Ring Magazines 20 Greatest Welterweights

The Ring never ranks fighters who haven't retired yet, even if they are done with the division.

They wait until the fighter has retired before ranking them.

 

Well, not quite.

Virgil Hill was rated #19 at LH when they did the top 20 in that division. The rationale is that a fighter has to be done with the division (with no hope of returning), or retired altogether before they'll consider him for their lists. Of course, the rationale might have changed since 2002, when the LH list was compiled.

 

Oh yeah, I remember that list.

I think they changed it after that. I remember before Hopkins beat Trinidad, they had Hopkins in the high teens all-time at MW. After he beat Tito, they had a list, but Hopkins wasn't ranked, because he was still active.

 

You could be right. I know they've changed the criteria before, so it wouldn't surprise me to see it tweaked a bit further.

Anyway, the list that the Ring compiled at 147lbs is actually quite good. You could argue the placement of certain fighters (I think SRL could go Top 3), but, by and large, there aren't too many grievous errors in terms of fighter's placements.

 

I give the most credit to those fighters who dominated their eras , my top 6 are the ones I feel did this . It can be argued that some fighters fought in tougher eras than others , but I think the ones that dominated their eras showed a really strong character to emerge as the best of their era . I know Gavilan never dominated as such , but that was probably only because of Robinson . Gavilan emerged as the best in the 147 post-Robinson era .

To answer your question further though , I think I rate Trinidad so highly becsuse I view him as sort of an icon , he captured the harts of boxing fans(the way Joe Louis did) the way he fought . And I just think he was great

 

Fair enough.

 

I wouldnt move Trinidad , but he is one of the ones that if someone else had him lower on their list then I wouldnt argue with it

 

I'd like to see their 140 and 135 lb list.

 

They did do a lightweight list. Here's the Top 10 (not certain of the placement of the bottom 10)

1. Roberto Duran
2. Benny Leonard
3. Pernell Whitaker
4. Joe Gans
5. Ike Williams
6. Joe Brown
7. Carlos Ortiz
8. Tony Canzoneri
9. Bob Montgomery
10. Beau Jack

 

Not Bad but the Duran from Montreal should be higher and Hearns would blast out a lot of guys ahead of him, also Barney Ross should be higher

 

Both Griffith and Napoles are rated too low. Napoles would have boxed rings around Carmine Basilio, and would have stopped him in my opinion.