Top 50 All Time Boxing Fan Favorites - SURVEY RESULTS FINISHED!

Someone quoted me about it, it was only logical I replied.

 

FFS its only a bit of fun.Your favourite can be who the hell you want it to be

 

He's no more said his piece than any of those arguing the counter-point. Less, in fact, on balance.

And he so happens to have the right of it.

 

I'm going with Jorge Paez.

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Why? Duran is universally loved on this forum.

 

Respectfully, that oughtn't be something that needs to be stipulated - more so a (it would seem, to me, and others) common sense issue that it wouldn't behoove Rummy to be compelled to spell out. You're talking about mixing apple with orange criteria, here.

We're not talking "ample", here; there's no magic # of bouts that needs to be met as threshold. We're talking any. More than zero. We're talking one single readily available (preferably complete, but for the sake of argument let's say even partial) viewable prizefight - not sparring, not shadow-boxing, a fight - as barrier for entry. That isn't unreasonable. To have a favorite boxer you need to have watched said boxer actually ...box. That is a valid stance, however much some may want to gang up and gaslight others into accepting that it isn't and that we've fallen into The Twilight Zone.

You of course can be riveted by writings on pugilists who didn't yet live when cameras were afoot, or did but for whatever reason haven't been passed down to us in any known preserved format. You can say "stories about Greb are my favorite fighter stories from that time period". Or "stories about John L. Sullivan", or "..of Old Chocolate Godfrey", or "..of Nonpareil Dempsey" or what have you. You can't, however, expect anyone to take seriously that when making a list of your 35 favorite fighters, only 34 that you've actually seen with your own eyes make the cut.

You mentioned club shows and radio; I was actually going to address both in a follow-up post before seeing your reply.

Before there were cinemas, let alone television, if you did not live in an area where they staged fights you could pay for a ticket to attend or did but couldn't afford admission (and weren't working the venue as a cigarette girl, or newsboy handing out programs...or couldn't find a way sneak up into the rafters or peek down from a window ledge if you were a spry and enterprising scamp) - then you didn't watch boxing. You read about it, or you listened to it, as a radio drama that just happened to be true. Neither is the same as watching boxing. If you never attended a fight in your lifetime, then no, you didn't have a favorite fighter in the same way as people that did (a way which those people share in common with those of us alive in the Wide World of Sports, closed-circuit, TVKO PPV, Tuesday and Friday Night Fights, basic & premium cable, and now OTT digital streaming eras). You could have a favorite "real-life radio character" that was a boxer (part of me has always wished I could experience having been a kid lying prone on a living room floor in front of a big Westinghouse or RCA tube, chin in my palms and elbows digging chafe-hard into a rug as an announcer with a knack for tachylalia called play by play for a prime Joe Louis), or a favorite to collect articles about from the papers, but that isn't the same.

And truthfully, if someone has made an account here or on any forum, and read my or anybody else's RBR threads and delighted in the descriptive details of the posts and used their imagination to animate them in their own minds - but has never in their life watched a boxing program on television or an internet stream or even highlights on YouTube - then, that is wonderful for them that they glean some enjoyment from it, that's very nice, but ...respectfully, they can't be said to have a favorite fight or fighter the same way the rest of us have. Likewise fans who listened on the radio may well have been fans of the cultural practice of their times of doing that, but if they never sat ringside (or thirty rows back in a dingy hall filled with cigar smoke with an vantage obstructed by insensible architecture, whatever) or saw it on a screen - they aren't boxing fans, at least in the same manner as those who have spectated what is, and has always been, very much a spectator sport. There's no born-blind boxing fan. There can well be a blind man who likes to be told stories about boxing and do his best to visualize what they're being told, however that may work out for them - but it isn't the same.

And you all know that it isn't the same, I think. There's this urge among a lot of historians and classic boxing nerds (which to be clear I don't say as a pejorative, and like to count myself among that happy number) to bend over backwards and elevate Greb to mythical levels to gain 'cool points' and seem enlightened...which in the context of arguing for p4p or intra-divisional greatness, makes sense. You can use contemporaneous accounts to say how good he was in his era, then cull together a rough idea of how good his rivals and adjacent competitors from that era were, and give him his place in the historical standings ...even without a shred of footage. It's stretching things thing even there to be honest, but it can be done.

To say he's your "#1-35 favorite", however? With a straight face? As in, over the last century there aren't more than 34 fighters whose body of in-ring work that you've witnessed with your own eyes have made an impression enough upon you to not prefer a guy you've only ever (and will only ever) read about? No, that simply isn't so. I can't accept it.

Now, this post has probably not changed any minds - and replies to it aren't going to change mine. If everyone wants to pretend that what they're looking at in fact is a fully clothed emperor - hey, you guys do you. Horse to water and what-all. I raised the point that his inclusion on the list bugged me (because it takes away a spot from someone anyone's actually seen, which rather implicitly seems to be a necessary part of the whole deal - at least to some of us) and people such as yourself and salsa have voiced your disagreement. At this point there's no further we're apt to take it civilly, so, to you all I say godspeed. And on the next survey let's be sure to spread the love chuck in a few of those ancient Greeks, eh? (sorry, couldn't resist, my hands are now washed of it)

For others I concede there may have been a push to credit him a bit extra in light of it having only been a matter of months. For me, as explained above, it wasn't. And for the record, those personal connections - insofar as having training partners in common - only manifested in adulthood (my late twenties into early thirties). I've been a MMH fan since very early childhood, and first remember hearing about him on Cheers, and my dad thought he was the bee's knees. Then in my teens upon becoming a serious adherent of the sport, I gorged on footage of the 4 Kings and, just based on styles & demeanor, he is far and away the one I always liked and gravitated to most. And that'd have been the case whether he was from Massachusetts or Moscow (and even if Roberto, Tommy or Ray had grown up on my very street). It ultimately is about the in-ring stuff at the end of the day, for me (and I'm gaga for technical but hard-nosed boxer-punchers).

Which bleeds nicely into...

Well, I'm running up against the per-post character limit so these will be spun into a separate reply.

 

Liston didn't top out the survey at #1, and unless I'm mistaken Monzón didn't even make the top 50. I singled out Hands of Stone because...well...he's the highest elevated point, that's where the lightning goes.

I could have sworn there was something of domestic violence in his past, but can't find anything concrete on it now that I'm actively seeking it out. Certainly if there is anything, it pales in comparison to Monzón actually killing his wife. SRL was a monster in his day too, used to get bipped & blotto and smack his missus around. I'd just as soon he not have made the video either - but again, he isn't #1.

As for Floyd, that he had physical altercations with his ex is undeniable, but witnesses of the incident (granted, in his employ, so perhaps unreliable narrators) purport that he never actually struck her with his fist (the way so many champions including SRR himself have sadly done) but rather grabbed her by the hair and restrained her while she was in fact attacking him in a hysterical fit. Nobody that wasn't in the room is apt to ever know; it's they-said she-said, ultimately we do know that he let a toxic situation spiral to where he's yanking his children's mother by the hair, so that certainly doesn't reflect well on him. But, if we're talking degrees of shittiness, there's that, and then there's Leonard throwing actual punches while drunk & high, and then there's Monzón, and the likes of Valero in the ninth circle of hell.

I didn't contradict it, friend - you just misunderstood my point. I was illustrating the fact that Classic tends to have an anti-Floyd bias as it is, such that it seeps into conversations that ought to be objective and "strictly business" (like rating résumés) and colors people's willingness to give him due ("easy kayo victory for Napoles! Basilio would shut him out!" Eh...) . So for him to get a place in the video, playing to what ordinarily is a very hostile room, where he usually isn't given a fair shake, in essentially a straight-up popularity contest where his skills and achievements don't even have to come to bear, surprised the heck out of me.

 

I never thought he's be more loved than Tyson, Ali etc

 

Well now you're just making things up from whole cloth, tut-tut. What he said was "XYZ (as in, abstract concept) seems stupid". No ad hominem calling any person themselves stupid. You've of course called outlandish or absurd claims stupid yourself, plenty of times. You happen to not agree with him/us here, fine, but he has kept within the lines, no foul territory.

 

The phrase that stands out to me is saying they can’t have a favorite ‘the same way’ as people who have favorites only by watching do.

That’s correct, but not having favorites ‘the same way’ doesn’t make their way illegitimate.

I’ll give a really simple analogy:

There are fans today who have favorite superheroes based on the cinema, streaming shows and the like.

I grew up before there was much of that, and precious little I was exposed to (like Superman had the George Reeves show, Batman with Adam West, Lou Ferigno as the Incredible Hulk) … and none of that played into who my favorite superheroes were. I read comic books. Spider-Man was my favorite and still is — and while I’ve enjoyed and appreciated some of the movies (and outright hated others) it has no bearing on my favorites. I could give you a top 35 list if pressed to do so and it would all be based on comics.

Therefore it’s fair to say that I don’t have any favorite super heroes ‘the same way’ as the movie-going generation does. But mine are at least as legit, and I probably have an encyclopedia’s wealth of knowledge about those characters more than those who only know them from the movies.

I stand firm that my choices are at least equally legitimate as theirs.

I’ve been a Pittsburgh Steelers fan since before the Immaculate Reception, back when they were horrible. I choose them when I was like 5 years old and I think it was because I liked the color scheme and the fact that they had an emblem on only one side of their helmets. So I didn’t choose my team ‘the same way’ as others but don’t tell me I’m less of a fan because of it, not after more than 50 years of living and dying with their fortunes on Sundays.

Someone can like a fighter for any reason they choose. Nobody gets to tell them that their love/fandom for that fighter isn’t as real as yours for your favorites.