Top 50 Middleweight of all Time

I'm Scottish.

He did. But it could go either way.

 

Because there's an Argentine that could make the #1 spot and a Nigerian that could make the top 10?

:rofl

 

Apart from all time p4p, where I have a Canadian at #1, controversially, and I believe for the first time "in print" in about 100 years.

 

This is what I ended up with, gents:

01 - Harry Greb
02 - Carlos Monzon
03 - Marvin Hagler
04 - Sugar Ray Robinson
05 - Stanley Ketchel
06 - Mike Gibbons
07 - Bernard Hopkins
08 - Charley Burley
09 - Tommy Ryan
10 - Holman Williams
11 - Freddie Steele
12 - Jake LaMotta
13 - **** Tiger
14 - Bob Fitzsimmons
15 - Jack Dempsey
16 - Fred Apotoli
17 - Teddy Yarosz
18 - Mickey Walker
19 - Jack Dillon
20 - Tiger Flowers
21 - Ken Overlin
22 - Joey Giardello
23 - Billy Papke
24 - Gene Fullmer
25 - Mike O'Dowd
26 - Les Darcy
27 - Bert Lytell
28 - Frank Klaus
29 - Emile Griffith
30 - Nino Benvenuti
31 - Lloyd Marshall
32 - James Toney
33 - Tony Zale
34 - Billy Conn
35 - Roy Jones Jnr.
36 - Michael Nunn
37 - Randy Turpin
38 - Marcel Cerdan
39 - Georgie Abrams
40 - Mike McCallum
41 - Jeff Smith
42 - Young Corbett III
43 - Charles McCoy
44 - Sumbu Kalambay
45 - Bobo Olson
46 - Marcel Thil
47 - Jack Chase
48 - Jermain Taylor
49 - Cocoa Kid
50 - Hugo Kelly

 

How so? Sure:

Mike Gibbons is a total anomaly, a white fighter who was clearly the best in the world in his weight division for a concerted spell who never became the champion. He laid claim to the title, like so many others in the wake of Stanley Ketchel’s death, but his claim was never recognised as full.
Mike was able to tempt three of the men who held the lineal title during his career into the ring at one stage or another. George Chip was the legitimate world champion in 1913 and 1914; Mike met and outclassed him on three separate occasions between 1917 and 1919. Al McCoy was the man who took the title from Chip. Three months before he did so, McCoy faced Mike. According to The Pittsburgh Press, McCoy landed “three or four punches” in ten uneventful but one-sided rounds which were hissed and booed by those in attendance. This may have been a part of Mike’s problem: he was a defensive specialist, the “St.Paul Phantom” a fighter almost impossible to hit and given to taking protracted breaks even against world-class opposition, especially in no contests where no official decision was being rendered.
McCoy reigned for three years and despite his clear superiority over the new champion, Mike was never rewarded with a title fight. “I will meet McCoy any time,” was the line he parroted throughout that reign but it would be Mike O’Dowd who ended the McCoy title-run. Against O’Dowd, Mike enjoyed less dominance, dropping a twelve round decision in the twilight of the career and swapping newspapers decisions with the brutal champion prior to that. Against fellow uncrowned champion Harry Greb he managed a laudable 1-1, although it should be noted that Greb, while far from green, improved considerably after the first meeting between the two, a six-rounder fought in February of 1917.
Two newspaper decisions rendered over Jack Dillon and three over Jeff Smith in what appear to have been fascinating if sometimes slow encounters nail him down as great but his resume has enormous depth to go with these quality wins. Willie Brennan, Gus Christie, Bob Moha, Jimmy Clabby, Eddie McGoorty and Leo Houck, among others, fell to his stylings at some time or other.
A veteran of more than 130 fights, he was never stopped, a granite jaw barracking that legendary defence. Had he been champion he would have cracked the top five.



Count them: three losses in more than a hundred fights. It is a true rarity to see so few losses in any centurion but Tommy Ryan was likely as brilliant and dominant a fighter as has ever lived.
The first of those losses came against the great Kid McCoy in 1896. Ryan was in his prime, but he was in his welterweight prime, and he weighed just 148lbs. Although he was crushed by McCoy it needs to be remembered that the Kid would go on to become a significant force at both light-heavyweight and heavyweight and that he carried a significant size advantage into their fight.
The second was suffered via a disqualification against George Green, the foul blow reported alternatively as “a light blow struck on Green’s shoulder” when he was down and a knee delivered to the face as Green crumpled before Ryan’s assault. Finally, he was beaten by heavyweight Denver Ed Martin in his final fight which has all the appearance of being an exhibition. He dropped a six round newspaper-decision to the big man having come out of retirement after a four year hiatus. He was forty-one years old.
Other than that, it’s just glory and greatness and the only factor that determines how highly he rates in the divisions he graced is identifying when he should be credited as a welterweight and when he should be credited as a middleweight.
For me, Ryan’s middleweight prime stretches from 1897 through to 1904 and his draw with Philadelphia Jack O’Brien; most primes are barracked by losses but Ryan was all but invincible at middleweight, and seemed literally so during his middleweight prime.
Perhaps his era’s definitive technical genius, he is said to have schooled both Jim Jeffries and, more surprisingly, the supposed “Grandfather of Boxing” James J Corbett on the finer points of boxing technique, but he was also one of the toughest middleweights in history. An orphan, the story goes that he wound up in Michigan s****ping his fellow newsboys for territory in semi-professional contests that morphed into a boxing career. Skin gloves and cobbles wrought a fighter carved of stone as he proved in defeating Tommy West in perhaps the bloodiest fight in boxing history. As well as innate toughness, he proved himself a wilting puncher scoring knockouts, some of them early, in the majority of his title defences. A shot Jack Dempsey, the legendarily filthy “Mysterious” Billy Smith, West and Kid Carter were among the best to fall to him during the eight years during which he was almost universally recognised as the middleweight champion.
His was not an era of great strength but his consistent and extended dominance over it brings him in here just ahead of the mercurial Williams.