Tony Zale vs the MW of the last 30 yrs

The one where you say Moore was nowhere near ready for a title shot against Zale.
Moore was his number one contender in1942.
In the same post you said the mob controlled boxing and if they thought Williams and Burley worth of title shots they would have got them.
Williams was ranked the following in Zale's title reign.
1942 no3.
1943 no2
1944 no1.
1945 no 1.

Burley was ranked:
1942 no2.
1944 no3.
1945 no 2.
1946 no2.

I'd say that proves they were ready and had justified themselves as title challengers. They were certainly more worthy of title shots than Steve Mamakos who was unranked.

 

I can't speak for Suze, but I think Zale was a courageous fighter his losing effort against Cerdan shows how big his B*LLS were.

 

Some tend to underestimate the caliber of fighters who fought during Tony Zale's pre WW2 career. Such as the "poor mans Harry Greb", Ken Overlin
who near the end of a hectic 150 fight career, beat and drew with the rampaging young MW Ezzard Charles, who about this time whipped Charley Burley TWICE...Jimmy Leto a tough WW beat Charley Burley. Georgie Abrams
drew with Charley Burley...Marcel Cerdan defeated Holman Williams who also defeated Charley Burley. Al Hostak when his hands were healthy was as devastating a puncher as any MW in history. Fred Apostoli was a great all around boxer/puncher...Billy Soose was so great a college boxer, that he was banned from collegiate boxing and had a great pro career. And I need not remind you how great a middleweight Freddie Steele was before his severe breastbone injury terminated his career....There was Solly Kreiger a powerful puncher and rugged as hell.England had the lethal punching Jock McAvoy, and France had the powerful MW Marcel Thil. Last but not least was the
young, tough, irrepressible Billy Conn who without one amateur bout became a helluva middleweight before he morphed into a great LH. so my contention is this..Tony Zale when he hit his stride was as good as any of these guys, but
than WW2 disrupted all their careers...

 

Yes for sure although mamakos was a decent fighter. I rate Burley higher than Holman Williams certainly a lot higher than Lytell. around 1940 Zale was just becoming a good fighter and Burley was a legit contender at the time but war did intervene and that was really what stopped that matchup, he would certainly have gotten that shot if the war didn't happen but from there on we can only guess as to who would have won. i did a good write up today on Zale and am proud of my work on him, it was highly detailed and i described the third Graziano fight and the Cerdan fight from memory and I think it was accurate and a little exciting, at least i was excited recounting those two awesome fights from memory.

 

I'll read them all later, you are a welcome addition to our forum. These threads on Zale will hopefully enrich my own scant knowledge of him,I've tried to be objective with my posts and I do admire Zale I remember him when he wrote a monthly column in the Boxing Illustrated. One of his quotes stuck in my mind,it was on the subject of "glass jaws", he said ,in his experience there," weren't so many glass jaws as glass hearts".

Something he could never have been accused of having!:good

 

As always a good post from you, the incredible thing about this era is this, Fighter A beats fighter B and fighter C and D but fighter E loses to fighter F who always beats fighter A but loses to fighter B and C and so forth and so forth making it diabolical to rank them in any sort of order. and then you have guys like Holman Williams who wins against as many names as he does loses to the same guys and they all have so many losses that makes it so bloody hard..... it seems any of these guys can win against any of them on a given day but just as likely to lose to the same guy three weeks later... there is not a lot to separate any of the top 15 or so fighters and not a single one of them stands as unbeatable.

 

If modern fighters fought on the same schedule it would happen again.
2 fights a year would be a JOKE to 99% of the fighters back then.
:-(

 

That's it in a nutshell:good
Zale defended his title 3 times and also had 6 over the weight fights, all crammed into 14 months and two of the non title fights were with Apostoli and Soose, hardly easy touches.
The 20s schedules for fighters were even more manic, no wonder they dropped a few verdicts!

 

Zale was a very tough minded man...I think there was an article of an old Ring magazine...where Zale commented that every champion should be able to fight to the end...I'm paraphrasing there...but nevertheless, Zale was a baaaaaaaaad man...IMO.
Win, lose, or draw...whoever fights Zale, knows they've been in a real fight.

 

When Georgie Abrams drew with Charley Burley, the former was a middleweight while the latter fought mostly as a welterweight at the time. Moreover, the Pittsburgh Press and the Pittsburgh Gazette gave Burley a small edge in the bout even after he lost two rounds due to fouls.

At the time that Marcel Cerdan won by decision over Holman Williams after ten rounds in Paris, the AP scoring of the bout was 4-4-2, a draw, according to one source. Williams was past his peak and had many bouts under his belt by the time he fought Cerdan. Moreover, Williams fought much more formidable opposition than Cerdan ever did over an entire career.

- Chuck Johnston

 

On film Cerdan looks to be the man, the pick of the bunch, he had it all, lets not forget his life was cut short in his prime he was not finished doing great things, I believe he would have been able to with two good arms beat LaMotta the same way he beat Zale, not easily, Jake was as tough as Zale but Cerdan had too much for him, and maybe too much at MW for SRR to have won the MW title. We are talikng about a guy with a high class record, amazing actually. .......111-4-0, that is outstanding, sure a hell of a lot are against Frenchmen and Germans and other Europeans but once he starts fighting Americans he shows that whoever these Europeans were they were good enough opposition to turn Marcel into the most dangerous MW on the planet, you already have shown that he beat Williams. He was a dynamite puncher that is clear on film as it is on his record, 65 KO's at %57. In those days every fighter fought a few easy fighters between fights with good fighters and big names, it was sensible, they were staying active and that's exactly why they are better than todays fighters.

Cerdan's best opponents were LaMotta (L), Williams (W), Abrams (W), Zale (W-KO), Harold Green 51-7-2 when they fought TKO 2, Robert Charron, **** Turpin KO 7 and like a hundred others ranging from bums to journeymen to national contenders to Euro title contenders to the very good. He was just getting started and he was stopped only once and that was from a busted arm.

 

You say that Marcel Cerdan's best opponents include Jake LaMotta, Holman Williams, Georgie Abrams and Tony Zale? Abrams and Zale were terrific fighters before serving in the U.S. Armed Forces during World War II, but both were far from being as good after the war when Cerdan fought them. At the time of their bouts with Cerdan, both LaMotta and Williams were past their peak and had previously fought far more formidable opposition than Cerdan. In addition, Williams had already fought in over 170 known bouts at the time and had been fighting as a pro since 1932.

Take a look at the records of top American fighters of the 1940s. It is very hard to find any top American fighter of the era who faced as few world-class fighters as Cerdan. It may be that Cerdan would have fought far more world-class fighters if he was an American, but it is probable that his win-loss record would be far worse.

- Chuck Johnston

 

Yes he does. I like Cerdan a lot. But what Chuck says about a general lack of quality opponents on his ledger is true as well.

The plane crash was a tragedy that left many questions about Cerdan unanswered. Maybe he would have beaten Lamotta or maybe he would have lost to him again.
We will never know.

 

Well Chuck I do not dispute this post, but my eys show me a very talented, rough, agressive dynamite puncher with very fast hands, Sure Zale was on the way out but LaMotta was proving he still had it at least from some of his film evidence, he was definitely on the way out when he fought SRR a year or so later but he never really had his measure. As I said I don't disagree with you but I reject him being rated lowly due to film evidence and I have seen all his available film, he looks brilliant mate.

I don't know if his record would have been far worse, we just don't know enough about his European opponents so there is so much guesswork. Lets not forget that he is French so naturally coming to America was expensive, it sure would have helped if he moved to America semi-permanently and he should have sought out bouts with the likes of Dave Sands, Sands would have been a perfect yardstick for Marcel, indeed I probably tip Sands to beat him but either way we would have known a lot more, he should have chased Randy Turpin too but then he died didn't he. The Americans had all the advantages of depth, but being american sure doesn't mean your DNA is somehow superior either, any fighter from any country can rise to the top back then if given the opportunities but the Americans were very uninterested in letting many foreigners a go. We Aussies are very aware of how many obstacles there were on the road to world championship shots from the time Darcy died to the mid fifties we had plenty of really good fighters but we couldn't even get in the door to fight great Americans, occasionally some came downunder like the very very good Freddie Dawson who is still a legend downunder but we needed more fights against the guys where the biggest depth was, it was a matter of money most of the time. Vic Patrick was so good he could have been anything but he couldn't get the fights against the likes of Beau Jack and Ike Williams, Dawson was surely the very best fighter he ever faced, he just needed more experience because he had some awesome tools, maybe the best southpaw Australia ever had. The situation for Europeans was only slighty better.

 

I think Cerdan was probably slightly past his prime by then too.