For today: 1) Sugar Ray Robinson 2) Henry Armstrong 3) Harry Greb 4) Joe Louis 5) Muhammad Ali 6) Sam Langford 7) Ezzard Charles 8) Sugar Ray Leonard 9) Pernell Whittaker 10) Roberto Duran
1 Harry Greb 2 Ezzard Charles 3 SRR 4 Henry Armstrong 5 Willie Pep 6 Sam Langford 7 Bob Fitzsimmons 8 Mickey Walker 9 Joe Gans 10 Roberto Duran
1. SRR 2. Greb 3. Langford 4. Armstrong 5. Charles 6. Fitzsimmons 7. Duran 8. B. Leonard 9. Louis 10. Ali
Why all the love for bob fitzsimmons? Baffles me how he could deserve to be on a top ten list, or most of the "great" fighters from pre 1930 tbh.
a good exercise for you diehards, not me, my interest has waned beyond resuscitation measures. anyway, excluding fighters from pre 1910 because of the more grappling brawling & smothering era, into Boxing/Prizefighting becoming a more 'technical & athletic' Art & Sport, right up to 2010, where we have the "Land of the 'hapless' Giants", this gives you 100 Years of BOXING more as we know it. the TOP Fighter of each Year followed by the Decade, leaving you 100 Greats, thinning out to 10 greats, such exercises though interesting & informative, still don't represent the whole story, too many variables, facts, circumstances and less known realities. However, it is always a great starting analysis, if never quite 'exact'. then for the real archivists, do the same by Weight Divisions, place in-between fighter's weights either up or down into the appropriate traditional Weight Division - i.e. a fighter say a Jr Welter being typically on the lighter side of the division gets slotted into the Lightweight Division and one who really is really a Big Jr Welter gets slotted into the Middleweight Divisions and so it goes through the divisions... another example is 'most' S-MW's would actually be L-HW's, you get the breakdown. Well, you will certainly come up with the greatest Fighters in History, though 100 is still leaving dozens out, whereas 10 is never accurate. so, it would make for interesting reductions over the 100 Best years of Boxing and also you can give the, generally speaking, lesser S-HW's their own list among 'each other'. as to the thread, fighters like Greb, Tony C, SRR, Pep, Charles and the like will ultimately be there, but as to more extensive lists, say 300, well then, many more greats will receive the credit that is often overlooked them, but that definitely belongs to them. "Fly at er".
1 : Ray Robinson 2 : Harry Greb 3 : Henry Armstrong 4 : Roberto Duran 5 : Ezzard Charles 6 : Sam Langford 7 : Muhammad Ali 8 : Willie Pep 9 : Bob Fitzsimmons 10 : Joe Louis
Go ask Joe Gans.. he was in awe of him.. it's pretty simple really.. he was the first 3 weight champion and he was a freak of nature, often outweighed by a significant margin.. that was P4P before there even was such a concept.. yes he fought a long time ago & his style & era seems archaic now .. but u respect them for what they did in their time.. i don't necessarily just think well how would they fare today .. because if u placed the fighters of today back then they too wouldn't be the same as they are now & vice versa. Bob in today's era would be a great champion & ahead of the curve just like he was back then because I believe greatness transcends.. Fitzsimmons operated and thrived under the framework and circumstances of his time. Doesn't disqualify him from standing alongside fighters from say the 50s or the 80s... I rate Fitzsimmons so highly because he was one of the standout fighters of his age & was a freak of nature.. Incredible KO power, freak athleticism & way ahead of his time in terms of training & nutrition.. he bashed up MW great nonpareil Dempsey when he was considered the best fighter of his era, dropped him 13 times.. he sparked out Corbett (who had 17lbs on him) for the HW title .. then beat LHW champ George Gardiner aged 40 & ATG Philadelphia Jack O'Brien (go look up his resume) aged 41.. after suffering hard losses to the much younger & much bigger James Jeffries at HW.. can u imagine such a career today? In fact in the second Jeffries fight he was piecing Jeffries up.. but youth & size pulled through.. Bob didn't swerve black fighters either.. fighting men like Starlight Rollins, Jack Johnson & Harris Martin .. he fought all over the world never shirking a challenge.. a proper fighter, hes the very definition of an ATG IMO
Around 100 years. That's how long gloved boxing had been around before the LHW champion stepped up and won the HW title. Some great LHWs had attempted it, JHL, Archie Moore (twice), Bob Foster and Billy Conn, but none had succeeded. How utterly absurd, then, that over 80-years earlier, the MW champion won the HW title. Iirc, Fitzsimmons officially weighed 167lbs vs Corbett, but I've read reports that he weighed-in fully clothed with weights in his pockets and that at a private weigh in that morning scaled 156lbs. Either way, Fitzsimmons was never anything other than a natural MW, its beyond insane he was the best fighter on the planet regardless of weight. The first and, to this day, only time that has ever applied to a natural MW. Aged 41, which is roughly the equivalent of 50 for an athlete today, the natural MW Fitzsimmons beat ATG Philadelphia O'brien to become the LHW world champion. All this, was after he beat NP Jack Dempsey, the p4p GOAT up to that point, in a fight so one sided it can be considered a mismatch. Fitzsimmons achievements defy logic.