Top 15 middleweights of all time

Suzie, neither Ward nor Kov were Middlewts.
This thread is about MWs.

Which top MW has Golovkin avoided ?

 

Who exactly was supposed to fund him to fight outside of Argentina on his way up? Is no fighter worth his salt unless he is privileged to fight his entire career in the media center of the US? And beginning with Benvenuti, he was a road warrior for the next 20 fights, 15 of them - and all the major ones- being outside of South America. Trivia fact: he won all his fights outside Argentina.

"His best wins came against smaller, faded fighters?" Leave Marciano and Johnson out of the discussion. Otherwise, name me the big, full-size middles he was avoiding.

Two or three years that he "ducked" Valdes only got Carlos older. I read somewhere that he did beat him twice late in life. I'll check my sources, tho.

I also remember something about Valdes' car accident... as I do remember something about the broad who shot Monzon and the bullet never being taken out.

 

Excuse ?

I notice you didn't answer the point.



Tripple GGG appears to have avoided SRR.

Now SRR died before GGG was hatched, but that's just another excuse, isn't it.

 

I don’t know how you could have found more than 4 rounds for Canelo. Seemed like an open and shut robbery to me. I’ll have to rewatch some time.

 

"home padded resume"

A champion who fought 12 of his 15 championship fights outside of his home country is home padded? Nonsense.

If Monzon's resume doesn't have quality, you are just putting down the entire division for his entire reign. Of the 11 men he fought for the title, 9 were ranked by The Ring in the top five in the yearly rankings. A 10th, Napoles, was the welter champion. And Tom Bogs, the 11th, was hardly a bad contender, being ranked in both the middle and light-heavy divisions, and Monzon beat him in his home country.

"Eurotrash like Bogs, Bouttier, and Tonna, all of whom would have been featured in a fight a week tour of Robinson's"

And what exactly makes Turpin so great other than beating Robinson? How many rated fighters according to the Boxing Register had Turpin beaten before challenging Robinson? Well, two--Delannoit and Tommy Yarosz. Nothing sensational to put him above the general run of "Eurotrash" middles, to use your term.

And after botching a championship fight with Olson, Turpin gets taken out in one round with one punch by fellow Eurotrash middle Tibero Mitri.

And Monzon "ducked" Valdez whom he defeated twice in championship fights. Nothing like the great Robinson, who stopped Turpin back in his home town in 1951. Everyone expected a rubber match, with Turpin the #1 contender, while Dave Sands was the #2 contender. But Sugar defended against Bobo Olson (beaten twice by Sands and unranked) and the #10 ranked Rocky Graziano instead and then jumped to light-heavy to challenge Maxim for probably less money he would have gotten for the rubber match with Turpin. Interesting, but Sugar wouldn't duck anyone, would he?

When he came back, Robinson lost to Tiger Jones who was coming off five straight losses, but clearly Jones is better than those 1970's middles, being American and all, and having a win over Robinson. For some reason, there was no rematch.

And Monzon defended against the welter champion, Napoles. Nothing much there. Robinson also defended against the welter champ. But Robinson lost, so Basilio is also a middle champion. Well, Basilio was younger than Napoles, but this is another case of a fighter gaining stature by beating Robinson. No one did that with Monzon after he emerged on the world scene.

"names . . . well past their primes who had moved up from lower weights."

Like Robinson in the 1950's, but Robinson was still the best out there. This is the only valid point in this post, but Monzon also beat the younger guys. Basically, this is again falling back on the notion that "the bottom fell out of the division" just at the right time for Monzon to run up a unique record. I never find this logic convincing.

So why rate Monzon at or near the top? How many middle champions had 15 title fights w/o losing or coming close to losing? and also defeated their successor? How many fought 12 of these 15 fights outside of their home country? How many defended against the best of the whole world, rather than just American centered defenses?
And how many after this sort of reign retired undefeated?

And Robinson in fact lost to Turpin, Jones, and Basilio. I am not convinced any of that trio beats Monzon.

 

I like the post on the whole, but

"Trivia fact: he won all his fights outside Argentina."

Rio is in Brazil. What is true is that he won all of his fights outside of South America.

 

Corrected.

Your post is brilliant.

 

Both his and your posts are brilliant. I still maintain that Monzon was the best middleweight champion of history and I haven't changed my mind.

 

"Zale is way too high."

I can't see him in the top 15 myself.

"Never beat the best of his era."

Well, he did beat Apostoli, Hostak, and Abrams, losing to Soose, but Abrams beat Soose three times. Soose beat Overlin, who beat Charles. Abrams drew with Burley, who lost to Charles. Hard off this to say who the best of the era really was. Zale ended up uniting the championship for the first time in ten years about 10 days before Pearl Harbor. He was then in the service for four years. When he came back he ended up fighting Graziano, who was a highly ranked contender and probably the best bet at the box office. I can't really score Zale for going for the money after losing his prime years to WWII.

"Drew the color line and ducked the black murderer's row."

He was in the service. He fought black fighters so just saying he drew the color line is not accurate. Abrams was actually the #1 contender in 1941. Burley was still a welter. When Zale returned to action in 1946 LaMotta was the #1 contender. In 1947 Zale was.

Bottom line--I can't see putting Zale in the top fifteen--didn't accomplish enough. But it was WWII, not exactly Tony Zale, who kept the "Murderer's Row" from the championship. WWII, and #1 contender Holman Williams losing to Cerdan and LaMotta in 1946.

"Cerdan too high. Ducked the best of his era."

LaMotta, Zale, Williams, and Abrams were all among the best of his era.

"Ducked Villemain."

Certain about that. Why? To fight LaMotta?

"Lost to LaMotta."

Cerdan was 33 to LaMotta's 28. The bottom line with Cerdan is that he lost most of six years spinning his wheels during WWII. He was already 30 when he began his push to the title. Except for a couple of DQ's, he didn't lose until he was 32 when he lost in the other guy's hometown, which he quickly reversed in a rematch. His final loss was in a fight in which he was injured and had to fight with one arm and when he was already 33. It all boils down to there is no good way of judging how good Cerdan really was. He looks good on film. His resume is thin.
He lost his prime to WWII. I wouldn't put him in the top 15 because he didn't accomplish enough. On the other hand, I think he possibly was better than Zale and most of the others of his era. We will never know.

Ketchel

"dominated his era."

All three years of it, and except of course for the KO defeat by Papke.

"Knocked out two men who beat Tommy Burns."

Burns was little more than a middleweight himself prior to winning the heavyweight championship. He was negotiating with Ryan to fight for his title at 158 lbs. When that fell through, he was matched with Hart instead. So this fact is somewhat less impressive than it appears. Sort of like Maxim getting credit for beating a heavyweight champion in Patterson, but Patterson was 164 for that fight, hardly more than a middle.

"You leave off Ezzard Charles who beat a prime Charley Burley TWICE at 160 lbs."

Yeah, and Charles couldn't beat Ken Overlin in two tries, and lost to Kid Tunero. Charles really didn't do enough at middle to get anywhere close to the top 15 for me. Burley's failure to beat Charles or Marshall or Abrams should raise issues about his "underrated" status, although I feel with breaks he might have been champion of the welter and/or middleweight divisions. On the other hand, if he had to go through Robinson and LaMotta, perhaps not.

 

I am struggling to put together a list, which hopefully will be ready tomorrow.

One issue is going to be if to use the entire career, including fights with bigger men, or just what the guy accomplished at middle. I have decided to go with the entire career and accomplishments restricted to middleweight on separate lists.

The other big issue will be if to weight the results on the basis on the improvement in boxing over the years. I decided to abjure that in favor of how the men did in their own time and place, with no scale of historical weighting.

I didn't know what to do with Bernard Hopkins and the other modern guys and I really don't know enough about their opposition. He certainly belongs in the top 15, so I decided to do is to list 14 historical figures whom I feel comfortable rating, and you guys who know more about Hopkins can put him where you feel he belongs on each list.

 

GGG was born in 1982. SRR died in 1989. That gave them seven years to meet at a catchweight. If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's a duck.

 

Hagler never beat Spinks. He can't be "great"

 

Golovkin top 5

The guy who couldn't beat a Canelo who was dominated every round by a fading Floyd Mayweather??

I suppose he can always claim he wuz robbed by the fanboys , but in reality Sturm beat Hoya a lot clearer than GGG beat Canelo. Some perspective shows he wasn't able to produce a more dominating performance than Felix Sturm against another P4P guy moving up.
That goes for Bernard Hopkins as well.. Look how easily he blew through all the guys who moved up to fight him.

GGG never went above or beyond the call of duty in his 12 rounds against Canelo and his arrogance thought he could bring home the win by doing the bare minimum. He wasn't prepared to enter into the trenches , fearing the sharp shooting counters of Canelo , so instead chose to hover outside the blast radius of a smaller flat footed fighter with glaring stamina issues. Thats not the mark of a great fighter especially when you consider that this was the fight of his career , his legacy was on the line and he had spent years waiting on him to move up.

Throughout those 12 rounds he landed next to nothing on Canelo and thats backed up by the fact Canelo was never hurt , buzzed or wobbled at any point. He didn't go for it in close despite barely being able to land anyhting from the outside.
Now consider that it was Canelo who undertook the challenge in that fight. GGG was the bigger, stronger, harder -hitting , fully fledged MW and had every physical advantage in his favour yet couldn't impose the same dominance on a guy who gassed out during the middle rounds as he did against all the previous MW cans he was turning to mush.
That says two things - 1. His skills were exposed at top level.. 2. His record prior was padded with D level cream puffs... But i think everybody knew that already.

He has Jacobs , but that was another razor close decision where he was very lucky to get the win , and he may not have gotten that win had the big money Canelo fight not been looming afterwards , which draws parallels back to Sturm vs Hoya again.

Outside of those two razor close decisions , his best win is David LeMule and he was just made look like an out of town jasper in his hometown by Billy Joe Saunders.

GGG was a great MW of his own extremely weak era . But when you call him one of the greatest of all time you open him up to a level of scrutiny under the microscope and thats where the argument falls apart.

At the end of the day he isn't that much greater than Sergio Martinez because what Martinez did to Ring and lineal Champ Pavlik is what GGG should have done to Canelo..