WOW, just Wow - sometimes they FILMED it Right!

You speak true and I too feel that is the underlying motive behind his posts to build up Grandpop who was a decent fighter but never a world class one.
BOTTOM LINE
If you never beat a world class opponent,and lose fights to domestic fighters you AINT world class.Simple really.

He argued about the merits of Ken Shaw with me, Freddie Mills, not a classy fighter , but one who was in the right place at the right time,conceded 31.5lbs to Shaw and stopped him,in another fight he had a 12lbs pull over Mills and was stopped in that one too ,in one round. To put Mills himself in perspective, Mills was 10lbs heavier than Lloyd Marshall, yet Marshall wrecked him,dropping him 4 times before koing him.
Loyal but hardly objective is Mr Thistle.

 

It seems like Klompton will call anyone who was not an ATG champion a poor fighter. Especially if they are non American.

There have been many low grade champions who happened to be Americans too. Nobody is trying to say the best of the Europeans who won world titles were better than the best American grown champions. Europe never had a Muhammad Ali or Ray Robinson. Why should it? We know that. But for every Paul Pender, Jimmy Braddock, Marty Servo there have been Euro guys as good.

Freddie Mills and Marcel Cerdan fought at a good level and were certainly active and successful enough to be worthy of what they achieved.

 

Because I refuse to call club level fighters great I dont give any fighter who wasnt an actual all time great credit? Whatever.

I agree 100% that MANY champions from the USA were low grade and go even further and agree that you are spot on with regards to guys like Pender and Braddock. I would take even further and say that a fighter like Marcel Thil, who was better than Cerdan and Mills, gets criminally underrated. But im not going to sit here and pretend a bunch of guys who were absolutely not only not world class but often times not even the best fighter in their division in their neighborhood were something they werent. Its ridiculous. And as usual the common denominator with Danny is that these guys had some connection, tenuous or tangible, to his grandfather. Its all part of his agenda to paint his grandfather as something he wasnt: world class/championship calibre. My feelings have nothing to do with where he is from. Hell, I think the UK club scene is as colorful and interesting as our own. Im just not going to stroke the guys ego and pretend that these guys were all time greats because they beat his relative.

 

I get it Danny, every decision he lost was a horrible injustice. Every time he was knocked out the deck was stacked against him so he couldnt outweigh his opponent by 2 stone, every guy that legitimately beat him was HOF material, there was a massive conspiracy in place to keep Gilroy from getting the breaks he deserved, he was forced to move up in weight and fighter bigger guys because he couldnt get the fights at the weight he was comfortable at and then when he did get those fights it was an injustice because he had to come down in weight... Excuses are like assholes everyone has one, the problem with you in regards to Gilroy is you have about 100 assholes... I mean excuses.

 

It's Jimbo not Danny. :bbb

 

Ok, they're not all time great level. Absolutely not. But they are not club level either. Those guys fought in soccer stadiums. Club fighters fight in clubs. It's a decent level. Makes you realise how much better the champions must have been.

 

Mostly American M/W and Light H/W's.

:hi:

 

They were big fish in a very small pond. What does it say when Lee Savold went over there and became a celebrity.

 

Yeah, I enjoyed the footage a lot. Better than most from this era.

I do agree that most were not world-class, but in my opinion guys like Ralph were not clubfighters either...somewhere in between the two. I felt it was refreshing to see film of guys who I had read a lot about, but never seen.

So what if they're not ATG's...one issue I have on this board is that that's all people care to talk about, yet they make up 1% of all past and present fighters. The bulk of boxers are a notch or several below that level, and it's good to talk about these guys too instead of the same old Ali, Dempsey, Tyson, Lewis, Hagler, Hearns blah blah blah every day.

 

Savold was rated high and so was Baksi. It's not like they were small time. There just were not enough titles for all the fighters who were good enough to hold them. So many full time boxers. So many competative circuits. Even in Europe Club fighters had a competative circuit to fight in. Might have been local or small time but so many guys at the same level matched evenly will produce seasoned fighters. Seaman Tommy Watson was a featherweight on the northern English circuit who wound up beating Fidel LaBarba and taking kid Chocolate all the way in a title fight when he went to New York. A club fighter couldn't do that.

 

Watson beat world class Euro,and British championship level fighters ,Gilroy never did. No one called him a club fighter.


Great is the most overused adjective when applied to fighters.

 

I dont have a problem talking about lower grade fighters I just like to keep it in perspective. Thistle is the one who continues to call them great, even below this post which is trying to keep it in perspective:

"yes there are thousands of great fighters over the years whom we never hear about or know very little about them. this footage is great quality to see real fighting in these men, and they aren't club fighters, many of them were fringe contenders."

These guys werent great and they werent fringe contenders. Period. Ralph was a club level fighter. Period. I dont mean to say he only fought in clubs as an actual clubfighter. I mean thats the level he was on. He was a local talent. Nothing more. Olek was a club level fighter. Nothing more. These guys were small time and to paint them as contenders much less great is ridiculous. They are the type of guy that a visiting fighter would fight to get exposure and easy money. Just because the visiting fighter fought them doesnt make them contenders. And frankly, who the hell did they ever beat to become contenders? Even fringe contenders? Sorry to say but if you arent even the best fighter in Belgium in your weight class the odds are you arent cracking any rankings any time soon.

Choklab: I love Savold. I think hes underrated but he wasnt held in very high esteem in the USA. Remember he got his rating just prior to facing Wood**** the first time because he took on Gino Buonvino on short notice and stopped him in a round. How in gods name that qualified him to go from WAY down in the ratings all the up to #3 is a mystery to me (and this is where the Brits can complain because his rating was a joke). Prior to that Savold had been considered past his prime (he was going on 34) and something of an in and outer (hed won 2 of his last 7). Yet he was treated like a king in England. It was only off of his two fights with Wood****, first the robbery DQ when Wood**** tried to win an academy award and then the KO rematch after Wood**** had tried to duck the fight by having it postponed three times, that Savold really got back into the rankings. But remember when Savold officially beat Wood**** his only fight in two years was the DQ loss to Woodock. It was off those two fights that he was ludicrously crowned champion by the BBBofC and got his fight with Louis, his only fight in a year. Thats what I mean when I say big fish, small pond.

I dont think I ever mentioned Baksi but Baksi was rated #9 as of the month he faced Freddie Mills and keep in mind that he beat both Mills and Woodock back to back. Baksi got his ranking by beating Freddie Schott in the Garden who was unrated and had never faced anyone but it was a Garden fight and in New York... So a guy who was about as fringe top 10 as you can get at that point defeated Mills and Wood****. So what does that say about Mills and Wood****? It says that at best they were very fringe contenders (at least at that point, both obviously went further than that). Those guys knocked Bert Gilroy out every time they faced him so what does that say about Gilroy? That he wasnt a fringe contender.

Remember, the highest esteem the British public held for Wood**** was right after he knocked out Lee Oma, right before his first fight with Savold. The lowest esteem they had for him was right after his first fight with Savold (which he won). He lost a lot of appeal with antics against Savold, was booed from the ring, and then some in the British press even felt he faked his car accident injury to get out of the rematch with the 34 yr old aging inactive in and outer. The fact that when they did eventually meet the BBBofC recognized it as a HW championship is more a reflection of what I said: big fish, small pond, than how good either of these guys was at the time.

I never mentioned Watson. If your point is that Im painting all British fighters as club fighters you are wrong, as Ive illustrated above to a degree. Youre putting words in my mouth. Watson accomplished something Gilroy, and a lot of other guys thistle is hyping, didnt.

 

I know the British press went crazy over Savold, Baksi and later Valdes even though they were regarded "ten a penny contender level" in America.

I don't rate Gilroy too high as it happens either. I just think most of the higher regarded Euro guys who had good careers could always hold their own with fringe Americans.

To call decent pros who fought in big stadiums not a big deal or dismiss them as club level when they were actually stadium level is kind of harsh.

In those days the UK had a lot of fighters and competative circuits to breakout of before getting to national level. In some weight classes they had as many body's to climb over as the Americans had. Albeit Heavyweight not being one of them.

In the lower classes British champions were not that far away from world champions. They had the competition to develop the fighters but not the money or draw to cross the pond.

What do you make of Jock McVoy, Benny Lynch and Seaman Tommy Watson?