Do We Have A Consensus Number 1 All Time Light Heavyweight?

can you pick someone as the all time greatest light heavyweight even though he never actually fought for the world title at light heavyweight?

 

I don't see why not.

 

The really old school picks probably don't hold much water, because of the relative infancy of the division.

Jack Dillon, Harry Greb, and Tommy Loughran probably belong in the argument.

 

There is only one really old school pick, and that is BoB Fitzsimmons. OBrien, Mcoy and the otheres were not in the same class. I think Fitzsimmons should be the consensus pick if you take his career as a whole but not if you limit to "championship status or contendership". When weighing as a light heavyweight, he beat Corbett, Ruhlin, Sharkey, Obrien, Gardner, Maher and Pretty much everyone around, (heavyweight, cruiserweight or heavyweight) plus he went life and death twice with the best fully fledged prime alltime geat heavyweight he fought (Compare this favourably to Tyson Spinks, Charles Marciano, Foster-70s heavys. Remember also that all of these guys were not light heavys when they fought their heavyweight greats). I actually think that if there is a standout number one, Fitzsimmons is the only guy with that claim.

Of the others, Tunney, Spinks, Charles, Foster are the standouts. With maybe Greb and a couple of others Say Loughran or even Jones Jr interesting picks. Tunney is the one with the record I like of all of these, but it relies on the assumption that the Greb fights went his way and he actually defeated and outgrew outclassed Tunney. That traditional view obviously wont go down to well with certain posters on here.

Realistically, i think that the answer to the question is that no there is no consensus number one light heavyweight.

 

Foster
Spinks

 

More to the point, can you not? Charles sits at the top of many many lists and understandably so. His career is insane.

 

title defenses Virgil Hill.

 

Fitzsimmons probably did weigh under the light heavyweight limit for most of his key heavyweight fights, but with no formal weigh ins, we cant really say for sure.

This might make you reluctant to pick him.

 

Spinks has always been my number 1 lightheavy. He was big for a lightheavyweight and very versital. He could box, he had great power, great chin, great defense, fast. Pretty much the whole package.

 

Tunney or Charles