Best born and raised British HW.

Bruno would of had little problem beating any of those listed.

 

you might be right but according to wiki and boxrec he was born in Owerri, Nigeria

Sorry, thought we were still talking about herbie

 

I'd say Bruno.

He was for all his faults a ****ing good fighter, plenty of power in both hands and a decent chin too.

Haye at heavyweight is all smoke and mirrors, the one top fighter he faced pretty much shut him out, and he didn't even take the risk of being knocked out to try and win.... whereas Bruno gave a tremendous effort against Lewis in particular.

The only time he really crumbled was in the second fight with Tyson, a fight that really he didn't want to be in, and probably shouldn't have been with his eye condition.

Being consistently top 5 in that era was a pretty good achievement considering the likes of Tyson, Holyfield, Lewis and Bowe were in the mix at various times, compared to being a belt holder in this much weaker era.

 

Bbbbbrrrrrrrrruuuuuunnnnnooooooooo

 

If I'm gonna allow myself to be biased I pick Frank Bruno.

If I pick the man I actually think would do best in a round robin tourney I pick Haye.

But **** that, Heart over Head, Bruno is the man.

 

That might theoreticaly be the case, but his acomplishments simply don't warant ranking him over the other fighters on the list.

 

Arguably.

But Farr was too inconsistent; Cooper only really has the first Folley fight to call on as a very good or better win; and Haye is still active, so I will reserve judgement, although it looks like he is going to have a more accomplished record.

 

There is a genuine qualitative gap between Tommy Farr and the other people on that list.

Guys like Cooper and Bruno were good fighters but they essentially sat in the second tier of contenders of their respective eras. Farr was very decisively in the first tier of contenders of the period.

Bruno and Cooper generally lost against the better contenders of their eras, and got dominated or stopped by the champions. Farr was beating the champions of his era, and he might just have been the champion if it had not been his misfortune to share an era with Joe Louis.

Even if you look at Farr’s losses, the best fighters of the era were going life and death with him, including Louis. His resume included has genuine world level depth with wins over guys like:

Tommy Loughran
Max Baer
Walter Neusell
Red Burmann

You can add to that the fact that he probably deserved the win against Jimmy Braddock, which would mean that he had beaten the two previous lineal champions. Take all this into consideration, and Farr isn't the Henry Cooper of his era, he is more like the Jimmy Young of his era.

Farr was not a horizontal British heavyweight of the traditional mould. He was actually one of the best contenders of the era.

 

You can say that but Haye probably has better HW wins than Bruno. Both Haye and Bruno came up short against the ATG HW they faced

 

Farr was a brave honest fight, but he never beat the champions of the era; that is 'Campbell like' spin.

He beat a damaged 1937 Baer (losing the rematch). He managed to blow a fight with Braddock, after his epic Louis performance. Then lost to a converted 175lber in Burman.

That is not to disrespect Farr, who was by the far the best of pretty ordinary crop of British Heavyweights all the way up to the 80s. But by the time Bruno came around, the game had changed. For starters Bruno almost had less fights than Farr defeats! Bruno did not need to fight every month, go on 'American tours', and could be smartly matched. They may technically be involved of been in the same sport, but in reality they were not.

 

I dont know so much,he won a world and Euro title and everyone he lost to was either a world champ or went onto become a world champ. It was not a bad career.