Top 50 Middleweight of all Time

Me too. Either some people just don't like Cerdan, or they have not seen enough film on him. The guys had a great record and a lot of talent.

McGrian doesn't see Cerdan as a top 25 middle weight based on these tiers. I disagree.

 

- What you say about the Steele win is true but its still a good win and from the footage its clear Steele wasn't just there for a paycheck, looked fierce.

- Conn named Fred as his toughest opponent and Billy literally had his face wrapped like a mummy after one of them.

- YC3 may have been in the latter stages of his career but he beat Conn one year earlier and right before the loss to Apostoli beat Glen Lee so he certainly wasn't shot. It's a very good win for Fred.

- No business losing to Garcia? No shame in that. Happened to natural LHW Row phenom Lloyd Marshall twice and MW's like Kid Azteca, Glen Lee and Allen Matthews.

- Admittedly i haven't read much about the Thil fight but Klychko was up 4-2 on all scorecards when that fight was stopped. Damage your opponent it's a win...

There is a little validity in what you say but you're diminishing those wins waaay too hard. Based on my perspective he beat four ATG's (Steele, Thil, YC3, Abrams) and three other HOF caliber Champions (Kreiger, Risko, Brouillard) how many guys can say that? I would definitely move Fred up into the 4th tier.

* Granted Abrams was at the end of his career but so was Fred and Georgie had just got robbed against SRR based on the accounts i'v read so...

Check out Shorty Hogue he always intrigued me. Wins over Moore x2, Marshall, Booker, Bandit Romero x3. Young Ahearn and Leo Houck deserve a look too.

.....

Yes this is correct, i think Cerdan is definitely too high and tends to be overrated in general especially his accomplishments. Cerdan is impressive on film and it's a shame he didn't get to have more bouts against the top Americans but fact is he didn't do a whole lot.

 

McGrain

Sorry not to have gotten to this thread earlier, but I do have a couple of comments-questions

1---I would second the questioning of the high placing of the WWII murderers row fighters.

2---Freddie Steele seems very high for a guy who had three good years at a time when the division was split and then suffered bad losses. I have read the posts about the "reasons" but a major league pitcher doesn't become a great pitcher because he would have been if he didn't blow out his elbow. Whatever the cause or excuses, I don't think Steele did enough to be quite this high.

3---I don't understand the great gap between Giardello and Fullmer. Giardello was a top contender longer, and he did beat Tiger, but his career was full of down periods and in many cases hard to explain losses. Fullmer victims Webb, Jones, and Mueller all beat him. Ugly as his style was, Fullmer fought a lot of good fighters over a fairly long period (especially for his style of mauler) and was much more consistent. The two fought a draw when they met. I would put them in the same tier, the one Giardello is in.

I am interested in your thinking on why Fullmer should be rated so much lower.

 

I have to disagree on Steele ed.

A young Ceferino Garcia, Baby Joe Gans, Gorilla Jones, Fred Apostoli, Vince Dundee, Babe Risko, Allen Matthews, Gus Lesnevich, Frank Battaglia, Ken Overlin, Solly Krieger. With the exception of Garcia and the second and third Jones fights all those guys were top rated contenders. That's a hell of a run.

 

I agree with Giardello and Fullmer being in the same tier. Probably deserve to be in the same one as D!ck Tiger actually.

 

It is certainly true he had a good concentrated run, but it all went south rather fast as he suffered three bad defeats and quickly retired--so Steele doesn't have as many end of career defeats as some others.

Still, good as this resume is, let's compare it to some of his contemporaries--

Teddy Yarosz---Tommy Freeman, Sammy Slaughter, Vince Dundee, Ben Jeby, Pete Latzo, Babe Risko, Ken Overlin, Sollly Krieger, Lou Brouillard, Billy Conn, Archie Moore, Al Gainer, Nate Bolden, Jimmy Reeves, Lloyd Marshall

Lou Brouillard---Canada Lee, Baby Joe Gans, Young Jack Thompson, Jimmy McLarnin, Sammy Slaughter, Mickey Walker, Ben Jeby, Adolf Heuser, Bob Olin, Al Gainer, Young Corbett III

Fred Apostoli---Babe Risko, Lou Brouillard, Solly Krieger, Marcel Thil, Freddie Steele, Glen Lee, Young Corbett III, Melio Bettina,
Georgie Abrams

I think all at least match Steele, and I really think Yarosz has the most impressive resume.

 

Vysotsky: Kid Azteca was not a middleweight.

Glen Lee was nothing special, had moved up from WW just like Garcia, and had actually beat Garcia when he was doing well in his career, but when Garcia finally beat him Lee was on a downward spiral that would see him lose to every name fighter he fought and indeed lose more than he won.

Garcia did beat Marshall but as I said above Marshall always seemed to struggle when he had to come in at weight and look how low his weight was for Garcia, two of the lowest weights he would ever make.

Allan Matthews was 32 when he fought Garcia and hadnt defeated a world class fighter in years. He was done. He retired within the year. He was never a great fighter to begin with.

I say Apostoli had no business losing to Garcia because Apostoli's style was to be very strong, come forward, bang away, put pressure on guys and out gut them. Going up against a smaller guy like Garcia should have been made to order for Apostoli and instead he gets stopped. Thats just a very strange result and as you say I have to think there was something else going on with him for his career to have had the ups and downs it did but given those ups and downs I have a hard time rating very highly all time.

 

Brouillard has a fantastic resume but a lot of those fights were at welterweight. Yarosz has some great wins but was more inconsistent. You mention Archie Moore but he wasn't Archie Moore yet he was an unranked guy facing his first real name. Apostoli has been discussed earlier.

Anyway I think reason most of us would rank Steele higher is his remarkable consistency. He was pretty much unbeatable for a good part of his career and all those other guys kept dropping fights here and there and at the highest level little things like that make a difference.

 

"reason most of us would rank Steele higher is his remarkable consistency"

But I think he only was fighting and defeating top men from 1935 to 1937, not a very long period. In 1938 he more or less fell apart.

Did Steele win a fight after his 26th birthday?

Yarosz was actually rather consistent also, but he was a top man before Steele arrived and after Steele was gone.

"Archie Moore"

Moore in 1939 was not Moore at his peak, but how much a lesser fighter was he than Lesnevich in 1936, let's say. Lesnevich could not beat Marty Simmons or Ron Richards, but Moore did.

Most of these guys had runs much like Steele, but the difference is they kept fighting over a longer period. The bottom just fell out of Steele's career.

Bottom line--I don't see that Steele proved himself the best of his era, and I don't really see how he makes the top ten all time in a division so loaded over the years as the middleweights.

 

Steele was retired by 25 because of his injury and yes "remarkable consistency". His run at Middlwweight may have only lasted four years but its what you do with the time not the length. He went on a 42-0 undefeated streak and accumulated one of the deeper resumes during that time. To compare, Hopkins went 43-3 during his entire 15 year Middleweight career, what is more impressive (not including the enormous gulf in quality of opposition)? it's way more difficult to remain consistent fighting 10 times a year than 2 or 3.

There are a few guys like Yarosz, Williams, Overlin who may have deeper resumes but they took losses much more frequently and while their careers lasted longer i would be interested to see a 42-0 run during any point of their careers with comparable opposition. His combination of both is rare.

 

What you say is true, but let's compare him to Yarosz.

Yarosz went into the Conn fight 88-4-2 with victories over every man he had fought to that time. His only stoppage loss was in a fight in which he broke his leg when knocked down in the first round but still lasted seven rounds and did not take the count. His corner stopped the fight.

To that point, Yarosz had beaten Tommy Freeman, Sammy Slaughter, Vince Dundee, Ben Jeby, Babe Risko, Ken Overlin, Solly Krieger, Lou Brouillard

for the rest of his career, fighting at an age beyond the point at which Steele had retired and in a higher weight class, Yarosz went 18-14-1,

but defeated

Billy Conn, Ken Overlin, Archie Moore, Al Gainer, Nate Bolden, Jimmy Reeves, Lloyd Marshall.

After his great run, Steele suffered three crushing knockouts and retired. Yarosz was still able to fight the very best and hold his own with them.

I agree to disagree.

 

Steele already had the fractured breastbone when he lost to Apostoli and Hostak, retired for three years and lost once more. I would hardly hold a career ending injury against him for those three losses.

I agree with you about Yarosz though and that's why he's in my top 10, how many people can say that? When you examine his fights you see how odd some of them really are including many of those losses. My favorite being his loss to Abrams where Yarosz lost 8 points due to foul deductions in a 10 rounder yet still only lost by split decision Or his other foul fest in the Marshall rematch where both guys were suspended and banned in the state.

By the sounds of it he might have actually won his series with Conn but Billy was the favorite son in their hometown of Pittsburgh and got the split decisions as a result, at least one of those seems like it should have gone to Teddy. I love Yarosz but wouldn't place him above Freddie. Wish they had fought in '37 IIRC when it was a possibility.