Does anybody know how good was Marcel Cerdan

No, Turiello was actually ranked WHEN Cerdan beat him - he was ranked in February 1939. But that's not the point I was making. We know about Turiello. What i'm saying is the huge list of names he took, none of those guys emerged to validate him in the way some of the Mexicans from around the same time were validated by their opposition, for example. They were exactly what they looked like.

My mind is open, but based upon my knowledge of Cerdan he is absolutely not great. There is no case for rating him as such. Case not closed, but my position for sure.

 

Emerge. Emerge is the key word. Turiello was already a guy of consequence. My point was that there are no surprise names among the men he defeated so when people peruse his boxrec record and go "wow, that's a lot of wins, i bet he beat some really good fighters in there." He did, probably, but nobody who would fight him early in their career went on to hugely enhance their standing thereby enhancing the value of the win. Nobody emerged.

If it's confusing, it wasn't meant to be, there's no curtain to it.

Herb Goldman had him at five. A generally well researched list on BS had him at 13, off the top of my head. But I don't care about any of that.

The notion of Cerdan as a "great fighter" like Ali or Holyfield was a great fighter at Welterweight is preposterous, and i'm sure you're not arguing for it. He wouldn't make a top 200 I don't think, and unless, like thistle, you argue for that many greats for every weight class, you agree that he wasn't a great welterweight.

At MW, he boxed at for about five years. In that time he beat five different contenders, I think.

He beat Holman Williams. Holman would win something like 5 of 15 remaining fights and carried two injuries into the fight. He had fought around 170 contests at this point in his career. His hands were ****ed going in and even more ****ed after three rounds. He didn't use his right hand after the third. Still the decision was s booed by sections of the crowd and still some ringsiders scored it a draw or for Williams.

Next meaningful fight was Georgie Abrams. Abrams had tip-toed past Steve Beloise in the fight before, but to use your own language it was five years since he had won a "clear controversy-free fight over a ranked contender." Five years, man. That's a lot. He would go 1-4 in his remaining career after Cerdan. He was done.

Cerdan then went back to Europe and got tucked up by the Eurepean level Cyrille Delannoit over fifteen, Delannoit having just been done by Luc Van Dam. Cerdan got an immediate rematch and evened things up at 1-1. I have been unable to confirm whether or not this got Cyrille into the Ring rankings for a month I would very much like to know, not that it really matters.

Cerdan was undoubtedly superb in beating up Tony Zale, but Zale, of course, would never fight again. That made him the champ, but successful title defences were 0. Then he died.

I can't make this up to great. I don't see how it separates him from someone like Randy Turpin who in addition to minor ranked guys like George Angelo and Charles Humez has Ray Robinson on his ledger...not for me, but that's the type of company he keeps. Abrams himself is right there with Cerdan, Nunn, Roy Jones, Billy Conn...that's the sort of level he's at as a middleweight.

Now if you think those guys are great middleweights like thistle does, I say fair enough. But I certainly don't and Cerdan did absolutely nothing to elevate him above that kind of company in my eye.