Who Cleaned Out Their Division?

Lennox lewis actually cleaned the house. Except for the joke coward Riddick Bowe.
Evander,Tyson,ruddock,morrison,vitali,Tua, Bruno,tucker,golota,mercer,rahman,mccall,botha,grant,briggs,akinwande..

 

Joe Brown in the '50s, Carlos Ortiz in the '60s and Muhammad Ali in the 60s and 70s.

 

I should also mention Ruben Olivares at bantam, Jose Napoles and Antonio Cervantes all in the 70s.

 

Some examples I can think of the top of my head is Harry Greb at MW, Ike Williams at LW, Archie Moore at LHW, Ray Leonard at WW, Alexis Argüello below LW and Chocolatito below 115. That's excluding people already mentioned like Ali, Louis, and Durán.

I'd say my own definition of cleaning out a division is someone who beats all of the perceived threats they can fight at the time. For example, I'd say Ezzard Charles cleaned out his light-heavyweight division despite not actually fighting the champion at the weight. I say this because of Ezzard Charles' résumé at LHW is insane and he beat fighters better than Gus Lesnevich, who ducked him and a few others. So whilst missing a win over the actual number 1 on the division, at the division, he beat every threat available to him.

It rarely happens nowadays, even the last 2 undisputed champions didn't do it. Usyk missed Dorticos and Makabu, whilst Crawford missed a couple of guys, namely Mikey Garcia. They didn't duck these guys, the fights just didn't get made. Which is probably symbolic of boxing as whole, right now.

 

Hagler came to my mind instantly but the original poster has him ! He was a beast. One of the all time great middleweights. They say Mike Tyson had most of his opponents beat before entering the ring, such was his aura. Hagler did the same in my opinion.

 

Bob Foster?

 

Yes and everybody know that dominating the best guys from a complete era < not facing 2 secondary guys that would not have remote chance of beating him

 

Robert, I've always been a fan of foster and consider him in my top three of 175lb. greats. However, in regards to cleaning out the division, he holds that awful stigma of being stripped of his light heavyweight title for failure to defend, which is in essence, what this subject is about. If you look at his reign from 68-72, there wasn't a great deal there. He really should have been defending against guys like Jimmy Dupree and Bossman Jones. And then there was the thing between he and Victor Galindez in '77, which isn't exactly luster on a career. I will say this about Bob, however, after wasting Rondon in '72 to unify the title, his championship activity and level of talent he was defending against picked up.

 

Frank Klaus fought pretty much every top middleweight from the Ketchel Era to the Greb era

Harada wiped out his divisions

 

I appreciate the info and insight.
Thanku my man

 

Ali beat every fighter that was in The Ring top 10 when he became champion in 1964. That's probably as good a job that you can realistically do as far as "cleaning out" is concerned since there will always be a new contender coming in when you eliminate a current one.

Frazier did, just like, Liston and Tyson most of his best work before he started defended his lineal title. Rocky only faced nr 1 ranked contenders (well, maybe LaStarza wasn't ranked nr 1?), so he was solid in that regard.

 

Looking at Ali in the 60’s and 70’s there’s probably no contender you could name who he didn’t face and beat.
I’m sure someone will though!

 

Harada didn't actually clear out Fly. He only fought Pone then moved up, he could've fought the other guys. In fact I think by the time he moved up to 118, Pone was the only top 10 he had fought.

He also missed a few top tenners at BW, nothing major though as he'd beaten the best of them.

Rocky Marciano fought everyone except Valdez in his career.

 

Of course. Like the one who did with lennox lewis, actually ALWAYS you can find a minimal thing if you wanna **** the image of a fighter