It's not strictly a loss though is it. It's like holding RJJ's loss to Montell Griffin over him, when the fact is he beat the **** out of him.
I'm inclined to disagree. My sources put Britton well ahead consensus wise at the time of DQ. It seems WE has his facts wrong. Ther other thing is Jones was the interim champion not the challenger and also came back to set things right in devastating and conclusive fashion. Realistically i don't see how WE's Britton fight helps Leonard much at all P4P via his own criteria's.
But doesn't Jones get knocked a bit too much for this? He did face Toney, McCallum, Trinidad and Hopkins after all. Was there any really dangerous opponents except Eubanks and Benn that he didn't face? After all, even Robinson didn't face everyone there was during his era. Personally, I think that Jones's stock will rise quite a lot over the next 10 years. Especially so if he beats Calzaghe.
Well, he faced a weight drained Toney, i think he would have won anyway but Toney would have put on a fight. He fought an old, past his prime McCallum, and old past his prime Trinidad who fought far outside his comfort weightclass and he fought Hopkins who wasn´t what he later became - so not a green Hopkins like some say. He didn´t fight some of the best mws in Benn and Eubank, he didn´t fight the two best mws of the 90s, Calzaghe and Ottke - damned i´m pretty sure i get knocked for this but that guy had over 20 defences and united 2 titles - he didn´t fight his greatest rival at his best weight class in Dariusz Michaelchewski, he didn´t fight Gomez or Jirov at cruiserweight and he picked the weakest hw champ and didn´t fight anybody else there. I´m pretty sure he would have beaten everybody i mentioned, also DM would have given him a hell of a fight, than we woul argue about him beeing a Top5 fighter on par with an Ezzard Charles. But he didn´t, i can´t really tell you how dissapointed i am about him.
That's how I see it. People just extrapolate... He showed great physical ability but fought as few dangerous opponents as he possibly could. I've heard all the arguments but if you seriously want to be a top 50 p4p fighter then the onus is on you to make it happen. Jones didn't take up the torch. His stock will rise because his fans will grow older and the old-timers fans will die out. New guys will take Jones' strategy even further and fight even few dangerous opponents... I mean mentioning McCallum and Trinidad as wins that mean something shows you how far you have to go to suspend belief.
I don't put HWs in. They are the top fighters and the p4p tag came in to give lighter guys their credit. Nothing to do with moving up in weights or not... I don't challenge your actual selections - they are your opinion. However, by your statement (see above) your selction criteria is really only the-best non-heavyweights - not P4P.
1 Barney Ross 2 Henry Armstrong 3 Ray Robinson 4 Willie Pep 5 Bob Fitz 6 Sam Langford 7 Joe Walcott 8 Benny Leonard 9 Harry Greb 10 Micky Walker.
1) Henry Armstrong 2) Ray Robinson 3) Muhammad Ali 4) Willie Pep 5) Jimmy Wilde 6) Joe Louis 7) Sam Langford 8) Michael Spinks 9) Eder Jofre 10) Carlos Monzon
Just a few things to consider regarding the inclusion of Sam Langford in the top ten. 1. The man beat Joe Gans, Joe Walcott (officially a draw, though newspaper decision in Sam's favor), Stanley Ketchel (a draw, though most believe Sam carried Ketchel in hopes of securring a longer bout for the title later that year), "Tiger" Flowers, Kid Norfolk, ex-light heavyweight champion "Philadelphia" Jack O'Brien, and heavyweights such as Joe Jeannette, Sam McVea, Harry Wills, "Gunboat" Smith, "Big" Bill Tate, George Godfrey, "Battling" Jim Johnson, "Fireman" Jim Flynn, and John Lester Johnson, among many other heavyweights. In fact, he knocked out most of these heavyweights mentioned by name. 2. He's the only man to ever knock out both Joe Jeannette and Harry Wills. 3. Joe Jeannette was only knocked out twice in 112 professional fights, once in his 2nd or 3rd fight as a professional, the other time by Sam Langford. 4. He has 130 knockouts to his credit. Who else has a comparable resume?
Clay, I have a question for you that I've been wondering about for some time and I was hoping you could shed some light on it considering your research on the man, and it has to deal with Langford's TKO by 5 to Young Peter Jackson. I've heard in the recent past that Langford retired from that fight after five rounds due to a shoulder or arm injury he sustained in the fight, but, while I don't quite remember where I heard/read that, my faded memory thinks I heard that claim on one of these message boards on the net, which is obviously not the best of sources. I've tried to follow-up on that in the past and find information about the fight through contemporary sources from the time of the fight, but I've come up nothing but empty during those searches, so, if possible, could you maybe share some info with the curious in regards to that fight and it's ending?
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Well, that didn't work so well, copy and pasting from a PDF so let me retype it here. Here's a report of the first two meetings between Young Peter Jackson and Sam from my book: "When Sam faced the hard-hitting and dangerous Jackson, the latter was coming off a recent win over Larry Temple and had knocked out Joe Walcott in the fourth round of a contest only eleven months earlier. Sam earned a fifteen-round decision in this meeting. He demonstrated that the victory over Jackson was no fluke by repeating the trick on June 17th before the Douglas Athletic Club in Chelsea, Massachusetts. In another fifteen round contest, Jackson reportedly absorbed tremendous punishment and was all but out on his feet when the fight ended." And here's what I wrote concerning their third fight: "Sam met Young Peter Jackson for a third time on September 29th in Baltimore. It was a bout that was ruled a draw by the referee, but the newpapers reported Sam won. Sam had pounded Jackson's left eye to a pulp and hammered him with straight right hand blows at will throughout the bout. Jackson twice appealed to the referee that he'd been hit low, but the referee witnessed no such infraction." The fight you're asking about took place in 1906, approximately 1 1/2 months after Sam's loss to Jack Johnson and here's what I wrote about that one: "A month and a half later, Sam suffered a technical knockout to Young Peter Jackson in Southbridge, Massachusetts, under somewhat mysterious circumstances. Sam sat down on his stool in the fifth round and refused to continue. He declared that he had been struck a low blow and injured, but the referee claimed not to have witnessed it and proceeded to count him out while he remained in his corner. Many believed that Sam's contention must have been correct, as he had nothing to fear from Young Peter and should have been able to put him away. In any cas, the result was Sam's second loss in a row." I never uncovered anything else to add to that, though I read where some people questioned whether Sam went in the tank for that fight. I don't know. It did occur only 1 1/2 months after a fight that Sam later said he suffered his only real beating in (against Jack Johnson). That's all I can tell you. They fought again later the same year in November and here's what I wrote about that one: "Sam avenged the loss to Young Peter Jackson with a fifteen-round decision over him, November 21st in Rochester, New York. It was Sam's third win over Jackson in the past 1 1/2 years. Sam was the aggressor at all time sduring this fight. He got off to a fast start drawing first blood and closing Jackson's left eye by the end of the first round. Jackson clinched throughout the fight in an effort to avoid punishment and last the distance. There was no doubt but that Sam had won the fight when the bell rang ending the fifteenth round." Then later in the book is a report of their next meeting: "To get more fights, Sam traveled to the West Coast. There he faced Young Peter Jackson in a twenty-round contest, November 12th before the Pacific Athletic Club in Los Angeles. Sam did all the forcing in this contest, showing a willingness to fight at all times while Jackson spent the majority of time covering up. Toward the end of the fight, hopelessly outclassed, Jackson attempted to convince the referee that some of Sam's hard left hooks had landed foul. But the blows were clean and Referee Eyton openly laughed at the claim. Jackson was unpopular with the majority of the crowd and was actually booed for his reluctance to mix it up with Sam. Many fans left before the end of the bout." So like I said, that one 5 round TKO loss to Jackson seems very odd in comparison to their other meetings. On the subject of Greb, I certainly wouldn't argue with including him in a list of top ten greatest pound for pound fighters. I would be interested to see a list of heavyweights he defeated, and/or knocked out for comparison purposes.
Pound 4 Pound here we go again. Humor me, and lets compare boxing to another sport that requires a great deal of athletic ability, timing, skill, etc. mens gymnastics. Assume that there are similar weight classes in gymnastics as in boxing. Featherweight, lightweight, middleweight, etc. So lets compare some of these smaller gymnasts to the larger gymnasts. Would anyone doubt that the smaller ones are more capable, and probably better than the larger ones? For the Hell of it, lets assume that the best heavyweight gymnast ever was way more dominant in his division than any other champion gymnast from any other division. So who's greater p4p, the dominant heavyweight or the noticibly better small gymnast who was not as dominant in his own division? This is why I choose Ali #1 P4P. His skills when young, even @ his size, were on par with so many alltime greats of any division, then considering all his accomplishments, he gets my vote.
