Top Fifty All-Time Great at 175lbs

The fighters, organised in Tiers:


Tier I
Ezzard Charles, Archie Moore.

Tier II
Harry Greb, Gene Tunney, Tommy Lougran, Mike Spinks, Bob Foster, Billy Conn

Tier III
Jimmy Bivins, Harold Johnson, John Henry Lewis, Tommy Gibbons, Roy Jones.

Tier IV
Jack Dillon, Paul Berlenbach, Max Rosenbloom, Victor Galindez, Matthew Saad Muhammad, Jack Delaney, Young Stribling.

Tier V
Joey Maxim, Lloyd Marshall, Kid Norfolk.

Tier VI
Antonio Tarver, Mickey Walker, Dariusz Michalczwski, John Conteh,

Tier VII
Al Gainer, Jimmy Slattery, Dwight Muhammad Qawi.

Tier VIII
Virgil Hill, Jose Torres, Tiger Jack Fox, Marvin Johnson, Eddie Mustafa Muhammad, Gus Lesnevich, Glen Johnson, Battling Levinksy, Chad Dawson.

Tier IX
Willie Pastrano, Leo Lomski, Henry Maske, Anton Christoforidis, Bernard Hopkins, Billy Miske, Sergey Kovalev, Mauro Mina, Jeff Clarke

Tier X
Joe Knight



WTF: Sam Langford



An awful lot of this is up for grabs - I don't expect the fighters in Tier X to survive, necessarily. In fact, I'm so underwhelmed by the bottom half dozen that I'm sort of left wondering who I left out? So wade in, don't be shy, who is too high, who is too low? I'll provide some other thoughts in post 2.

 

So the Tier system is pretty straight forwards. It groups together fighters I think should be ranked together, approximately. The major drawback is that it makes fighters who may be ranked side by side look far apart. So, someone might think that Tunney shouldn't be "apart" from Charles and Moore, but Tunney may actually end up ranked third. The good thing is it gives a looser feel to any chat.

I'm not too interested in thoughts on what should happen with the guys in the top three Tiers - feel free to chat about anything at all light-heavyweight in this thread, but I probably won't be making changes there. Maybe a strong case could be made for a guy to move from four into three though?

WTF? Sam Langford. On the one hand, he could be the greatest fighter ever to visit 175. On the other hand, he didn't do a huge amount there (although it's more than enough that he should be considered for a Tier here).

Weights: fights between two "light heavyweights" where they aren't weighing in at or under 175 are treated carefully. As a rule of thumb, where one or both are weighing at or over 180 it was treated as a heavyweight fight for the heavyweight list, and won't count for or against fighters here. This is complex and difficult.

Time: Fights fought before 1903 aren't counted. There are other arguable dates, I know, but this is the one i've gone for for better or worse. It excludes a lot of guys, and happily coincides with the emergence of boxing on film in earnest. Hooray!

I think most of the debate will surround the bottom three Tiers and who deserves to be there and who doesn't. As I said, I'm underwhelmed by the bottom dozen or so. Who is missing? Here are some names worth thinking about that I looked at who didn't quite make it. Between a lot of them and Tier X there is nothing. Who do you like, and who haven't I considered that I should have?

Excluded: Zsolt Erdei, Georges Carpantier, James Scott, Mike Rossman, Tony Ross, Melio Bettina, , James Toney, Jeff Smith, Battling Siki, Lou Bogash, Freddie Mills, Yaqui Lopez, Bob Fitzsimmons, Jack O’Brien, Eddie Cotton, Tiger Flowers, Tony Schucco, Lou Scozza, Prince Williams, Jeff Clark, Bob Olin.

Have at it, men.

 

**** is true man, oh Jesus.

 

Not sure I could see him in II. I could see him in III but I reckon he would be last or second last.

 

I try to stay away from head-to-head as much as possible, but once a guy is qualified "great", he will tend to creep up the list a bit. Mostly it's the other stuff you mention.

I don't consider what he did when he moves up, and as above.

Well i'll read everything that's written in this thread - the point I was making is that I can't imagine moving anyone in the top Tiers off their Tier.

Official weights only - guys who weighed in significantly above 175lbs will have had that fight considered for the HW list.

I didn't really consider him - a quick look at his Boxrec page basically ruled him out. He did very little at the weight.

No, thank you.

 

Not a tremendous amount for sure.

I'm favouring Foster based upon that reign of terror he had - almost double the length of time Henry had on the top, by memory.

Conn, a generally better resume I reckon. But having a brief look (about to make dinner) I also think Henry could live with a bump for sure.