What era in the middleweight division had the greatest depth of talent, and quantity of top fights between those fighters? Does any era stand out as a golden age for the middleweight division?
for this, i gotta go with the 50s. From 1949 when lamotta won the title until 1965 when tiger lost it to griffith i think that 15 or so year period featured everybody fighting everybody. but the 50s...**** man, you had lamotta, robinson, fullmer, olson, basillio, tiger, etc. that was the most competitive period in all probability and certainly had the best fights in division history
38-49 -Robinson, Burley, Lamotta, Marshall, WIlliams etc etc and 88-95 - Jones Jr, Toney, Hopkins, Nunn, Benn, Eubank, McCallum, Kalambay, Graham, Julian JAckson, Reggie Johnson, Watson
60's is my favourite, though not necessarily the absolute strongest. It was hella strong with the likes of Tiger, Giardello, Griffith, Archer, Carter, Hank, Benvenuti, Spider Webb, Fernandez, Lausse, Benton, LMR, Moyer, Mims, Giambra, Papp, Jose Monon Gonzalez and probably more ..Even guys like Torres and Ellis made cameos...Also had young up and comers like Briscoe, Rondon etc. Im maybe making that to long a time frame to include just one era and including guys who were at their best in other decades but you get the idea of how many good fighters were floating around. Plenty of film around of it and most importantly a lot of them fought each other..multiple times and often. The early to mid 90's had some sensational names...but they really didnt fight each other to often. Plus having more titles and the adjacent supermiddle and junior middle division drained a lot of the talent away from division, instead of stacking it all together. I think a lot of people will rightly go with the turn of the 20's era or the post war one with Robinson at his peak...but I have always liked that 60's era.
1910-1920: Stanley Ketchel Sam Langford Harry Greb Mike Gibbons Tommy Gibbons Les Darcy Billy Papke Frank Klaus Georges Carpentier Jeff Smith Jimmy Clabby Eddie McGoorty George Chip Leo Houck Mike O'Dowd Buck Crouse Tiger Flowers (though he was just getting started)
The 30's are the most underrated for me (perhaps the most interesting era overall), but I agree with Surf on this one. Johnny Wilson could get a shout in there, too. Italian Joe Gans and maybe Soldier Bartfield as well.
Good post. :good Also a good post. Have you ever got your hands on Klaus´ book in infighting? Have heard it´s pretty good and still useful today but never seen it for sale. 30s is my fav - surprise! - you had many very goot, borderline great fighters that fought each other regularly, even so some matches didn´t happen. Wonder how Steele-Zale would have turned out.
And---the 1930s- Tony Zale Freddie Steele Al Hostak Fred Apostoli Solly Krieger Billy Soose Ken Overlin Teddy Yarosz Nate Bolden Young Georgie Abrams Billy Conn Marcel Thil Lou Brouillard Not a bad era,I say.