Should Jimmy Wilde be Considered the All Time Number 1 P4P Boxer ?

Joe Lynch was one of the greatest bantemweights that ever drew breath.

Wilde was also giving up a lot of weight to him.

 

This is the botom line.

While records of that era are often incomplete flyweight records are by far the worst of all. You could be the British champion and still only have one fight listed on boxrec today.

With so many early flyweights the historical record of their career has been lost forever.

 

I suppose we should wait until British library has the old newspapers available online (I believe they are available now already to local customers, but not too many newspapers of this period). Regarding Wilde in particular, the IBRO, of course, lists him among their major achievements ("and extensive work on flyweight champion Jimmy Wilde’s early record to bring his lifetime knockout record from 77 to 100"). So that gives additional doubts about his record being so much incomplete. I wish as much work has been put into Jim Driscoll's early record, or Owen Moran's (of him I know of several bouts that are not listed at all or are probably incorrect in current versions of his record, although it's coming from secondary contemporary source, that doesn't list the dates, why I wasn't adding them to boxrec or asking Tracy to add them at CBZ).

 

You're exactly right here, and it's a damned shame that that's the case (not that you're right, of course, but what you're right about).

I would love for Adam Pollack (or any other author, for that matter) to put the effort into doing an "In the Ring" book about Wilde and his opposition. Sadly, even being able to get that done would be a tough task given how bad the record keeping was for the smallest weight classes back then.

 

a mate of mine is writing a book on Wilde which will be thouroghly a good read. Wilde is his hero and he has researched it well im sure it will have alot of great information. Not sure if it is about his opposition though

 

a mate of mine is a writing a book and it will be a great read

 

I know this is heresy for some people, but I'm not impressed with the resume or the accomplishments.

 

The resume is definitely not as great as the men he is often surrounded by in p4p lists. But i rate the man, i think h2h is an undeniable aspect of his greatness, especially when we factor in his giving up in weight. Joe Symonds and Tancy Lee are undoubtedly his best scalps taken. But for me it's more top 20 then top 10 definitely.

 

he did beat Tancy Lee twice and lost once if im correct

im tracing the lineage of the flyweight title at the moment and its dominated by Europeans i think its not until after the war a Yank challenges for the title and thats Young Zulu Kid

 

Yeah i've done that tracing once before when i had nothin to do, done it for most titles, can get complicated.

 

i ahve only did till 1920 and its already getting complicated as Jimmy WIlde unifies the tile against somebody who beat the champion but didnt get the title but that champ still claimed recognition

 

Haha, nightmare for you, just stick to lineage even if you seem to be going against the grain and you might unveil a big surprise for us.

 

yeh i might ill try stick at it

 

It's a fact that he was significantly outweighed in many of his bouts, often by large margins. I'm not sure about 90 pounds, but it's definitely possible given the physical standards of the time period in general (people were on average a fair bit smaller back then). Probably one reason why he wouldn't have looked too much smaller (if not outright bigger) than his Flyweight contemporaries you've seen photographed next to him. He did look to be clearly the bigger man against Pancho Villa in their bout, however.

 

No, but he's probably the hardest puncher pound for pound in history!