Best cuban pro boxer ever...

Kid Chocolate or Sugar Ramos, with Jose Casamayor and Jose Napoles as close 2nds.

 

Casamayor second are you kidding?

the top three are Rodriguez,Gavilan and Napoles.

 

I'll go with Jose Napoles I cant find a lot of fights on Kid Chocolate.
Cubans have a lot of good fighters cant imagine how many of them were denied the chance to turn pro and be considered atg.

 

You put Rodriguez over Gavlian and Napoles?

 

i havent put much tought in to it but you can put those three in any order and i wouldnt argue. along with Chocolate they are cleary the best four cuban fighters ever.

 

Gavilan, Napoles, Kid Chocolate, Rodriguez

 

i agree with you completely. casa has a place, maybe, near the bottom of the list of fighters contained in the original post, but he is nowhere near the top...casa is a good fighter and a tough *******, no doubt about it, but we are talking about some all time greats here. kid gavilan, in my opinion, could probably lay claim to the title of all-time best cuban pro and rodriguez and napoles would fall just below that high water mark, but there is a long way to fall to get to casamayor from there.

 

I don't see the case for having Kid Gavilan above Napoles, personally.

 

i forgot to mention, kid chocolate is definitely up there, right below gavilan in my book. chocolate's fights with terrific fighters like seaman tom watson, fidel labarba, joe ghnouly. kid berg, tony canzoneri, benny bass those were all starmaking fights and those are only a fraction of the highlights of the highlights of chocolate's career (and this was in the days when being a top fighter usually meant you were a man with a capital "m," a warrior, not an athlete who is only brave as long as he doesn't get hit. chocolate probably belongs right up there with rodriguez and napoles.

 

i suppose, for me, it was just the sheer volume of wins and competitive losses against absolutely excellent fighters and so many of them more than once--ike williams, ray robinson, billy graham, tony janiro, joe miceli, paddy young, johnny bratton and later in gavilan's career, way past his best he beat young, fresh guys who would go on to (or were in the middle of) excellent careers like gil turner, chuck davey, ramon fuentes, cirilio gil, carmen basilio...and even in his very last hours, when he was way, way past it he gave some top fighters trouble, like bobo olson, tony demarco and gaspar ortega. i suppose i give gavilan a lot of credit for never being stopped, even in his 30 losses. mix in that napoles was less prolific and didn't press on as long and as surprisingly well in those late hours is why i would nudge gavilan ahead.

however, i can see your point and it's certainly something to think about. i mean, napoles also fought a long list of truly elite fighters, some of them all-time greats--johnny santos, curtis cokes, emile griffith, hegemon lewis, ralph charles, clyde gray, augustin saldano. i have to give napoles points, too, for having the better record by the numbers.

but i guess in microcosm i look at the way that gavilan gave ray robinson hell on mutliple occasions and then turn to the only fights of all-time elite level on napoles record, carlos monzon, and see the way he was shut down...though, i admit, he was way out of his weight class, which does weigh in heavily, so to speak.

hard to say. but your point is well taken.

 

i agree with you about how casa never ducked anyone and didn't play the games that keep guys out of the ring very often. when he talked trash he always walked straight forward to back it up. a consummate pro and an example a lot of these whiners today could learn a lot from about how to get the respect they say is being denied them.

you're right too about making the weight and staying responsibly in a division by ratcheting up the work he did to get ready instead of division hopping instead needlessly. i don't take anything away from him for getting ko'd by marquez...marquez is an excellent technician with a proper mean streak and great timing, but, it seemed to me, casa mostly went down as a function of age and wear, not so much from the impact of the punches.

i guess, in the end, casa's record just looks a bit uneven compared to some of these great cubans who were smoking and toughing out top guys for basically the whole of 20 year careers.