ATG Middleweight Chin Tier list-The Top Forty

Yes, it's absolutely brutal. I think that - what Abrams wrote, it does and it doesn't make sense. I agree that a fighter can be "as close to being KO'd as any fighter can be" while on his feet, but this is what it looks like:

This content is protected

It is very, very rare. Most of the time what a fighter who is nearly knocked out is up at nine, think Fury against Wilder for a good recent example. Knocked unconscious, woken up by his head hitting the canvas, up at nine, trying to buy time. I wish he'd used some different language because a true reflection would have been so very helpful, but I think, on balance, we get that elsewhere. Abrams isn't thinking about the legacy of history I suppose, he's thinking about capturing the essence of the fight in a competitive marketplace. To be final about my position, I'd say that what he wrote is demonstrably untrue in a literal sense, but that it is reasonable to suppose that Burley was more hurt in this round than is generally reflected from ringside.

 

OK Burley and Williams seem pretty clear, Titanium and Iron respectively - Ketchel is more narrow, but the group has mistakenly placed him in Iron Never mind, can't win them all!

 

Bernard Hopkins was stopped just once in sixty-five fights, in weird circumstances, aged 60. Dropped once by Kovalev up at 175lbs, the only real blot here is the two counts versus Segundo Mercado in 1994. Iron or Titanium for Hopkins?

Tommy Ryan was stopped just once in a hundred fights, crumbling in fifteen to McCoy. He did take a bit of a beating and it required a couple of knockdowns and flush shots to get him out of there - between the ninth and the fifteenth when he was finished, the wire report didn't even bother with a blow by blow. He just kicked the hell out of him for six rounds so I think that maybe this knockout is a little tempered. I know this fight, but I am not an expert on Ryan's career. Here is what Boxrec has for knockdowns: Jack Root "knocked Ryan down with a light punch...Ryan seemed dazed." Frank Craig dropped him in the second - that's all Boxrec has.

Nonpareil Jack Dempsey was stopped three times. While drunk in his last fight way past-prime he was stopped in three by Tommy Ryan. This is of no interest to chin in my view. Bob Fitzsimmons retired him after a serious beating that probably enhanced his reputation for punch resistance; and he was famously one-shotted by George LaBlanche in 1899, probably the most excused one-punch KO in history. In summary, LaBlanche's punch was seen as lucky. Known as the pivot shot, pivot blow, or LaBlanche Swing, the shot apparently called for the puncher to "close his eyes" and lash out "At random" with the right hand. Think about Deontay Wilder on a good night. Just my little joke there. This is held to be true in some quarter in the next day reports - Dempsey was hit "by a chance blow" and George "whirled around suddenly" before he landed the punch. I always feel, so what? George did exactly what he was trying to do while Dempsey pressed for the knockout win, this sort of thing happens all the time in boxing, it was just that NPJD had such a glowing rep and was so thoroughly dominating the fight that people were weirded out. Anyway, the detail: Dempsey droppped "like a shot" and blood expelled form his mouth. He tried for his feet but was unable to rise before the "10". He heard ten. Where does that leave him?

 

Yeah, I was kidding - Kovalev didn't stop him though, it was Joe Smith.

 

I have to ask - Ketchel as Iron and Ryan as titanium? Papke put a much worse beating on Ketchel than McCoy did on Ryan. Still, Ketchel was not knocked out and Ryan was. Is it the Johnson KO that makes you see a whole level of difference between these two?