I'm trying to remember how that fight usually goes. Here's a recent one from Fergy. Vitali had the majority vote. https://www.boxingforum24.com/threads/anyone-give-norton-a-chance-against-vitali.657823/ Here's one from a bit prior with mcvey giving a good account of his position. https://www.boxingforum24.com/threads/vitali-klitschko-vs-ken-norton.565269/
Great list, John. Not sure I’d argue against too many of them. The question marks are middleweight, junior middleweight, junior welterweight and junior lightweight. I have to agree with @Dynamicpuncher on junior middle - I’d have McCallum too. Junior welterweight - Jose Napoles Junior lightweight - Alexis Arguello. In fact, I was shocked that Samuel Serrano was listed as lineal champ. Did anyone really consider him the true champ during that era? Middleweight - Burley or Williams are good picks. Was thinking about flyweight as well - Mark Johnson would be a decent pick.
Thanks Jel!! Yes i would have no argument with McCallum. If i remembered him i would have been a little torn as i really rate Benitez at 154 and am a teeny bit under the norm on Mike, rightly or wrongly. Mike's got a better body of work but that Duran win goes a long long way for me. At any rate if 19 people out of 20 picked Mike i certainly wouldn't be questioning any of them. Napoles is an interesting choice. My worry would be that he has maybe 17'ish fights that fit the bracket and there's not a lot of meat in them. He also has a loss there albeit to a guy he beat on earlier occasions. The flipside is that it quite likely could be his greatest weight in the ring. Taylor has some nice work there. Even his early wins over Blake and Brazier were quite reasonable and that win over McGirt is a big one IMO. The loss to Chavez has some merits too i think as it was a big performance in a controversial fight. My mind is open tho and it's an interesting pick as i said. I thought there might have been a bit of interest in cruiserweight with a few lesser names than Toney getting a bit of work done there. Tony is such a good fighter tho and has a very impressive win there. I'm happy to defer to anyone below bantamweight.
Great list. I think I'd prefer McCallum in the JMW spot, Vitaly at HW and maybe GGG at MW, but otherwise I can't think of any objections.
Yeah i fully expected Vitali and GGG to have some fanfare and would have expected the same with Mike if i hadn't somehow forgotten him. Maybe i would have picked him myself. It's another interesting one.
In my rush to answer some of your post i did not even see this In my flimsy defense i did put the list together quickly and run the divisions in one go but still - what a miss Lock him in even ahead of JCC. Alexis got some nice work done there and i'd agree he pips Chavez. Serrano was rated top by Ring for many years but i think it was more the lineal and longevity thing. There was a truckload of WBA shenanigans going on. Have a look at the records of some of the guys he defended against. 8-0? 3-4-1? It was always predicted he'd lose when he fought one of the young guns and guys like Camacho and Mayweather were champing at the bit.
Mike was consistent, but never had a win like the one over Duran (maybe a case for the win over Jackson can be made, though). Same goes for GGG and Burley's win over, say, Moore; and Vitaly and Norton's win over Ali. Depends on what you emphasise.
Heavyweight - Ken Norton Cruiserweight - Juan Carlos Gomez Light Heavyweight - Ezzard Charles Super Middleweight - Roy Jones Jr Middleweight - Freddie Steele Junior Middleweight - Mike McCallum Welterweight - Thomas Hearns Junior Welterweight - Jose Napoles Lightweight - Packey McFarland Junior Lightweight - Julio Cesar Chavez Featherweight - Ernesto Marcel Junior Featherweight - Jeff Fenech Bantamweight - Carlos Zarate Super-Flyweight - Khaosai Galaxy Flyweight - Midget Wolgast Light-Flyweight - Myung-Woo Yuh
I was hoping you'd show and you didn't disappoint. Steele is a very good shout. Gomez was one of three other names i was tossing up with Toney.
I think most divisions were actually really easy to get a pick. There seems to always be a guy who'd rank right near the top of the division who never won the title there. Charles and Tunney at light-heavyweight, for example. Or Wolgast at flyweight - he's literally a lock for my top three there. Carlos Zarate, too. I'm a little irked nobody else has said Packey McFarland, tbh. Even Steele stands out as clearly the greatest middleweight to never take the lineage IMO. Although I'd have swore on my life that Arguello was lineal at 130 before reading the thread.
To be truthful when doing my personal list i was looking forward of Steele and Packey tho there's decent footage of them. Packey did cross my mind.
I wouldn’t be as emphatic about Steele, but he’s a good pick. And, yep, McFarland totally slipped my mind. The Arguello thing shows the weakness with lineal claims sometimes in that Serrano wasn’t half the fighter Arguello was, obviously, but Arguello beat a raft of quality contenders while Serrano wasn’t challenging himself. So, even if Serrano was lineal, at a certain point you have to say ‘this guy isn’t worthy of the claim anymore’. Kind of like Spinks when Tyson was cleaning up prior to facing him.
Heavyweight - Vitali Klitschko. Cruiserweight - Juan Carlos Gomez and James Toney. Light Heavyweight - Ezzard Charles and Roy Jones. Super Middleweight - Roy Jones, Carl Froch, Sven Ottke. Middleweight - Charles Burley, Golovkin. Light Middleweight - Mike McCallum, Julian Jackson. Welterweight - Thomas Hearns. Light Welterweight - Bruno Arcari. Lightweight - Packey McFarland. Super Featherweight - Arguello. Featherweight - Juan Manuel Marquez. Super Bantamweight - Daniel Zaragoza. Bantamweight - Anselmo Moreno. Super Flyweight - Vic Darchinyan. Flyweight - Mark Johnson. Light Flyweight -Myung Woo Yuh. Strawweight - Roman Gonzalez.