Greatest single performance in divisional history (original 8)

Some of these are greatest from a p4p perspective:

HW - Ali vs Foreman

LHW - Charles KO Moore

MW - here's one I bet no one else will go for - Soldier Bartfield over a 14lbs heavier Harry Greb

WW - Armstrong vs Ross (SRL vs Hearns better WW win, but taking into account Armstrong's weight and the dominance of the victory, I think this is the greatest performance)

LW - Controversial - McGovern vs Gans, on the basis it was genuine, which is clearly questionable, but the footage looks pretty genuine to me

FW - Saddler vs Pep 1

BW - Harada vs Jofre 2

Fly - Best win by a fly = Wilde vs Memphis Pal Moore. Best win in a fight contested at fly = Tancy Lee vs Jimmy Wilde

 

Just going off what's filmed, not much bother for the circumstances.

HW: Louis vs Buddy Baer II
LHW: Spinks vs Qawi
Middleweight: Hagler vs Fully Obel I
Welterweight: Leonard vs Duran II
Lightweight: Duran vs Leoncio Ortiz
Featherweight: Marcel vs Gomez I
Bantamweight: Olivares vs Rose
Flyweight: Miguel Canto vs Furesawa

 

Pep was I think a 4:1 favorite over Saddler in their first fight.

History has been rewritten to claim Pep was a washed-up has-been after the plane crash, but the only losses he suffered over his next 58 fight over five years were at the hands of Saddler … so if he had slipped only Saddler was good enough to take advantage of it.

There are no contemporary reports of which I am aware that said Pep was majorly diminished when he fought Sandy the first time. People didn’t look at him as damaged goods. Yes he broke his back in the crash but he did not sever his spine — if he had, he would never have walked again and might have been paralyzed from the neck down. Most likely he fractured a transverse process bone (the part of the bones on the spinal column that spike out) but I’ve seen no details on exactly what ‘broke his back’ means but this seems most likely — painful and difficult to rehab from, but there have been football players who continued to play after recovering from fractured transverse process bones.

I’d say Saddler’s three wins over Pep are arguably better than any three wins by any fighter all-time.

 

Harry Greb vs. Mickey Walker is one of the greatest performances at middleweight that I can think of. Both are ranked highly all-time at 160 and p4p and yet Greb, with one good eye, won the match handily.

At welterweight, you have to think Leonard's victory over Hearns is up there. I would add Jack Britton's win over Ted Kid Lewis, too. The one where he had to knock Lewis out to take home the World Welterweight Championship. You had a relatively light hitter beating up a tough man in one of the greatest rivalries in all of boxing.

As for Armstrong vs. Ross, which was suggested above, both guys admit in their biographies that Ross was past his best. It's still a great performance but I'm not sure it's one of the greatest ever.

 

Do you mean the greatest performance or the greatest win?

 

HW: Frazier-Ali I
LHW: Spinks-Qawi
MW: Kalambay-McCallum I
WW: Duran-Leonard I
LW: Duran-Ortiz
FW: Saddler-Pep I
BW: need to see more
Fly: need to see more

 

I'll go with greatest win for this list because that seems easier.

Heavyweight: FOTC
Light Heavyweight: Charles vs Moore 3
Middleweight: Greb-Walker
Welterweight: Duran-Leonard 1
Lightweight: Angott vs Pep*
Featherweight Sandler vs Pep 2
Bantamweight: Harada vs Jofre 1
Flyweight: Ebihara vs Kingpetch 1*

*Not confident about these picks.

I'll try to make a list based on performance another time.

 

OK, I'll give it a go. I might think of a different performance later, but off the top of my head...

Flyweight - Benny Lynch KO13 Peter Kane - An outstanding world champ against his absolute top contender who would go on to win the title himself at a later date. I always remember reading a quote from actor and former fighter Victor McLaglen who came out of the arena stating, "That was 13 of the finest rounds of boxing I have ever seen."

Bantamweight - Lionel Rose W15 Fighting Harada - Oh, man, a 20 year old substitute completely outboxes one of the top pound for pound fighters in the world. Brilliance.

Featherweight - Willie Pep W15 Sandy Saddler II - One of the most controlled displays of boxing out there I have ever seen.

Lightweight - Rodolfo Gonzalez KO13 Chango Carmona - Carmona sent Gonzalez' stablemate Mando Ramos packing on a stretcher to win the title in his previous fight and was the 3-1 favorite to do the same to Gonzalez. Only Gonzalez didn't read the script and battered Carmona every round in a controlled manner and sent him out of the arena after 12 rounds on the same stretcher. That's a Hollywood script there.

Welterweight - Henry Armstrong W15 Barney Ross - Man, this was the featherweight champ beating the daylights out of the respected welterweight titleholder. I never bought into Ross being washed up. He was only 28, on a 21 bout winning streak and only a few months back had turned back the challenge of the outstanding Ceferino Garcia. This was an outstanding performance.

Middleweight - Harry Greb W15 Mickey Walker - Wish we saw anything on this fight. 2 legends going at it with an incredible ending.

Light heavy - Jimmy Bivins KO13 Lloyd Marshall - Two of the top guns in the business, neither of which could get a title shot, went at it for the Interim title while Gus Lesnevich was in the Service. Bivins picks himself off the canvas to take out Marshall late in the bout. Damn!

Heavyweight - Muhammad Ali KO8 George Foreman - It took an ad-hoc plan, drawn up in the field, to take out the KO monster in front of him. And he pulled it off.

 

You've seen the second Saddler vs Pep fight?

 

Haven't seen it in a good few years. Back in the 70s there was a show on called The Way it Was. It was hosted by Don Dunphy and Curt Gowdy and they would bring a couple of rivals into the studio who break down one of their classics. They had Joe Louis and JJW, Jake LaMotta and SRR and they had Pep and Saddler breaking down their 2nd fight, which I thought was terrific. Of course, it is now an almost 50 year memory, but it stuck with me.

 

I thought there was only footage of their third and fourth fights. I had no idea about the way it was. I'll have to look it up later.