They're all legit in my books. If you want to talk about the colour line, then why only boxing, you could apply that argument to basketball, football, baseball, hockey, etc. Hell as late as the 1980's ****** Moon came to Canada to play football because he was black and he wanted to play quarterback, which simply wasn't an option at the time. So what about NFL teams who won prior to that? Are they legit? How the hell can a guy's first name be crossed out. ?? W arren is hardly a controversial word.
The first fighter to be called the "world heavyweight champion" was Jem Mace, after he unified the British and American titles. Mace did not draw the colour line, and indeed he defended his middleweight title against a black contender called Bob Travers. I would submit that the world heavyweight title started out in the right spirit, and only got sullied by the color line later.
Essentially the entire sport prior to the 1950's has an asterisk next to the names of every champion. That simple.
McCall destroyed Lewis, plus before Lewis' Holyfield win he wasn't undisputed champion, obviously he couldn't rule the division before his Holyfield win. Otherwise Golota's pro debut was in 1992.02.07.Maybe Golota was the first significant fighter from the eastern bloc. (Bowe was first man who beat Golota) Holyfield beat Holmes 1992-06-19 for the undisputed crown. (The glass-chinned Lewis beat the 37 years old Holyfield in 1999.) Lewis wasn't the first heavyweight champion who could win title in the era of the eastern bloc fighters. (Lewis wasn't historical champion at all.) You proved you are the biggest Lewis ass-licker ever.
Only fair to note that an old Lewis beat the first of the great Eastern European heavyweights in Vitally Klitschko.
Do you mean only heavyweights or do Joe Gans, Benny Leonard, and Harry Greb have an asterisk as well.
"World champion" is just a title and shouldn't be taken too seriously. Of course, the greatest world champions did endeavour to come very close to living up to the IDEAL ... but they are rare, then or now.
Genius. And by the way, it was Alexander Zolkin who was considered the real icebreaking eastern bloc heavyweight.
I think Johnson was the first to unify the coloured title and the world title. That being said it's all about perception. These guys were perceived as champs at the time and thus should be recognised as champs in history. Johnson refused to give shots to mcvey, jeannette and langford but he was still perceived as the champ.
Unknown on Sullivan. A win over Jackson or Slavin would have told us a lot. I do think Fitz was the best in the world for a short period of time, and Jeffries was the best in the world from 1899-1904. With Johnson, it's hard to tell if he was truly the best from 1909-1914 because he did not fight several of the top talents in Langford, Jeannette, McVey, or Smith. A champion can not avoid the four best contenders during his tenure and be distinguished. Nor can he afford to draw with a super middle, get knocked down by super middle, and draw with a man with a journeyman type of record.