Ring Magazine Fighter of the Decade Awards.

They are being held back by your criteria, because you're not giving credit for moving up a division and beating a bigger reigning champ (who also happens to be a Hall of Fame great), because they were now the same size... what?

Welterweight and middleweight champ, something like 15 wins in title fights, wins over Tiger, Rodriguez, Benvenuti, plus a slew of other top welters and middles, trumps Liston, Patterson, Terrell and grandpa Archie, IMO.

 

Jofre for the 60s. He was the best pound for pound for longer than anybody then and a dominant fighter. Was anyone better? I doubt it.

 

It might be very controversial, but I would take Archie Moore over Sugar Ray Robinson for the 1950's.

Robinson was more erratic. Moore lost to Harold Johnson, but beat him several times and proved his superiority. His other two losses were to Marciano and Patterson in a higher weight division. Moore had more fights and more tough fights over the decade.

I would dock Robinson for not re-matching Jones, nor fighting rubber matches with Turpin, Fullmer, and Basilio.

 

I don't think Moore is unreasonable at all. I would personally pick Robinson as the fighter of the decade, and put Moore second, but Moore could easily go for 1st. Robinson aside, he was the only champion to be a dominant force in his division from the very beginning to the very end of the decade. Robinson won and lost the middlweight title five times from 1951 to 1958, but Moore held the light heavyweight title from 1952 to the end of the decade, and never lost a fight as champion.

 

The more I look into it, the more I realize Pac's win over Thurman should've clinched him the 2010's FOTD award over Floyd.
Originally, I also reasoned that FMJ winning over Pac is a great big reason to make him get the award, but I am fine with SRL having incurred losses and draw over the decade he's won as FOTD.
But I'm not going to lose sleep over it though, having Floyd's name on that list somehow feels right.