Why does Fritzie seem to be forgoten about when people rank fighters in other of greateness? He never made the Ring Magazine's top 80 fighters, Bert Sugar's top 100 fighters book, or boxings best 100 fighters by John Owens. Zivic was a former Welterweight Champion taking the title off, for me the greatest fighter of all time in Henry Armstrong. Also held wins over La Motta, Burley, Lew Jenkins, Al Bummy Davis, Sammy Angott and Eddie Booker. Also Frizie give away weight in alot of fights as he was only really a natural Lightwelter/Welterweight even takeing on future heavyweight title challenger Billy Conn, which he only lost on a split decsion. Ray Robinson said he learn't the most from his fights with Zivic, than other fighter he fought. What are your thoughts and were do you rank him? And has anyone got any interesting stories or facts to add to this thread on Zivic?
I think he definitely is underrated. Some great wins and has fought some of the best competition of any fighter ever. I've only just began to actually make a list so not sure where I would rank him.
The problem with most would be his inconsistency combined with his dirty style. No fighter in the history of the sport was more of a scumbag in the ring to my knowledge. The guy was the master of cheap tricks. Be that as it may, he was obviously a very effective fighter, one who was willing to take on all comers, and beat most of them, because of his wealth of experience and dirty gamesmanship. He could hold his own with any fighter that ever lived around his weight. The more lenient the ref, the more effective he was. Not sure how he'd have fared in more modern times, but from the beginning of the Queensbury Rules until at least the time he campaigned he'd have given any champion a roughing over. It's highly unlikely you could name many more experienced fighters in terms of the depth and quality of competition faced.
The Pittsburgh fight writers, who were as good a crew as any btw, felt Fritz first fight with Lamotta was his career best form. This fight is in the record books as a loss, however its seems to be a robbery by all accounts.
Recently you was calling my lack of research, well if you had thouroughly researched Zivic you would have found that the consensus is that Burley won the fight and was robbed.
Actually it isnt known as a ouragous roberry and at the end of the day it's still known as a win for Zivic, thus me putting it on his resume of wins.
The majority of sportswriters had Burley a clear winner, one writer whos name i cant quite remember right now, wrote a huge article on this fight and how it was a disgraceful robbery. You mention no controvesy of the fight this giving the impression he beat Burley (when many disagree)
He's ranked #91 on this list : [url]http://www.boxingforum24.com/showthread.php?t=459918[/url] I actually think he should be higher, or at least above a few in the top 90.