This is about American Super Middleweights and nothing else. Joe Calzaghe be damned. We all know that Andre Ward is the best American Super Middleweight of all time. No one else comes close to him in terms of his accomplishments in the division, but after him who was the best American fighter ever within the Super Middleweights? When answering this please try to keep in mind that this is not just about head-to-head ability but about what the fighters achieved within the division - stuff like titles won, successful defense, noteworthy names fought and defeated, etc.
Actually RJJs win over Toney shits over everything ward ever did at SMW I have Roy over Ward in everything
But Jones was only in the division for a short amount of time and missed out on a hell of a lot of names. He only held the IBF Title for two years and in arguably the strongest period in the division's history the only big name he fought was James Toney. If you count second teir fighters you can add Malinga, Pazienza and Lucas - and I'm not sure he was actually a Super Middleweight when he fought Malinga - but he just was not in the division long enough to accomplish all that much. Ward, in comparison, defeated all but one of the top fighters of his era - Lucian Bute - and was a unified World Champion - holding the WBA (Super), the WBC and the Ring. No other American has ever been a unified World Champion within the division, none of them have ever held more than one title at one time. He simply did more at Super Middleweight than Roy Jones did, which gives him the bigger legacy at the weight.
accomplishments at SMW 1. ward 2. Nunn 3. Lillies H2H probably jones, ward, toney/nunn in that order. Leonard and more importantly Hearns werent 100% at SMW, if they'd bulked up younger they'd be in there most likely (more likely hearns due to build). In sport as a whole, as people that is, Jones*, Ward, Toney*, Laila Ali * asterisked with caution for short term PED use. one issue imay be that SMW was a fairly new division, and the USA being a traditional boxing mecca would place emphasis on the established divisions intrinsic with its history where the other divisions developed. American SMWs almost entirely as a unit, moved on from SMW for bigger prizes fairly rapidly. Really the greatest American "SMWs" were the great LHWs who preceeded the SMW division's arrival, they'd have stacked it out with ATGs if SMW was born in 1900.
Yeah take my opinion with a grain of salt I'm a RJJ fan and really don't like Wards style. Although he did earn some of my respect for removing all doubts in the rematch vs Kovalev(who was really really good and ward broke his heart) RJJ wipes the floor with ward h2h, ward got more done at the weight
I've got no problems with that - I'm no fan of Ward's style either and I'd expect Jones to beat him prime for prime - but it's just h2h is not the only factor in deciding this so that's the point I was trying to make.
