The heavyweight champions that most capture your imagination, and why...

Sullivan was half myth even during his lifetime. Very good pick for someone who captured imaginations.

 

Actually grabbing my imagination and curiosity as fighters and human beings, and not just subliminally rating them as my favorites? Johnson, Sharkey, Braddock, Charles, Patterson, Liston.

 

I’ve always found Tommy Morrison’s story rather captivating, although very sad.

 

Jack Johnson. For all the things he overcame to be able to become the first black HW champ, for all the risks he took on his way, all while doing it the hard way because he just could not bring himself to be the polite obedient guy they wanted him to be. Also, all the wild stories about him make him even more larger than life.

It's funny how he so upset a lot of white society at the time that later black champs tried to be the exact opposite of him. Joe Louis, for example, had a strict way of conducting himself that he stuck to, with the aim of being nothing like Jack Johnson in public. Floyd Patterson, eh, I think he was always just being himself, but the guy he was just happened to be nothing like Jack Johnson.

For the good, for the bad (honestly, his antics in the end did NOT help black fighters gain wider acceptance), for being a man who refused to be anything but himself. What a legend. He'll always be the one that captivates me the most.

 

Joe Goddard (won the title in 1896)
Francois Botha (the finest set of Boerish hams to ever grace a ring)
Johnny Nelson (his month at the summit of the IBF's highest peak were truly heady days. Long live the King)