Some good, some not so great. The worth of Angel Espada has been hotly debated here for eons, but I wonder just how great he could have been. Ranzany was quality though, as was Shields. Scott Clark is essentially the Jose Roman of the welterweight division.
They were surprisingly good, overall. Cuevas was a lowly 15-6 when he challenged for the title against Angel Espada, who was rated #2 by RING (which recognized John H. Stracey as champ). Jose Napoles was the #1 contender according to RING. So Cuevas knocked out Espada in a monster upset, and then successfully repeated the win TWICE in title defenses. When Cuevas was champ in 1976, both Pete Ranzany (#1) and Clyde Gray (#2) were rated ahead of the WBA champ Cuevas in the RING ratings. Cuevas fought them both and stopped them both in two rounds. Harold Weston Jr. was a guy who fought everyone close. He drew with Benitez when Wilfred was the Super Lightweight champ and drew with Hedgemon Lewis when he was a top contender and drew with future super lightweight champ Saoul Mamby. Weston also beat top contender Andy "Hawk" Price and Rocky Mattioli (future WBC junior middleweight champ) and Vito Antuofermo (future middleweight champ). Weston was a slick boxer that everyone respected. Cuevas knocked him out. Billy Backus was a former champ, who won the title from Napoles on a cut. He was sort of a fluke champ, but he got a title shot with Cuevas after drawing with Everaldo Azevedo, who had just gone 15 rounds with fellow champ Carlos Palomino. Cuevas broke Backus' eye socket and stopped him in one. Randy Shields was the top contender. He was the only guy to manage to go the distance with Cuevas in a title defense. Campanino, Tsujimoto and Clark were probably the least known challengers, but Campanino had a ridiculous 81-4-4 record and was from Argentina, when Argentina was turning out world class fighters all over the sport. Cuevas stopped Campanino in two. Tsujimoto was the top Japanese welterweight. The WBA (and WBC) had a long-standing relationship with Japan to give top Japanese fighters title shots in the lower weight classes. (Like Tsujimoto, Akio Kameda, Funjio Ozaki). Palomino defended against Japanese welter, too, but he was pretty washed up. And then, it should be noted, Cuevas wanted to fight Sugar Ray Leonard in a unification, but Leonard chose to fight Duran instead. And Cuevas readily accepted the challenge of Tommy Heans. So, out of the 12 guys he defended the title against, which included Hearns, it was a pretty rock-solid list of challengers. The only challenger out of the 12 who you could question was Scott Clark. I'd argue Pipino Cuevas' list of challengers was MUCH better than Carlos Palomino's (who really only successfully defended against two top welterweights in Dave "Boy" Green and Armando Muniz).
his record is good but not great. you can divide his challengers into 2 catagories: 1) undeserving: Gray ( was coming off a ko loss in a Canadian title fight), tsujimoto (never beat anyone), campanino ( misleading record compiled at domestic Level), Harold volbrecht, Randy shields ( solid fighter but undeserving at the time, having been stopped by benitez and ranzano and outpointed by ray Leonard. his 3 victories came against nobodies during this period), scott clark. 2) deserving: sure, the rest were deserving. but with the exception of ranzany, they were all Pretty much in the journeyman stage of their careers. the only real Young undefeated hot shot he faced was hearns. sure, losing to hearns aint that bad………..but it´s the way he lost. he got blasted out in such a Fashion that it has become the defining Moment of his Career. personally, i would let him into the hall of fame. not so much for the substance of his wins, but rather for the fact that he was 18 years old when he won the belt.
There's no need for me to belabor this since the answers already posted all comprehensive and accurate. He, like Alfredo Escelara, rose to a higher level when he won the belt. He accumulated his defenses against a relatively strong crop of challengers. None were IBHOFers, but at the same time, there weren't any real freebies either, from what I remember.
I’m a big Espada fan and Pipino bested him three times. Shields and Ranzany were both contenders for about a decade it seems. Some good breakdowns of the challengers in the posts above. An average champion woud not have made it through Cuevas’ list of successful defenses unscathed, and he went through them like a wrecking ball for the most part.
