Is Tony Zale a top 20 all time Middleweight

Tony Zale's failure to establish himself as even the best of his own era would seemingly hurt his case for being near the top 20. He failed to beat Burley, Holman Williams, Bert Lytell, etc

 

Ahh, Tony Zale, when men were men..... *zzzzzzz*

 

Agree.

 

Well, if I can paraphrase your statement , he didn't fail to beat ? he failed to fight, we will nether know if he could have beaten them, but get the jest of your point. keep well.

 

No, far too deep a division.

 

#4 Behind Monzon
Ketchel
Walker
Greb
Robinson

 

Yep

 

He cleaned up the division pretty well before WWII and deserves some credit for that. He can be excused for not fighting guys like Archie Moore and others from the so-called "Murderers Row" group during that era because they weren't yet on the public's radar as middleweight contenders. Burley and Williams were still in the process of transitioning from the welterweight class to middleweight, and Lytell hadn't even turned pro yet. After the war, I like Man Machine's explanation of why he didn't fight the guys who had developed as contenders during the war. It's not an excuse, but it is an explanation.

That said, given all the great middleweights since WWII, I don't see Zale being in the top 20.

 

Around 25-30 or so sounds most likely, have yet to make a list upto top 20 but it feels so.

 

Anyone saying yes wanna give a list. I'm finding it hard to see who he should be rated above.

 

I'd say 20 would be his high water mark in the all time middleweight ranks, while I wouldn't argue much against it, around 25 could be more accurate. I'll give Zale one thing ,at his best he wouldn't be easy for anyone .

 

No, not now.

Zale may have been considered a top 20 guy several decades ago but not now I don't think. There's 2 reasons for this IMO;

1) With the advent of the internet and greater accessibility to information regarding boxing history, fighters whom were largely unknown and therefore not considered (I'm thinking Murderer's Row types) 50 years or so ago are now more well known and are now more routinely coinsidered when compiling top 10 or top 20 lists.

2) There have been a number of fine MWs since Zale's time who were probably better than the Man of Steel, so inevitably his ranking will drop as time moves on.

 

All-time, I don't know.
Queensberry era, yes, maybe.

 

Put Zale in Philly in the 1970s and he may not be in the top 10 there.