Who is the toughest boxer who ever boxed at the top level?

personally, i think it s not the well known Champions that are the toughest. to me, the journeymen are the ones that take that Prize. they go in hopelessly outgunned; kinda like bringing a butter knife to a gun fight. yet they go out and try anyway, knowing that there is a big Chance they gonna get hurt. they fight in high School gyms and small Clubs, infront of audiences that usually dont give a ****.
no fame, no glory…..just a few bucks and a nod from Insiders. doing THAT takes the hardest man.

 

Fought outside the comfort zone of his home state more and relied less on hand picked officials?
Tough and gritty?
Joe Jeannette,Sam McVey,Sam Langford,Ad Wolgast,Battling Nelson,Billy Miske,Bud Taylor,Harry Greb,Bob Moha,
Chuck Wiggins,Billy Petrolle,Jimmy Wilde.

 

You can't look past the old timers such as Soldier Bartfield (clue is in the name), One Round Hogan, Jake La Motta, and Battling Jim Johnson. Not only were these guys training year round, they had to do back breaking shifts down in the coal mines. They don't make them like that anymore.

But since it's you Mark, I'd say Anthony Joshua is the toughest fighter.

 

Ah, I forget about Chuck Wiggins. Great shout, McVey.

I see a lot of Chuck in Alexander Povetkin, perhaps a cruder version.

 

P4P or overall?

If its overall, it will be a heavyweight.

Names like Chuvalo, Vitali, Puritty, McCall all come to mind.

 

Please.

Two Ton Tony Galento makes Vitali look like a choir kid. Vitali is the type of fella that Two Ton would have buried out the back of his local pub if he dare mentioned Tony's name.

Tony would take the corpse of Vitali out the trunk of his Cadillac and throw him in the already made grave, before plodding into the pub for a plate of chips while his cronies cover it back up with dirt.

 

They wouldn't even cover it back. They'd just leave it open till Vit began to decompose then come back and unload the contents of their pastrami-clogged Italian bowels on it for good measure.

Asked what Tony did to the missing Ukrainian, Galento'd proudly tell the authorities: I moidered da bum!

 

Ali said if every fight was 100 rounds, Chuvalo would be the best ever.

 

On that note, Vitali stops Galento in 3!

 

Galento? The guy with 6 losses by KO?

 

Jokes aside, the large number of deaths in the old bareknuckle fights, combined with the attrition that the rules forced on the fighters, means that one of those guys was probably the toughest.

There was an American bout cited in either Gems's cultural history of boxing, or Boddy's, where a fighter tied a flag to his post to symbolize that he was going to die before giving up, and proceeded to go out every round until he was literally beaten to death.

I question these people's sanity and priorities, but that kind of behavior is a more extreme display of "toughness" than anything we see today.

 

Jimmy Goodrich was never stopped and the Iron man Joe Grim were tough dudes

http://www.boxing.com/joe_grim_how_to_take_it_and_then_some.html