International Boxing Hall of Famers Who Never Won a World Title

Any Murderer's Row fighter would do.

 

Most famous would be Charley Burley.

 

I assume we’re not counting the non-combatants like Sylvester Stallone or ring announcers or trainers or boxing journalists, etc.?

 

That's gonna be a very long list - more than 40 "Pioneers" alone, and in total around 80.

 

Packey McFarland is the greatest fighter to never receive a title shot.

 

Jim Driscoll has to be mentioned.

 

Iirc, Laszlo Papp, the great Hungarian who won 3 Olympic gold medals and who wasn't allowed to box for the world title by the authorities in the Eastern Bloc communist era is in the IBHOF.

Deservedly so, I think.

 

It's not as big a task, as one might think!

All three categories, "Pioneer", "Old Timer", "Modern" are listed alphabetically... so all you have to do, is scan down the lists of names, and pick out those who never won a world title. If I have counted correctly, it comes to this:

Pioneer: 41
All but Paddy Duffy and John L. Sullivan of the 43 listed.

Old Timer: 32
Jimmy Barry
Eddie Booker
George KO Chaney
Joe Choynski
Les Darcy
Jim Driscoll
Mike Gibbons
Tommy Gibbons
George Godfrey
Len Harvey
Leo Houck
Peter Jackson
Joe Jeannette
Jake Kilrain
Sam Langford
Charles Ledoux
Packey McFarland
Sam McVey
Billy Miske
Charlie Mitchell
Pedro Montanez
Memphis Pal Moore
Kid Norfolk
Billy Petrolle
Wesley Ramey
Dave Shade
Tom Sharkey
Jeff Smith
Young Stribling
Lew Tendler
Sid Terris
Harry Wills

Modern: 7
Jimmy Bivins
Charlie Burley
Billy Graham
Cocoa Kid
Lloyd Marshall
Lazlo Papp
Holman Williams

 

It depends who counts as champion. I think Jimmy Barry has a much better claim to having been world champion than Paddy Duffy. I'd argue Jem Mace had a far better claim too.

 

Don't we usually go with BoxRec for these kinds of questions? Not necessarily saying they are "right" - but it's easier that way, when a statistical question (like this one) comes up. Whenever there's a question about who fought/beat the most world champions or something like that, I think there's an unspoken agreement, that we're talking about champs recognized by BoxRec.

Like when we're talking about HOFers. Here there's obviously some kind of agreement, that we mean IBHOF - and not that other organization.

And when we're discussing world champs, we mean "the big 4" - without having to say so.

 

Jimmy Barry is recognised as a lineal champion by CyberBoxingZone and Wikipedia though.

I don't see much reason to go off the boxrec page, what that lists as title bouts seem pretty unreliable and arbitrary.

Boxrec doesn't count bareknuckle fights either, so talking about bareknuckle boxers in this decussion, while basing it on Boxrec, becomes a bit silly