not questioning peoples choice, i just need educating more on the bloke. info is hard to come by on the mighty atom. please, state your case.......
He has no case, he was undefeated for a while beating up on bums. Most people that try and rank him so high have never seen a single fight of his.
What makes you think his opponents were bums? Flyweight records from that period are almost non existent so we really dont know how good most of his oponents were. He certainly made a clean sweep of the best British fighters before moving onto the world stage and beat the best in the world up to bantemweight.
He arguably isnt even the best flyweight of all times. Miguel Canto and pancho villa can argue that they are better flyweights. Fighting harada went on to beat eder jofre, who has wilde beat that is half as good as jofre, nobody!
BIG DEE HERE= You guys put to much faith in boxrec as their records are about as accurate as a broken level sometimes. Their record of Ted Kid Lewis isn`t even remotly correct. Like wise the record of Wilde opponent Tancy Lee which they claim is 11 W 7 L 1 D 19 TB. Which is total crap as his record is really 48 W 10 L 2 D 60 TB. So you can take boxrec and their records with a great big grain of salt of which I persoally think alot of their records are total bull****. Jimmy Wilde cut a huge swipe thru the flyweight division in the teens. When he came to the states he took apart two highly ranked bantamweights Joe Lynch and Pal Moore giving up hugh amout of weight as Wilde neVer weighed more that 108 to 110lbs.Wilde`s ability to punch is a thing of amazment to all historians who have gone deep into his background. If you watch his final fight with Pancho Villa his punching is unreal an he`s really putting it to Villa untill the bell rings and Wilde drops his hands and turns to got to the corner an Villa cheep shots him with a right to the jaw while the referee looks on and did nothing about it. The crowd called for the fight to be given to Wilde for the foul but the referee ignored them and made Wilde fight on when they got him to his feet as he was out and they dragged him to his corner WILDE GOT SCREWED IN THE FIGHT BIG TIME. HE BELONGS AMONG THE BEST AND PROBABLY WAS THE BEST. HE WAS DAMN WELL THE HARDEST HITTING FLYWEIGHT WHO EVER STEPPED INTO THE SQUARED CIRCLE.
anyway wilde was finished when he fought villa.it must be remembered that wilde wasn't even a fully fledged flyweight often fighting 4 or 5 pounds under the limit,an enormous amount at that weight,and that he fought a lot of bantamweights.he was always giving away weight.i know a lot of the american historians have him at no.1
A friend of mine worked at the Barry Island funfair where he often met Jimmy Wilde. One time, he asked Jimmy for some advice about punching, because he thought he was going to have to fight some local tough. Jimmy said "It's all about where you place your punch" and proceeded to 'tap' my friend on the chin. He said he felt his brains rattle in his skull.
Wilde had rare punching power for his weight class. He had an all out action style that targeted the head and the body. Wilde often gave up weight in fights, ( which means a lot the extreme lower weight classes ) and still won. Good speed too. Gene Tunney said Wilde is the best fighter he ever saw. I've got some of Wilde's Ko's clips. Tyson would nod his head at the Mighty Atom's work. I don't care much for flyweight fights for the most part, but I could watch Wilde all day long. I think he can be a top 20 p4p guy.
