Tommy Burns as champion. Did he face top ten ranked opponets? How many did he beat?

You could have made a case that an essentially undefeated Squires belonged in the lower echelon before the first fight with Burns, since he was Australian and Commonwealth champion. That status would have established him as being a reasonable challenger

Flynn certainly proved to be worthy of Top 10 consideration around the time he faced Burns (as he would go on to defeat the Top 10 rated Jack Twin Sullivan, Ross and former LH champ Gardiner).

O'Brien was certainly worthy.

So...If you take the reasonable challengers O Brien x2, Flynn, Squires, throw in a couple of serviceable optional defenses (Moir, Lang and Roche were national champs), take into consideration that he was willing to make fights with guys like McVea and Fitz, eventually defended against clear number one Johnson, and did all this in a reign of about 2 and a half years, it's not actually that bad of a championship resume. If he had faced the likes of Roche and Moir exclusively, then he might deserve more criticism. But he faced better quality fighters than that so I'm willing to cut him some slack.

 

Interesting that Burns, for all his set backs defended his title against the most outstanding challenger during his reign... Eventually. On the other hand the same might not be true for Jeffries.

 

Flynn was at least as accomplished as Kaufman when he faced Burns in October of 1906. Kaufman's first defining win took place in December of that year against Gardiner. Prior to that point (i.e. by the time Burns had faced Flynn) the only fighter of note Kaufman had faced was O'Brien and he had lost to him. Ruhlin's final fight was in May 1906, so Flynn and Sullivan certainly could have filled those vacancies.

The problem with year end ratings is that it doesn't always take into account the fact the rankings during the middle of the year. For example, it could easily be argued that O'Brien was the #2 guy behind Johnson both times he fought Burns. So Burns could easily have claimed to have faced his top available challenger in '06 and '07. Given Squire's win streak and status as Commonwealth and Aussie champ, is it entirely unreasonable to have him slotted into a lower Top 10 rating by the time he faced Burns the first time? I think not, personally. I'd view the first win as a pretty spectacular showing against a serviceable guy who was hovering near Top 10 consideration at that point.

 

I'm not slagging on Matt's work, btw.

Just saying there's some room for interpretation.

 

Year end ratings should be taken with a pinch of salt, all the respect to what Matt did with these rankings and the same for Rummy, but without looking deeper into them they aren't always a reliable source

 

No doubt burns title reign was filled with soft handpicked opposition, some of them had no business fighting for a world championship title.

Burns title reign rates up there with Johnson, Dempsey, Patterson for taking on a lot of lower rated weak opponents

 

There's definitely some filler, but the reign itself only lasted about 2 years or so...And he had two fights with a top contender (O'Brien) during that time, along with two defenses over reasonable fighters in Flynn and Squires. Plus he defended eventually against Johnson and was willing to face McVea. It's not like he ducked his top challengers for years at a time, like some other champs.

 

Respect to Tommy Burns for taking the title on the road and fighting often.

 

Obrien weighed 163lb when he fought burns. If he was the “top” heavyweight contender, then it must have been the weakest heavyweight era of all time. No other era would a weak hitting 163lb man be the top heavyweight contender.

Flynn and Squires? Not good fighters, I’ve seen both on film. Not good at all. Even for the era, I doubt either were top 10 at the time.

Burns missed out on a lot of better heavyweights and bigger punchers

 

But in this era, O'Brien was the reigning LH champ, and as per the ratings in the OP was listed as the number two guy at heavyweight behind Johnson. If you go by these ratings (and Mendoza is in this discussion), then O'Brien counts as a top guy at the weight.

Flynn had drawn with Jack Twin Sullivan, who was considered to have been highly rated at that point. He'd go on to score wins over some other rated guys like Gardiner and Sullivan. He was definitely a contender at that point.

Squires was the Commonwealth champ at a point in time when that status alone pretty much guaranteed a top ten rating. He may not have been great, but he was still highly regarded enough at the time to have been made a favorite over Burns the first time around.

The fact that these guys fought in a weak era has less relevance to this discussion than whether Burns actively ducked top guys for extended lengths of time. The fact that he faced #1 and #2 during his reign indicates that he didn't do so to the same extant as some other champs have.

 

How was Obrien the number 2 of the era over Sam Langford, or joe Jeanette or Sam Mcvey?

 

Joe Jeanette had only started fighting in 1904 and was only starting to produce noteworthy results (including a win over Langford). Langford had only recently moved up in weight and had yet to really establish himself as the top HW contender when Burns had won the title. In fact, in 1906, he had split a couple of Young Peter Jackson (who O'Brien had previously defeated twice). McVea was coming off a layoff and while he did rack up revenge wins over Denver Ed Martin in 06', his best years were to follow.

O'Brien, in the meantime, had racked up newspaper victories over the likes of Choynski and Hart and had stopped former HW champ Fitzimmons to win the LH championship. His resume at 1906 was probably more impressive on the whole than McVea, Langford or Jeanette and at the very least he was in their company.

 

If you honestly think that Hague was worthy of challenging Burns, then you can't really slag on Squires at all as being worthy of contention.

Hague was quite inexperienced even by the end of 1907, ending up 6-1-1. He only really stared coming into into his own around 1908, and had pretty much peaked by the time he ran afoul of Langford. Meanwhile, Squires was much more experienced, accomplished and was considered to be a big puncher in his own right (having rattled off 11 KO's in a row, and 17 KO's in a total of 21 fights). Granted, that was pretty much all he had going for him, but enough people believe the advantage in power was sufficient to make him a favorite the first time around.

In 1907, I think most fans of the sport would have much rather seen Burns face Squires than Hague any day of the week, and twice on Sunday.