Who do you think was the best middleweight titlist between Walker and Zale?

Steele.

 

Fred Apostoli or Freddie Steele

 

Actually they fought twice, with both kicking the others ****. However, in the first fight Apostoli was too inexperienced in the pro ranks and in the second fight Steel carried an injury. Too bad we never got them together at their best. I would rate the top 5 of this group as:

1) Steele
2) Overlin
3) Garcia
4) Apostoli
5) Thil

Tough matches here, as well as Apostoli over Thil since Thil was ahead on points when their bout was stopped on cuts. But theser's my 5.

 

Great thread as I rate the pre WW2 middleweights as good over all as any MW era with the exception of the Greb/ Walker/ Shade/ Flowers era and the Ketchel/Papke/ etc era. But one MW I would include in your bunch, and that was [for a short time] Mr.Billy Conn who without one amateur fight stepped
into the tough MW division and beat the lijkes of Babe risko, Vince Dundee, Oscar Rankins, Teddy Yarosz, Young Corbett, Solly Krieger and Fred Apostoli
[twice]..So tough was Billy Conn as a MW that a great Boxing writer I recall wrote he would have Billy Conn over Ray Robinson in a MW match...

 

Freddie Steele.No 1. Not qualified to expand further.

 

Steele
Yarosz
Overlin
Apostoli
Risko
Thil
Soose

 

I was thinking the same thing, bloody mods get away with murder.:-(

 

No that's probably klompton who is rather high on thil.

Apostoli also lost to Steele so I don't give him much credit for the h2h when the series is tied (unless one fight is a total blowout, ie Jones-Griffin, Louis-Schmeling). Apostoli was green for the first fight and I wouldn't rate it a great win but Steele himself was retired within a year of the rematch so you could say he was just about done.

I give it to Steele because of that mind boggling consistency. Apostoli was not a hot and cold fighter but all those little decision losses that dot his resume kept him from putting together an identifiable period of dominance.

 

We need more stories about Henry Maske:good

 

I dont think Ive ever really criticized Steele for not meeting Thil. I do believe Thil is vastly underrated and didnt get the credit he deserved from the American press, who savaged him, but I dont really know why or even if he Steele should have fought Thil. Some fights just arent really there to be made.

Wasnt Steele's breastbone already injured when he fought Apostoli?

 

Perhaps the rematch was just a case of Steele being near the end of the road by the time Apostoli got to him? His manager had recently died and he went 3-2 over the remainder of his career before retiring.

I would pick Steele here because he had some dominant wins against quality comp and had a long run where no one could really touch him, whereas Apostoli could always be picked off, even at his best. Steele did KO Overlin and Garcia, both of whom handled Apostoli.