Top 10 Welters?

CLEAR DAYLIGHT

 

No sign of Oscar De La Hoya when Trinidad is outside the top ten but implied to be somewhere 11-20? With Mayweather almos getting multiple mentions in this thread? Hmm....

 

Howdy Russell, I ranked Tito, Oscar, Floyd jr and Marlon Starling equal at around 12.

I think a prime De La Hoya and Trinidad probably beat Mayweather, Tito is a bad guy to fight if you are smaller than him and cannot pull him up.

Floyd might be able to outbox him but I think Trinidad's size and stamina would enable him to outpoint Mayweather, especially if it was over 15 rounds. The De La Hoya who was robbed against Tito ( in my opinion ) would also have the jab, legs and size to outpoint Floyd.

In my opinion modern weigh in rules and modern performance enhancing drugs actually make it quite difficult to rank modern fighters vs ones from the old same day weigh in era.

Errol Spence for example is a bigger guy than Marvin Hagler.

 

This is a depressingly good point...

Love to see the actual result of a fight between the two myself, irregardless of their respective in ring weights. I hate the size bullying that often occurs in modern boxing. I'd predict Hagler by murder within something like 6 when Spence meets a fellow very bad man who can take it and dish it out better than anyone he's ever met.

 

I cant see an atgument for Burley. He has exactly 4 wins against quality welterweights in 6 fights. 2 against the inconsistent Zivic who beat him once, he split two fights with an aging Leto, and beat Cocoa Kid. After that he fought mostly middleweights several pounds above the WW limit. He may have been able to make the limit still, which is debateable, but if hes fighting MWs and weighing above WW and has very few marquee WW wins its giving him a lot of credit he doesnt deserve to be rated in the top ten of that deep division. Seems more like a social justice pick than a merit based pick. Leto himself beat Cocoa Kid 3x, Zivic 1x, and Burley, in addition to many more contenders at WW than Burley. You can make better case for Leto being in the top 10 WW than Burley and thats not an argument I would entertain either.

 

Besides SRR, my favorite welter is Napoles.

 

You can tell we are similarly aged RC, Napoles might be my all time fave fighter. Imagine how good he was as a prime lightweight

 

There's not too terribly much footage of lightweight Napoles available, correct?

 

You've got to be on the money here JC40! I fell in love with the guy when he butchered poor old Curtis Cokes.

 

Mantequilla would absolutely own the welter division of today IMO.

 

Hi mate, unfortunately no. Napoles laboured in obscurity in Cuba and in Mexico as a lightweight for a VERY long time.

Napoles had actually been pro for 11, yes ELEVEN years before he finally got a title shot against Curtis Cokes ( who was a very good fighter ).

I still reckon Mantequilla might have the best left jab in history, it was that good.

 

I still remember the Ring Magazine that my dad bought me in 1969 showing Mantequilla Napoles posing next to an almost unrecognizable Curtis Cokes, who he had just dethroned as welter champ...Jose had that big victory sombrero on...

 

I wouldn't dare make Golovkin, even the fresher one of a few years ago, a favorite against Mantequilla. Look at the hell the slippery, blown up in weight welter/junior middleweight Kassim Ouma managed to puit him through years ago.

 

And Ouma was shot too

But Napoles would be VERY small by todays WW standards much less a MW.