Jimmy McLarnin

@robert ungurean the real question is how would he do in a division comprised entirely of Tiger Jones?

 

I have him in my top 10 of all time based on his stellar resume

 

Definitely underrated, in terms of the names he beat and his career consistency. Worth noting that he did have savvy management and was almost always the bigger man than his opponent. Sometimes by a lot.

 

What has always amazed me about McLarnin is how many great fights and great opponents he packed into just 69 career bouts. This is especially notable since he fought in an era when even the greats were fighting lower level guys all the time in between their big bouts.

The last quarter of his career was outrageous. 13 of his last 16 bouts were against Hall of Famers. He went 8-5 in those bouts. The combined record of his other three opponents was 150-39-16 when he fought them. He rarely took an easy fight and almost always gave a good accounting of himself.

As robert ungurean noted, he lived a good life after his boxing career ended. Jimmy McLarnin was a very impressive man.

 

Oddly enough, I've been meaning to start a thread about Barney Ross lately. Good timing on this one.

 

I'm the first to admit that @robert ungurean is providing a much-needed serious, scholarly corrective to the recent nonsense that we've been descending into.

 

Great fighter ,who had a great,caring manager who left his estate to him when he died.Having said this McLarnin often had a pull in the weights.

 

Superb thread, Robert. Thank you. Probably Ireland's greatest fighter

 

He's kind of the spiritual ancestor to Manny Pacquiao in that he went from flyweight to welterweight, generally beating the best at the weight along the way. It's paying a compliment to Manny that I place him right around the same range as the Belfast Spider in terms of all time ranking.

 

The BabyFace Assassin. He helped Benny Leonard make some $ at the end. They packed the garden.

 

Mind bringing up the BoxRec records to prove that?

 

I think Leonard was much better than his supporters want to admit. I get it, he probably wasn't really at his absolute best. The counter right he caught McLarnin with was magic, and maybe a younger Leonard would have pounced and finished the job. Maybe. I think the Leonard win wasn't too far off from how a fight in their primes would have played out. Jimmy was just that good.

He enjoyed the good times, too. And he never really seemed to keep up with developments in Boxing. Even by the standards of the day he was vulernable to defensive fighters. Ross was no Willie Pep, and he ultimately, even if only narrowly, proved too wily to McLarnin.