Your top 10 most exciting fighters of all-time

I’ve whittled my list down from about 25 names to a top 10:

1. Matthew Saad Muhammad
2. Bobby Chacon
   
3. Cornelius Boza-Edwards
4. Arturo Gatti
5. Thomas Hearns
6. Israel Vasquez
7. Orlando Salido
8. Kevin Kelley
   
9. Carmen Basilio
10. Aaron Pryor

My number 1 is a consensus choice as one of the 10 most exciting fighters ever. Between 1977 and 1981, Matthew Saad Muhammad had many remarkable, classic battles (Yaqui Lopez x2, Marvin Johnson x2, Richie Kates, John Conteh, Jerry Martin), all of which showed a distinct ability to battle back from the brink of defeat. He has to be at the top spot.

Chacon did it almost as often as Saad - he had that same ability to battle back from the edge of disaster. His final battles with Limon and Boza are two of my five favourite fights and he went to war with Danny Lopez, among many others. He’s a lock for the number 2 spot.

Boza had an almost 100% hit rate for exciting fights in the first half of the 1980s, win or lose: with the exception of the Chacon rematch, his fights weren’t as iconic as the fights involving the two names above him and he didn’t cement himself into people’s consciousness in quite the same way - but fight for fight, there wasn’t a more exciting fighter in the 1980s.

Arturo Gatti was to the second half of the 90s and early 00s what Carmen Basilio and Bobby Chacon were to the 50s and 70s/80s respectively. His trilogy with Mickey Ward defines his legacy as an exciting fighter but his battles with Wilson Rodriguez, Gabriel Ruelas and Ivan Robinson are what first established him as the default for most exciting fighter of his era.

Thomas Hearns isn’t quite like the names above him because he wasn’t the same kind of attritional fighter as Saad, Chacon, Boza or Gatti (well, there’s some similarity to Gatti in his one shot fight-ending power but the similarities end there). The excitement with The Hitman came from the devastating power as befits his name combined with a vulnerability that put him on the brink of defeat even in fights he was otherwise dominating (Juan Roldan). His wins over Cuevas and Duran - and James Schuler to a lesser extent - were no less thrilling than his losing efforts to Marvin Hagler and Iran Barkley. He combined the single-shot fight ending power of a Julian Jackson with the chin of a Hilario Zapata (minus the slickness) and he didn’t need any encouragement to go to war.

Israel Vasquez picked up the mantle of fighters like Chacon and Gatti for a new generation. It started in a low key way with battles against Oscar Larios and Jhonny Gonzalez and ended in a crescendo with his trilogy against Rafael Marquez. And when he was done, there was another battle-hardened Mexican to continue the tradition, Orlando Salido, who was a FOTY entrant for much of the 2010s.

What Boza was to Chacon in the 80s, Kevin Kelley was to Arturo Gatti in the 90s - the no less thrilling B side to a more celebrated warrior. His battles with Troy Dorsey, Alejandro Gonzalez and Naseem Hamed were all amazing in different ways. And there were plenty of other thrillers as well.

Carmen Basilio was involved in 5 consecutive FOTY from 1955 to 1959 and one of those makes my all-time top 10 (the rightly-lauded second fight with Tony DeMarco). In an era of exciting welterweights - Gil Turner, Gasper Ortega, DeMarco - he still stands out.

Aaron Pryor rounds off the list, pipping a bunch of equally deserving fighters to the final spot. He probably only engaged in a couple of really great two-way battles, his title defense against DuJuan Johnson in 1981 and his first fight with Alexis Arguello, but the Arguello fight is my all-time favourite and Pryor’s style meant that even when his fights were one-sided, he created drama.