and I welcome that.

 

If the major and legitimate publishing houses (i.e. those that pay the author and not vice versa) were still interested in boxing books, Matt’s exemplary body of work here would be an excellent primer for so-called writers and experts who are largely clueless about the extent of work and discipline that is required to make the grade. We all have our ideas about how our favourites should be ranked. But leaving that aside, this series has grabbed my attention from beginning to end. Take a bow, author!

-Mike Casey.

 

Demand for part one on boxing.com is so high it's crashed the site