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

1. Hart
2. O'Brien
3. Flynn
4. Lang
5. Moir

 

Tommy Burns

1.Hart
2. O'Brien
3. Flynn
4. Lang
5. Moir

 

Ys, Burns' number 5 is very poor, Squires or Moir, I think Squires would defeat the Gunner.

 

What I am seeing here, is that Hart should probably be above Burns, on an all time heavyweight list!

 

Perhaps Burns should have fought as a light heavyweight instead.

I understand guys like Miske, Brennan etc fighting as heavies since they were on the smaller side but too big to be heavies, and there was no cruiserweight division around. But Burns should have been a 175 pounder.

 

Johnson is going to be interesting.

Plenty of good wins, but not much separating his best five.

 

I like the premise of this thread - admittedly, my key interest probably kicks in from Louis onwards.

I salute the distinction that you have made with Langford, who of course, p4p ranks terribly highly, but as a pure HW, your question about the credibility of it as a HW victory considering time of fight and respective weight is spot on. I have seen others use it to argue Johnson's greatness past a level than what I think scrutiny of his record allows me to do so.

 

Johnson

1. Ed Martin
2. Tommy Burns
3. Frank Moran
4. Sam McVea
5. Langford

Even though Sam was a middleweight at the time, I will take a middleweight over a guy who hadn't fought in 5 years.

Still, Johnson's resume comes across as extremely weak. Weaker than Dempsey's.

 

Personally I don't give Johnson a lot of credit for beating Langford,but it should be borne in mind that
posters here, in an effort to big up Corbett's resume,included wins over Mitchell and Choynski neither of whom were more than super middles at best when Corbett beat them. One was past it the other as green as grass.

Langford had 64 recorded fights under his belt when he met Johnson,he had faced heavies Gunther,Black Fitzsimmons and Jeannete, indeed he had beaten Jeannette in his previous fight.He was the more experienced fighter.

Some consistency in evaluating champions respective wins would not go amiss here ,but I neither expect, nor look for it in this thread,in fact I could have written one of the posters comments before the thread began! Which is one reason why I declined to vote .
NB Neither Johnson or Langford weighed in for this fight weights are only "guesstimates". However we can say for certainty that both were below their optimum weights.

 

The devil is in the detail with Johnson.

I suggest that we present arguments for the inclusion of fighters on our lists, before we compose the lists themselves.

 

I would even go as far as to suggest, that we kick it off with a 24 hour period, where only evidence can be presented.

Let people present the evidence, before people compose their lists.