The exact lineage seems pretty disputed and a bit of a mess, so we'll just say out of this lot Paddy Duffy Mysterious Billy Smith Tommy Ryan Joe Walcott George Green/Young Corbett Eddie Connolly Rube Ferns Matty Matthews The top 3 is pretty simple for me Tommy Ryan Joe Walcott Mysterious Billy Smith I need to read up more before ranking the rest, just curious if any of you guys have much of an opinion on this. I'll get back to it later, a glance at Duffy's boxrec suggests he's been pretty undre researched.
1a. Ryan 1b. Walcott (head and shoulders above the rest) 3. Smith 4. Ferns (based off of his consistency in beating Matthews) 5. Matthews 6. Connolly Here's where I get to the point where there's not enough info 7. Corbett (lost to Paddy in his first fight, best win is a DQ against Ryan, who avenged it multiple times...) 8. Duffy (dunno anything about a presumable bareknuckle record or off charts fights, too little info) I consider myself one of the more educated people on old-oldschool fighters but I don't know too much about Paddy and Connolly
Weirdly boxrec lists Ryan being DQ'd against Corbett for using his knee, but all the reports I saw said it was for a light punch when he was on a knee. IIRC it was considered a fair DQ, but not a malicious foul, and Ryan was winning when it happened. I don't think Duffy actually fought bareknuckle. But he's so early it's hard to find much at all on him. I'm having a quick look through the chronicaling america archive ATM
One of Duffy's opponent, McMillan, has only 1 previous fight on boxrec, against Pete Lally, who has no other fights on boxrec, but appears to have been reasonably notable. McMillan's next fight listed is challenging Tommy Ryan, he is also from the UK and all hs fights on boxrec are in America. Definitely one to look into.
There's an opponent named Paddy Sullivan (lol what's with all the Paddys? Might be named after Paddy Ryan?) Who he fought a 4 fight series with. He actually went neutral, with 2 ties, 1 win and the final fight having Duffy stop him in the 8th. There must be something more behind that, especially being 1 of the 3 people to beat him. It's just hard to rate these guys when their only recorded opponents are usually Duffy himself I'll go search for McMillan stuff
Question Cyberboxingzone lists Duffy as having "good power" and states that he only lost once Boxrec lists Duffy as having a 35% KO ratio and 3 losses, 1 by knockout (to be fair the opponent was a good puncher, 10 wins 7 knockouts athletic physique blah blah) Which is legitimate?
Ferns was a proper beast, made of proper iron. 7-2 in welterweight title fights which i'm here to tell you is approaching exceptional and more. Kind of has become a footnote and that isn't fair. Dressed like a madman, too, by the sounds, a sort of weird dandy farmer. I have him right behind - and I do mean right behind - Smith.
