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I misstated my intent earlier: What I meant was, arguably the best three wins by a singular fighter in boxing history. Absolutely without question the best three wins over the same foe by any singular fighter in boxing history. Most people say Pep is No. 1 all-time at featherweight, and Sandy beat a championship-caliber version of Pep three times with none of them even going the distance. Willie’s one win in the series stands as solid proof that he was not some faded version like Matthew Saad Muhammad or Ezzard past his championship years.

This isn’t aimed as a slam at you @Greg Price99 btw: I appreciate you bringing up the condition/status of Willie Pep at the times he fought Sandy Saddler. I think close examination exposes some of the Pep legend as myth rather than fact.

From the time Willie Pep was in a plane crash on Jan. 5, 1947, through mid-1952 — at which point he lost to Tommy Collins — Willie had 59 fights with 56 wins. All three losses were to Saddler.

No less than nine of those fights were featherweight world title bouts (including the four Saddler fights) and he won all of those apart from three losses to Sandy. His level of activity (as in frequency of fights and ratio of title fights to non-title bouts) is on part with his fight schedule before the plane crash. He took off six months after the crash, for sure, but after that it was basically business as usual.

Let’s talk about that plane crash. Yes, people died. Yes, Willie was injured. The New York Times reported this: “Among those injured was William Papaleo (Willie Pep), world champion featherweight boxer, who suffered ankle and chest injuries, but whose athletic career is not expected to be affected by the injuries.”

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Willie claims he broke his back and leg and was told he’d never fight again. If he did break his back, it is a 100% certainty that he did not sever his spine — if that had occurred, he would have died or been paralyzed. What may have happened, if indeed there was a spinal fracture at all, was a transverse process fracture — the bony ‘spike’ of the spine on a vertebrae getting cracked. It’s damned sure painful but it’s not an injury which is debilitating.

The wrestler Ric Flair broke his back in a plane crash in 1975 and was considered to be the best or among the best in the world still 20 years later and was still good enough to pull off a high-level WrestleMania match in 2008.

NFL quarterbacks Tony Romo, Cam Newton and Bo Nix all played with transverse process fractures — they did not even take six months off.

None of this is to take away from Willie’s toughness nor his dedication in going forward after the plane crash. But some people wish to act as if he was pushed to the ring in a wheelchair against Saddler or fighting in an iron lung, which is simply not the case. He was world featherweight champion and there wasn’t a peep about ‘omg this guy is a half-cripple’ in any contemporary account of this time. It’s much more ‘he lost, so he must not have been good anymore,’ and that flies in the face of the evidence.

Willie was a 3-1 favorite over Saddler in their first go. I have seen zero contemporary articles suggesting Pep was shot or even beginning to show decline. Sandy iced him clean in four rounds.

After the third loss to Saddler, Willie started campaigning pretty much full-time around 130 pounds. After the Collins fight you cited, he won 19 fights in a row before a KO loss to Lulu Perez. So counting the four fights before the Collins bout (and the Collins fight itself), up to Lulu Perez he went 79-5 after the plane crash with three of those defeats — the only three at featherweight, his natural and best weight — coming vs Saddler.

(Has there ever been a sports injury that only hampered the athlete against one particular opponent — like a baseball pitcher with an arm injury that only stopped him pitching well against the Yankees, or a running back with a leg injury that only kept him from running well against the 49ers?)

It should be noted that there were accusations that Pep threw both the Collins and Perez fights, the latter of which I think there’s general agreement that this is what happened. The Collins one is more iffy, perhaps shock that someone other than Sandy could take out Willie (even at a higher weight).

Furthermore, if Pep was shot, why was he ranked No. 1 going into the Perez bout? Who was saying he was toast at the time? (The dive evidence in that bout backed by odds swinging from fourth-ranked Perez being a narrow favorite to shooting up as high as 3 1/2-to-1 on fight day and most bookies taking it off the board. Specifics of the fix being reported some years later by Sport magazine that Pep took $16K to lose the fight.)

Specific to the Pep of the fourth Saddler fight, he had reeled off eight wins I think after losing the third go including a win over top-10 lightweight Eddie Chavez while weighing 127. How is that evidence of Willie being shot?

Also, in discussing Pep’s KO losses to Lulu and Collins, funny that (dive accusations aside) so many will dismiss every loss by Razor Ruddock after Mike Tyson (including getting destroyed by Lennox Lewis) with ‘meh, Mike ruined him’ but no one entertains the idea that maybe Sandy ruined Willie much more than the plane crash did (there is at least evidence in his record that he wasn’t the same after those four bouts; not so from the plane crash).

 

Why did Whyte specifically have to fight a PBC fighter? Whyte fought Parker and Chisora in that time period. Ortiz' most significant win was against Jennings. Breazeale's was Molina. Fury hadn't had a big fight in years going into the first Wilder fight. All of them were rated below Whyte in the WBC rankings, if I remember correctly.

 

Parker was/is a WBO guy and Chisora wasn’t exactly a top contender. I spelled it out for you and you don’t like it. The WBC ranked PBC and Hearn fighters, but Hearn tried to skip fighting them.

 

Dillian turned down final eliminators vs Fury, Pulev and Ortiz, right?

He wanted to play, but he wouldn’t get in the sandbox.

 

No, Parker was rated #5 by the WBC when Dillian Whyte fought him. Chisora was #7.

 

They weren’t eliminators. Didn’t Whyte have a lawsuit? How did that go?

 

Changing the goalposts a bit, aren't we? #4 Breazeale fighting #12 Molina is "first mandatory" material, but #1 fighting #5 isn't?

 

Well, according to Whyte, he turned down Fury because of a lowball offer. I don't know whether that's true or not.

Pulev was for the IBF and isn't what the conversation is about (it's not about Whyte). Why would there even be a reason for him to fight Pulev when he thought he had a direct line to the AJ rematch?

 

Skipping the part about Whyte not doing the fight with Breazeale or Ortiz again, I see.

 

Well, “he thought” is doing a bit of heavy lifting here. Fight Pulev, win the IBF and you’re in very good position to make a heck of a lot more money in a unification.

My point is he has a history of believing he should be entitled to something but balking at what it takes to get it (win a final eliminator). Can you make an argument that he shouldn’t have to? Sure. But that doesn’t pay bills or accomplish the goal. Sometimes you have to jump through hoops to get what you want.

As for lowball offer, if a mandatory was ordered (as it was by the WBC), then he doesn’t have to take a lowball offer from Fury. He has to accept that he will fight in the mandatory and force it to go to purse bids. He gets his percentage of whatever that offer is … if Fury balks at that, the WBC puts someone else forth in that position (just as they did replacing Whyte) and he still gets his percentage of the purse bid.

If he thinks that’s not enough, he obviously has a skewed perception of the market — purse bids allow all promoters, including his own, to put forth their highest bid to promote the fight. If his own promoter doesn’t think it’s worth what Whyte does (the promoter is going to bid what he must to get it up to the point that he can make money), they should talk. But whatever people will bid is the free market pricing the fight, and some imaginary number in Dillian’s head of what it ‘should’ be has nothing to do with reality.

 

As I understand it, the fight with Breazeale was being negotiated. But talks of a planned rematch between Wilder and Fury stalled when Fury signed with Top Rank. That's why Breazeale got the direct shot at Wilder. I don't remember Whyte turning down that fight.

 

AJ was IBF champion, not Pulev. Beating Pulev would not have moved the needle at all at the negotiating table with AJ.

I seem to have confused Fury with AJ in my response as a quick Google tells me Whyte accepted the offer to fight Fury in an eliminator. Whyte declined AJ's terms of a flat fee should a third fight be necessary.
https://www.*******.com/articles/hearn-whyte-accepted-wbc-eliminator-lets-see-if-fury

It was Fury who passed in favor of a second shot at Wilder, much like the Breazeale situation for Whyte (see above).

What pays Whyte's bills and what counts towards his accomplishments mean less than nothing to me. The discussion is about Whyte's standing within the WBC, how he's repeatedly passed over for men of lower rank (Breazeale, Fury, Ortiz), and how that reflects on the WBC.

 

For the record, when I examine Pep's record pre and plane crash I see a decline (yes, he was still excellent post, but not as great as pre, imo), but I've read enough of your posts on the issue to accept that any attempt to persuade you otherwise would be futile, so that wasn't the purpose of my quoting your post.

Greatest 3 wins in history over the same fighter belongs to Ezzard Charles in my view. Moore typically ranks 5-10 spots lower than Pep on all time p4p lists, but was closer to his prime than Pep was in Saddler 3 and inparticular Saddler 4.

Nevertheless, Sandy's wins over Pep were truly great wins by an ATG.

 

They treated Fury like an injured fighter. In this instance mental injury, not a physical one. WBC did the same with Jermall Charlo.

So bunch of WBC BS, thanks for confirming.

 

Charlo never tested positive for steroids, nor did he retire.