Furthest Back Middleweight That Would Defeat Most Modern Guys?

The modern Middleweight scene is atrocious. Like, the Heavyweights are better currently, and it's not even that strong of a HW division historically. And the Middleweights were basically always better than the Heavyweights. Fitzsimmons KOs all of them.

 

Harry Greb, Gene Tunney, Ceferino Garcia, Henry Armstrong,...

 

Greb, of course. Mickey Walker would be able to beat many of those people today, MW has been bad for a while imo.
We gotta consider though that these "MWs" are not really middles they just drain themselves to make weight and gain 8 pounds back in order to fight so...

 

Most of them and here's the thing,

because 'Most' Modern Middles would have been L-HW's cum HW's - Stature & Size wise at either side of 6' tall.

so without the 4 months or so to drop down to 160 lbs, today's MWs would have been fighting the Billy Conn's, Archie Moore's, Ezzard Charles, JJW's, Joe Louis' and ALL of their Contender Co's...

so unlike the Middles of Old, they, the Modern MW's, haven't had to fight the Bigmen a Division or Two UP, like most of the TOP Middles of Old DID!!!

 

What did either Tunney or Armstrong do at Middleweight?

 

If you come in at the stipulated weight and fight on the day of the weigh in,what's the difference?

 

No diff, but life isn't like that though is it.

in the years say from the turn of the Century until about the 80s - 6 ft guys fighting every few weeks or so didn't even think of themselves as Middleweights, they knew (like near all of their contemporaries), they were ether side of 180 lbs men fighting at L-HW or HW.

that's just the way it was until about the 1980s.

 

For arguements sake, let's look at the Ring MW rankings:

Alimkhanuly
Adames
Sheeraz
Lara
Eubank Jnr
Nursultanov
Liam Smith
Oliha
Kyrone Davis
Tyler Denny

Quite a Murderer's Row, isn't it? Which MW champ from ANY time period COULDN'T beat these guys?

 

Honestly I wouldn’t even count Mike Donovan out of the title picture. The likes of Frank Klaus and Jack Dillon would dominate.

 

Probably someone like Freddie Steele. Fought in modern-esque ruleset already, was dominant and had intangibles.

 

We won't know how good many of these guys are until their careers play out.

That said, I think Greb translates to any era just based on the volume of victories he stacked over the best of his day.

 

Are we considering SRR and Hagler as "old time"?

 

Well, Armstrong for one was about to become Middleweight champion of the world, held to a tie by champion Ceferino Garcia, who should be in the IBHOF, only because Armstrong had a point taken away.

As far as Tunney, he was undefeated at Middleweight IIRC. ..but I dont know IIRC...lol