Is Chris Eubank the lowest ranked divisional ATG ever?

Super middleweight is irrelevant pre-1988. It was somewhere for all the middles to go to to prevent dehydration.

Eubank was grossly unlucky in that he had some of the very best fighters we've ever seen as fellow champions (Nunn, McCallum, Toney, Jones) yet massively lucky to have Benn and Watson to draw 16+M viewers on UK TV and make him a sporting enigma with the attention he craved.

He wasn't P4P 1 or whatever because he had to beat Toney or Jones Jr to be. He was also unlucky to run into Joe Calzaghe, who turned out to be very very special as we saw on the night.

He certainly proved his greatness in the 11th against Watson (fatally), beating Rocky cleanly in Germany and the epic war with Benn which he, uhh, won. And being the most active world champion in the game with the longest unbeaten run before he lost. And the throwback epic effort against Thompson in their first fight.

 

The keyboard warriors also don't appreciate the couldrons Eubank entered, like Belfast, Berlin, Cork, and the Benn and Watson crowds in 90/91. Wearing bullet proof vests, being spat at, such hostile atmospheres and walking past two ambulances to get to the ring post-Watson.

Lucian Bute froze like a deer in headlights in an atmosphere nowhere near as volatile as what Eubank often experienced. He was attacked on the way back to the dressing room after the first Watson fight, suffering whiplash, scratches and bruises. The guy was great, the pressure on his shoulders would've caved most men

 

Benn was easier to hit at 160 and stated that he improved after the first Eubank fight by working with Jimmy Tibbs.

 

I agree but there have been several Brit fighters that were a lot better than Eubank, Calzaghe was on another level to Eubank.

 

straw weight or paper weight, a division under flyweights.

 

Yes, Joe was top notch no doubt, still a lack of top prime names while he was champ tho, Jeff lacey is one. Would like to have seen Joe fighting the big names of the day tbh.

 

Just like cruiserweight, being top 10 in smw history means little to nothing. I could probably count the number of legitimately great fighters that have fought at 168 on one hand and almost all of them validated their greatness with their work in other divisions

 

No offence to some of these posters but I struggle to understand their wavelengths in any post they ever type.

 

They were basically the same, Calzaghe took Eubank's lead but fought 4-5x less often making it 4-5x easier, and against weaker fighters

 

I prefer to just appreciate the majesty of all those middles/super-middles in the 90s, instead of playing word, letter and number games 30 years later on some message board on the internet - Benn, Watson, Eubank, Nunn, Toney, Jones Jr, McCallum, McClellan, Graham etc all had awesome ability that left you in awe, and Barkley and Collins were two of the hardest warriors in the world along with Holyfield, and Toney, Nunn and Roy the best in the business along with Whitaker, and Benn and McClellan like more dynamic Tysons etc, Graham and Eubank the two most awkward styles you'll see pretty much...

Loved it

 

Eubank was a British thing. We paid little attention to him in America

 

And the world (outside America). He did huge viewing figures on Star in Asia and SABC in South Africa, and Ingemar Johansson used to come over to commentate for Nordic TV.

 

Plus, practically and literally the whole GB land stopped to watch him vault the ropes and strike poses with his condescending poker-face - that's unprecedented when US contempories had 0.0002% of the States.