Michael Spinks in the mid 1940s light heavyweight division

Absolutely not. Nobody goes undefeated in that era. Spinks would probably be either the best or second best, after Charles.

 

I have him down as the greatest LHW of all time H2H and ranking also, but that doesn’t mean I think he’d go undefeated, but I do believe he’d beat every man he faced come the end of his career. Against Charles, I broke it down here

Against Moore, I feel Spinks would use his lighter feet to stay on the outside and find uppercuts off of the jab, get Moore to use that cross guard by jabbing and poking, then slip some feint then uppercuts in then evade the counters by grabbing or moving away.
Harold Johnson, I feel this would be a cagey, Competitive boxing match, up until Spinks finds the jinx, he jabs with Johnson, then mid-late rounds, he jabs with him and finds the right off of the jab countering Johnson’s jab like Lewis did Ruddock, because, the saying goes you can jab with a jabber, but not when then jabber has a devastating right hand behind it, and since Johnson is shorter than Spinks with a shorter reach, combined with the fact he’s textbook, means if he jabs with Spinks, he would be within punching distance of Spinks’ right hand counter when he Johnson jabs with him.

 

Assuming he was born with the same level of talent and a reasonable start in the sport then he’d do very well. But no… he does not go undefeated. Not only was the light heavyweight division congested with dense talent but in those days he’d have to fight at least three times the number of matches just to earn a living.

 

It’s not just a matter of determining which individuals he’d beat or not beat. The overall circumstances were way different. Even the best fighters back then lost matches to lesser men from time to time. The frequency at which these guys appeared in the ring was crazy. You could fight 13 times in a single year, face three ranked contender, several journeyman and a couple of tomato cans and finish the year with a record of like 10-2-1. Also take into account glove size, training conditions, holding a job on the side, etc etc and it was almost impossible to even MAKE it let alone go undefeated

 

I’ll try to elaborate on my point by putting it this way:

for all we know he might have BEATEN Ezzard Charles, Archie Moore, Jimmy Bivens, and Joey Maxim then LOST to a mediocre fighter like Phil Muscato all within the same year. It was the way things worked back then.

 

Spinks clears the field. Beats everybody.