I think with the rules exactly as they were when he was fighting, Jim Jeffries in a 25 rd fight Kos all the behemoths. Sonny. Foreman. Lewis. K1 & K2. Fury. Jeffries was athletic and had it all.
The plane crash excuse with Willie Pep holds little to no weight. The crash was a catastrophe. His injuries clearly were not. The 1940s doctors got it wrong, believe it or not. Vinny Pazienza had a much harder road back. Not that anyone really cares about him.
I find Chavez v Taylor 1 to be overrated. Great performance by Taylor, dramatic ending but fight of the decade? No.
I don't see what all the fuss is about Bob Foster. He looked great against a very old and hopelessly undersized Tiger but aside from that his resume is exceedingly thin. Spinks was much the more accomplished light-heavyweight.
I don't doubt this at all. WOW! Larry's my favorite fighter and even I don't think that lol. It would be a pretty close fight, though. Holmes would have gone the distance with Tyson in the 90s, and gotten a lot of shots in off the ropes and in the corner, staggering him with the uppercut. Mike would win UD, but a close one.
I confess, I told a journalist friend boxing's big secret; Harry Greb never existed. It had to come out eventually, but we did so well keeping it going for so long. Now let us put this story to bed and campaign to get get Boston Tom McMustache his rightful place in history.
What we know for sure is that Pep did not sever his spine: if that had happened, he would have been paralyzed from that point down or just dead. You don’t come back from that no matter how tough or strong-willed you are. What I think is most likely is that he fractured one or more of his transverse process bones — the spiky things that stick out of each bone that surrounds the spine: https://www.spine-health.com/glossary/transverse-process Other athletes have suffered this and come back from it. The professional wrestler Ric Flair came back from ‘breaking his back in four places’ in a 1975 plane crash and was the top guy in his profession within a year or two: https://www.the-sun.com/sport/880732/ric-flair-plane-crash-wwe-wrestling-broken-back/ What we have in Pep’s case is a real-life example of the quote from the movie The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.’ I’ve never seen one single account of Pep’s broken back where the report gives us any details of exactly what Pep’s back injury was, just ‘broken.’ But, as noted, if it was a severed spine no person in the world could have come back from that to compete athletically. In rare cases today they’re able to walk again, usually with aid. The facts tell us that Pep had won 20-something in a row after the plane crash, including capturing the featherweight title. I’m sure he was slowed/rusty at first but he obviously fought his way into top form. What you won’t see are contemporary accounts that say Pep was never the same after the plane crash, no examinations of how much he had slipped, etc. Go find previews of the first Saddler fight that discuss how he’s just a shell of his former self. People don’t want to credit Saddler for beating Pep 3 out of 4 so there comes this myth/legend that somehow Willie was crippled in the plane crash and it seems to only affect him in select fights against Sandy. So yeah, I think the back injury is WAY overdone.
