I would go with Langford, as he moved from lightweight to heavyweight. He drew with the welterweight champ (which he probably won) and also beat the light-heavy champ but the belt was not on the line. Once he apologised to the fans before the fight as he had to catch a train, so he had to knock the guy out In a round, he did and court his train. Hey even when Sam was old and have blind, Dempsey was still scared to fight him. Second Greb then SRR at third
It is hard to say who was the best etc etc I rate Joe Louis ahead of Ali, which is not what the majority of people acknowledge, but it is personal preference and everybody has there reasons why, so nobody can be right or wrong and that is the beauty of this sport. One of my favorite fighters to watch is Ike Williams, especially against Buae Jack another of my favorites.
Robinson is probably the greatest all-rounder. He doesn't necessarily have the best record or achievements; he doesn't necessarily have the most skill or ability; nor does he necessarily look better than anyone on film before or since. But he's right up there in all of those categories (I'm sure some would have him topping one or two of them, but you still get my drift) and if you lump them all together, he has arguably the most convincing case. Certainly that seems to be the opinion of almost all major publications, writers, historians etc., albeit I've been critical of how quick they are to bestow the title on him without even considering the credentials of other men. Greb's record, in terms of the names he consistently beat, is arguably better than Robinson's on paper - especially if you factor in that he faired better overall at his higher, less comfortable or natural weight (175 lb) than Robinson did at his (160 lb). Greb's record makes him perhaps the greatest Middleweight ever, but it's worth noting that he actually beat more Light-Heavyweight champions than he did Middleweight ones, despite usually scaling no more than around 168 lb for those fights. The down side is the lack of film of him in action and the slight question marks which come with the 'No Decision / Newspaper Decision' era. But clearly he has to be considered. However, I really can't have anyone above Armstrong. Well, okay, maybe I could have him and Robinson as 1a and 1b (I've copped out using that plenty of times!). But I'd struggle putting anyone ahead of Armstrong outright. Vicente Saldivar - a truly great Featherweight champion, maybe top five all-time. A properly great fighter by anyone's definition, right? Well, now imagine Saldivar, instead of retiring in 1967 after cleaning out the Featherweight division, decides to go up in weight for new challenges instead. He makes the leap all the way up to Welter and, weighing inside the Lightweight limit and spotting his opponent 9 lb, he dethrones Curtis Cokes. He then drops down to Lightweight in his very next fight and outscores someone like Ortiz, Laguna, Teo Cruz etc. for the title there. He then makes fifteen defences of the Welterweight title, often while only weighing inside the Light-Welter or even Lightweight limit, before boxing a draw with Benvenuti, who outweighs him by 11 lb, for the Middleweight title. Now imagine he does all that in a two-and-a-half year span. The idea of even a great fighter like Saldivar doing that is laughable - yet that's what Armstrong accomplished, and in terms of jaw-dropping achievements I don't think anyone else comes close. Take another quality Featherweight champion in Naseem Hamed. Imagine him trying to do this, switching the names above with, say, Quartey at Welter, Mosley at Lightweight and Joppy or Keith Holmes at Middle between 1996-99. Or Lomachenko between 2016-19 trying to replicate that against the likes of Bradley / Brook, Linares (which he did later, of course) and Billie Joe Saunders. Hamed and Lomachenko are both outstanding but it's impossible to see how either of them could manage what Armstrong did, particularly considering the weight disparities and how quickly he racked up these achievements. I'd also argue that Armstrong is the only man who has a legitimate, if not concrete claim to rank inside an all-time top ten for three of the original weight classes, again making him pretty unique. He doesn't have the silky-smooth aura of Ray, or the same insane longevity at title level (albeit he packed in more defences than most have in a decade-long reign), but when I think of great achievements, Armstrong is my guy.
Helluva post. Chris. I tip my hat. Not sure I'd have Saldivar top 5 feather but other than that, can't find fault with a thing you wrote. Brilliant.
He never fought at Lightweight, he was supposed to against Gans, but didn't make weight. He was also above the Light Heavyweight limit when he fought O'Brien. I'm pretty sure that Dempsey story isn't true, but if you have a decent source please correct me.
If you say Greb, Robinson, Armstrong, Pep, Langford, Benny Leonard or Joe Gans, I cant be upset with you because all of these men are serious contenders for the title of Greatest of all time
Bob Fitzsimmons. No other fighter has dominated so much, beating the best punchers and boxers, even outside his weightclass, only coming short when hitting the brick wall known as Jeffries, when giving up a stupid weight disadvantage. From McCarthy to Sharkey, it's not just (other than Jeffries), he consistently won, but consistently stopped top opponents Billy McCarthy Jack Dempsey Peter Maher X2 Jim Hall Joe Choynski Dan Creedon Tom Sharkey X2 (ignoring the apparently ridiculous ruling by the ref in the first one) James J Corbett Gus Ruhlin The Dempsey fight was a drawn out massacre Dan Creedon and even more so Billy McCarthy are pretty forgotten, but were top Middleweights, McCarthy recently challenging Dempsey. In his first fight with Maher he had an injured hand but outboxed him to quitting on his stool Not only that, but he also beat George Gardner over 20 rounds despite having injured hands, being 40, and ill, collapsing with pneumonia in the days after. After that he still managed to get the better of Philadelphia Jack O'Brien in a ND contest. Even aged 50 he still battered heavyweights, all be it not good ones.
Springs Toledo was in the Robinson #1 P4P camp for well over 30 years. Even H2H -and he debated Compton on this forum about 10 years ago, arguing that Robinson would beat Greb at middleweight. And he was wrong, wrong, wrong. "Smokestack Lightning: Harry Greb, 1919" is his admission -writ large- that Compton had it right all along. This content is protected
SRR was the greatest fighter of all time period...unless films surfaces of Greb that changes my mind in an absolute sense he will have to settle for #2 SRR had the record against just about every good/great fighter to come along in his era to support what can be seen on video....he was grace, beauty, artistry, violence the perfect fighter.
Yes, it's the age-old philosophical question: If a boxer fights in a ring and no-one is around to see him, does he exist? Or something.
Yes, at the end of the day this is what it comes down to. Even when trying to judge objectively, the choice of no. 1 says more about the poster than the fighter. We all have our own criteria for judging greatness and what we weight as more important and most of us probably make exceptions to that self-imposed criteria too! Like you, I think as long as certain fighters are in the conversation, I'm happy. And who places no. 1 is ultimately a futile exercise... it's fun to debate it though!
In terms of achievement, Fitzsimmons has to be in the conversation. The thing that has given me pause in the past though is the film. I don't want to say he looks terrible - that's unfair - but he does seem crude to me. If I compare him with someone like Robinson on film, there's no contest. But... we have footage of modern fighters like Monzon and he doesn't look great either! The main question I have is how much weight do we put on film and the so-called eye test and how much does that penalise fighters from the early years of the 20th century? Watching someone like Robinson, it's easy to imagine him being the best because aesthetically he looks great. He also has a record to back up what we see on film. But Robinson caught the moment when boxing started to be televised regularly and so the quality of the footage is lightyears ahead of what was around at the turn of the century when Fitzsimmons was fighting. So to judge them based on film would be to penalise Fitz for the technology of his era. The same question applies to Greb, if and when footage of him ever turns up from around the late 1910s or 1920s. So I think it's really hard to trust the eye test based on film over the first couple of decades at least of the 20th century. From the 1950s on, what we're watching I think is a pretty damn accurate reflection of what happened in the ring. Between the 1920s and 40s, the quality of film seems to be really variable. Not trying to criticize your choice, by the way, but your post triggered an initial reaction in me based on what I've seen of Fitzsimmons on film that I then thought better of and thought I should analyse more.
Great post! I have Armstrong at no. 2 all-time behind Robinson but agree with everything you said about him. Him holding all three world titles between featherweight and welterweight for a period in 1938 is to my mind the single greatest achievement in boxing history and truly gives merit to the idea that p4p, he was the best. I'd personally have him top 5 at welterweight, just outside top 10 at lightweight and inside the top 10 at featherweight. But he's a unique fighter and what he did between 1937 and 1940 was astonishing.
