Best five wins thread. Lineal / Ring Magazine heavyweight champions.

Ferguson was discussed as a serious title challenger for Jeffries, and his resume was not good, because he was a bit of a child with money.

Head to head, he was certainly one of the most dangerous men that Hart met.

In the Johnson thread we will expand on him further.

 

He wasn't a heavyweight,as we know the term today.
Names bandied about here as best wins for fighters include Choynski for Corbett,five years after Corbett beat Choynski, Choynski still only weighed 162lbs when he fought Fitzsimmons

 

He wasn't a heavyweight,as we know the term today.How can best wins for heavyweights include guys that were middleweights? Five years after Corbett beat Choynski,Choynski still only weighed 162lbs when he fought Fitzsimmons.
Mitchell weighed 150lbs when he fought Sullivan. In his middle thirties ,when he fought Corbett he was 165lbs.These are middleweights. How many heavyweights did Corbett beat?How many over 175lbs did he actually fight?

 

I don't see that as being particularly important for a fighter of that period.

 

I see it as being important when you are discussing a heavyweight champions best wins. McCoy,Choynski,McCaffrey,Mitchell were NOT heavyweights.If they have to be included this indicates a paucity of heavyweight scalps on a heavyweights record.

 

They were heavyweights by contemporary criteria. By modern criteria most heavyweights before 1970s were not heavyweights.

 

A heavyweight as I understand it is a fighter who enters the ring at over 175lbs,ie the light heavyweight limit,and that goes back to long before the 70's.None of those I named did ,so for me they do not qualify.

 

Yes they were.

In those days a heavyweight was anybody over 154lbs, or 158lbs after Fitzsimmosn won the title.

The fact that they were not heavyweights in today's terms, might have some relevance when comparing them to later champions, but it has none whatsoever when discussing their own best wins.

 

The light heavyweight division did not exist before 1903.

Before that the heavyweight division started at 158lbs, and before 1891 it was 154lbs.

 

As janitor said, there was no LHW division back then, so anyone over MW was a heavyweight.

Today heavyweight has to be over 200 lbs. Would you object from calling Jack Dempsey a heavyweight? Or Rocky Marciano? They were heavyweight by contemporary criteria, but not by 2010s criteria. Same applies to 1890s fighters.

 

Are you under the impression I don't know these stats?

 

Perhaps you didn't quite understand the point of the thread?

We are trying to work out what each fighters best wins were.

Whether or not their best five, was good compared to somebody else's, is not important at this stage.