Best WW to never win world title: Gaspar Ortega, Clyde Gray, or Oba Carr

Ortega was the best of the three by some distance.

 

It's Oba Carr for me. He was one of the best US amateurs and a guy that looked like a sure thing. The only men to beat him in his prime were Oscar, Tito and Quartey. Any other era and he likely would have been a world champion.

 

I'd have to go with Oba Carr, too. Welterweight has had some pretty bad titleholders over the history of that weight class. All the guys mentioned in the first post probably wins a belt in another era.

But Oba Carr was so good in his day. He was such a complete fighter. In the first decade of his career, he really only lost two fights, both highligh competitive, with Oscar and Trinidad, when both of them were fighting their best.

Considering guys like Gert Bo Jacobsen were welterweight titlists, I still wonder how Carr never picked up a belt.

 

I've always liked the style of Clyde Gray. Such a beautiful boxer, sharp puncher, stamina through the roof, good jaw. He really had it all. If he had one impediment it was his skin started to let him down late in his career. But long, hard careers will do that. Nothing wrong with Ortega or Carr either. Really liked those fighters and were just a bit unlucky in their eras. I would also add in names to the ranks of great 147 pound contenders right up there with the aforementioned, Armando Muniz, Hedgemon Lewis, Gil Turner, Ralph Dupas, Eddie Perkins, Ernie Lopez, Isaac Logart, Dave Shade, Adolph Pruitt and Ceferino Garcia. Such a stacked division over the years. I could keep going.

 

I think Ernie Roderick deserves a shout, and I also wondered why (outside of WW2), that he and Zivic never met, it was proposed enough.

Roderick was an outstanding beautiful Boxer and fighter.