Professional boxing records that impress you

In all fairness that was a bit of a skewed comment by myself. It was only towards the end of the world war that Louis lost 2 and a half years of activity, Ali was effected worse by the lay off, although Louis did only have 1 fight in a 4 year period, I'm sure he stayed active with plenty of exhibitions

 

Pac starting out at 106 lbs, going up and up and up and taking out whoever was in his way

 

Whitaker compiling a record of 40-1-1 and his only blemishes being extremely questionable, 1 of them already being avenged. Considering some thought he beat Dela Hoya as well, while already on the slide and likely using cocaime semi-regularly and the first time he was convincingly beaten was by Trinidad, I think his record is mightily impressive.

 

A voice of old world sanity in a sea of chaos.

 

So many bouts (123)... trading solely on his phenomenal skill, ....no punch...with so many big names on his record. Impresses me.

 

I wrote a story on him once. He also had a devastating injury from a car accident where he broke his breastbone and couldn't even hold his hands up in his final two fights, which were both lossesI never see him mentioned that often in top 10 middleweights of all-time lists, but he has to be damn close. Fun fact, one of his first fights he was 105 pounds. He went something like 88 fights without a loss. True forgotten great.

 

Archie Moore's knockouts, Willie Pep's winning streak, Joe Louis' 12 year 25 defense reign, Emile Griffith's 337 championship rounds, Manny Pacquiao's titles in 8 weight classes, Henry Armstrong holding titles in three weight classes simultaneously, Wilfred Benitez youngest champion, Ray Robinson beating two p4p guys a generation younger when he was over 35, Ray Robinson beating the most top ten opponents, Jimmy Bivin's four year win streak '42-'46 against amazing competition.

 

You nailed it, sir. Definite underrated and in my opinion great fighter.

 

One of my only drawbacks is that I don't think the era he fought in was a particularly strong one for middleweights, but to be fair, I haven't researched it a ton. What is your opinion on this era of middleweights? I mean, Steele beat some guys with fantastic records, and I believe some hall-of-famers, but not a lot of names you see pop up around here. Would love to hear your thoughts - and others - on this.

 

His record is more flattering numbers wise than it is when you dig into the names... but you can't hold it against Steele. He was an extremely active fighter through an entire gamut of weight divisions, he fought whoever, whenever he could. He was simply an extremely big fish in a moderate sized pond. But complete and total dominance even over a league of B-Level talents with no singular stand out win doesn't not make you a great fighter... look at the type of praise the likes of Ricardo Lopez get.

 

Great comparison. I think Steele is even better than Lopez. The little footage there is of him makes him look fantastic.

 

Marciano 49-0 43 KOs ofc. Imo still the greatest undefeated record due to KOs, better competition than Floyd and fighting at heavyweight where he was outsized in almost every fight.

SRR 128-1 1 loss against one of the greatest of all time, Jake LaMotta. Prime SRR looked unstoppable.

Pre-Draft Muhammad Ali 29-0, this sparked the Marciano vs Ali debate.

Archie Moore 186-23 (132 KOs) it still amazes me that a light heavyweight has the record knockouts rather than a heavyweight

Maxie Rosenbloom 207 (19 KOs) - 39 (2 KOs) I still have no clue how this man got these numbers. Less than 1/10th of his fights ended in a knockout, and 1/20th of his losses ended in HIS knockout. Amazing

 

Jordan Keepers
3-53-2, KO'd 27 times.

 

Floyd's competition was much better than Marciano's. That isn't especially close. Marciano started fighting world class fighters in his 35th fight against Rex Layne, other than one earlier sd with LaStarza. Floyd started fighting world class fighters in his 18th fight.