How Do You Rate The 1950 s, For The Heavyweight s?

There is me to a decade than the top four fighters.

Granted this was not a decade where the primes of ATG's overlapped, but there was plenty going on.

You probably didn't have to wait very long, for an interesting heavyweight clash to come along.

 

May I also add with the 50s we had more ranked fighters meet in the ring this decade than any other decade. So there was a lot of quality fights this decade.

 

Louis was only ranked in 50&51.What year was Bivins ranked?
London was only ranked in 58 I believe. I don't rate
Cockell
Lastarza
London
Cooper
Very highly

 

A decade blighted by mob control.
The fact that back numbers like ,Louis,Savold,Bivins were still ranked points to the lack of depth.

 

Plenty that didnt get made too.
Marciano v Valdes
Patterson v Machen
Patterson v Folley
Patterson v Liston
Johansson v Liston
Henry v Layne
For starters

 

Bivins I believe was ranked in 52 after a few years hiatus. This is without looking. Those men were ranked and all at the bottom of quality for the decade but all were decent fighters. I don’t blame u for Don C but the others were all good at some point. If u haven’t seen Lastarza v Layne u should give it a watch…changed my opinion of him.

 

Layne,like Lastarza was ruined by Marciano.Lastarza got his ranking by squeaking a split dec by Rex,and Cockell got his by beating Lastarza. Lastarza was a very brave guy ,but not of the first rank imo ,he was very carefully managed.
I'll take your word on Bivins.

 

While it happened in the 1960s (nothing changes on the exact decade mark), I think of the 1950s as the last era of the light heavyweight heavyweights — the 180-pounders fighting at heavyweight when they basically are just light heavies who didn’t sweat off a few pounds.

I’m not talking about the light heavyweight champ moving up to challenge like Bob Foster so much as light heavyweights who moonlighted as heavyweights even though they really weren’t … basically they were technically heavyweights at times but weren’t true big men but were able to have success because there were others like them (light heavyweights masquerading as heavies) and there weren’t enough true heavies (200+ guys) of quality to dissuade them from doing so.

So while there are certainly some good heavyweights in the 1950s and the decade produced plenty of good fights in the division, in my eyes it kind of marks the end of an era with the ‘60s ringing in a new one.