Thanks Eddie, appreciated! I Hope you like Jofre and find him as impressive I do, he was some fighter. I try to be as impartial as possible and not biased towards a certain era or fighter, which is hard as fan, and I'm not sure on here some would believe me, but hey.
Hard to choose. Both were dominant champions and very skilled in their own right. If I had to pick I think Jofre may have been be a bit more well rounded. Skillwise Jofre takes it while Monzon had a better resume IMO.
To be honest Tin, I don't actually mind a bit of bias. I am biased towards certain boxers and I have slight prejudices against certain eras based on what I see. Boxing seems to create that passion among us fans. It's my opinion that boxing improved decade on decade as trainers improved because they had been fighters too, fighters travelled and got better sparring and a wider array of fighters to fight, fought full time, saw other fighters on film, in different gyms, had no colour bar, better diet and had a few decades of trial and error to inform what they were doing. A whole array of reasons that meant it was just about peaking as a sport in the 50s-60s, may even have got better in the 70s and 80s, slipped a bit in the 90s (though still a great decade) and has become very poor ever since with other sports, cultural pastimes and drugs providing alternative paths for many who would have increased the sport's talent pool. But I have no problem with those that disagree as long as they can be reasonable and not take a difference of opinion as a mortal insult. These two's peak years fall right in what I feel to be the sport's zenith so I'm not surprised they are so highly thought of. Importantly, they were still of an era, at least where they grew up, that instilled real mental and physical toughness. In terms of being the best boxers they could be, they came along at the perfect time and they absolutely made the most of it.
I don't mind a bit of bias either, it's nigh on impossible to omit it completely; very few manage it. I've my own preferences for certain fighters in certain weighclasses during certain eras (Jofres weight and era being one) but I try to remain as objective as possible and cognisant of facts with honest observations. Liking a fighter more than another (or disliking) is fine as long as you can admit it. What I don't like are people quoting opinion as fact (though I've probably done it myself on occasion) and twisting facts disingenuously/using arbitrary or illogical standards to suit an agenda or be contrarian. And putting forward strong opinions when they have clear gaps in their knowledge. My favourite fighter of all time is probably - for all that the heavyweight threads on here **** me off - Joe Louis. He's certainly the first old time fighter I revered (because of my Grandad) and the one I struggle the most with concerning objectivity. So I rarely post about him on here, something made easier by most of the threads concerning him being too frequent, tedious and full of stupid opinions. I agree with you to a fair extent about the trajectory of boxing history although Id say it peaked earlier slightly and isn't really a linear rise and decline as such. Most of the stronger eras were years ago with the greatest fighters produced, but there have been seismograph-like spikes and dips in quality throughout history. Only in the last twenty five years has the standard slightly declined as a general rule with the last fifteen of those being more prominent. That said, when the murderer's row and lightweights of the 40s were establishing the zenith of the sport, there was the heavyweight division of the time that was weak in comparison to the 90s, and not long after the average era at bantam dominated by Ortiz (although he took on all comers similar to Louis and made the step up to challenge Pep instead of hiding behind a paper title and calling himself world champion). Pep's own era at feather was solid rather than spectacular other than Saddler and Wright (weaker than the times of Saldivar and Sanchez for example) but he also faced top class lightweights such as Joyce, Angott and Stolz. Super-fly in recent years has been a notably strong pocket-universe with Gonzalez, Estrada, Srisaket, Nietes, Ioka, Inoue, Ancajas, Viloria, Cuadras etc. Good post though You made several good points.
