Excellent work @Rumsfeld I was also surprised to see Lopez there. But if I cover his name up the rest of the order is fine. The other big surprise for me was Lopez being left out of a top 15!
I was actually going for brown. Featherweight is orange. Or a lighter shade of orange, I suppose. I'll reply tomorrow in more detail.
Good list for Flyweight without the notable anomaly of Lopez at 10 - the only name that offends me here. I personally don't rank guys who never fought in the official division even if they were technically inside that weight limit - Strawweight and Light-Flyweight may not exist for any particularly good reason but Lopez's legacy, for better or worse, resides in those divisions.
Even with him being in the limit, its meaningless. He never competed for the prize of being the best flyweight in the world.
Fan-damn-tastic. Great work by @Rumsfeld and all who voted. Yeah, we can debate about the final results but ultimately that’s what these lists are about ... debate and discussion. For myself, I’ll say this — flyweight was the division I was least versed in so my rankings rely a lot on research and opinions of others who came before me (not posters per se but historians who have done ranking lists). I did look up records and parse them and took notes but I didn’t feel authoritative or have any strong opinions like I did in the other weight classes where I had more knowledge and belief in order (which isn’t to say that 11-15 or thereabouts in some classes wasn’t a bit of a crapshoot for me because you obviously get more mixed resumes where a guy did some really great things but also some results or things that counted against them, like maybe not campaigning there for a longer period of time). All in all, we’re off to a great start and I’m excited about seeing more results as we go.
Good work @Rumsfeld and the 24! My only quibble is what was mentioned in the video and comments. I am disappointed that a mere 3 votes was enough to warrant inclusion for Lopez, but the scoring system while not perfect does seem to be a good gauge for a consensus ranking.
10 - Ricardo Lopez 09 - Pone Kingpetch 08 - Fidel LaBarba 07 - Benny Lynch 06 - Frankie Genaro 05 - Pancho Villa 04 - Midget Wolgast 03 - Pascual Perez 02 - Miguel Canto 01 - Jimmy Wilde Ok, first thoughts would be that the forum got the top four "right", if that's a fair thing to say. That's not bad given the history of the division. The two -and it is two for me- wild inaccuracies are Lopez at ten and Fidel at eight. Lopez at ten is something you run into in the general forum - guys just think he was a "little guy" so rave about him at flyweight. Of course, he never fought at flyweight. I kind of am presuming that the guys who ranked him at flyweight just toss in everyone below 112lbs into one division, as per the Classic Eight, and rank them head to head. Speculative at best, crazy at worst, but just about defendable as a position. Fidel LaBarba in the flyweight top ten is something I will just never understand. He has two absolutely crackling wins and perhaps the best win ever by a kid (Genaro). But is that really enough to see him ranked above guys like Wee Willie Davies and the host of ranked flyweights he beat? If it's "single great win" that counts so heavily, why is that Betulio Gonzalez who beat Miguel Canto (And many, many, many, many more flyweights than LaBarba), a better win than Genaro never figures? The answer, I think, is that LaBarba was one of the very favourites of the "golden generation" historians - Charley Rose, Herb Goldman, Nat Fleischer, guys like that, who all absolutely loved him. And it's just stuck. But it makes absolutely no sense, no matter which way you cook it! Oba and Chionoi, certainly, are locked - locked - above LaBarba. I really like the top eight, that's a great result really considering the division.
Matt, I've never understood why Chartchai is so high on many lists, could you please explain why you have him so high? If this is the place for it, at least.
He's a two-time flyweight champion of the world who contested thirteen world-title fights, beat a big scoop of contenders and engaged in perhaps the greatest trilogy in flyweight history. Hard to see him outside the top fifteen, very hard.
For me, I don't have LaBarba in my top 15, but I can understand those who do. He has a big rep already, he's one of the first names you come across in FLW history. I cannot get my head around Lopez at all. At all. At. All. Rummy must have been a bit gutted when his scoring system gave Lopez a place in the top ten, but I admire him for sticking to it to see what comes out. The problem with FLW will always be that not enough know enough. But if we'd have been able to wangle 40 posters it probably wouldn't have happened.
That’s true, all it would take is one anomaly If the no.10 ranked fighter in said division was below 100 to cause an obscure results. Lets say, John L Sullivan, ranked as no.1 on just 1 list to crack the top 10.
