Ring Magazine's Top 20 Middleweights of All-Time

No way, post Fleischer The Ring always feels the need to give a bias towards the more contemporary fighters.

 

LaMotta and Flowers are too high, Tiger and Walker are too low, and Conn shouldn't be on there IMO. Also, Freddie Steele and Fred Apostoli should be in the top 20 as well (in general, the '30s MWs appear to have been short-changed by this list).

 

The Australian claim to the MW title was as bogus as it gets. First of all the accepted poundage in that era was 158. Australia set it at 160. So right there you have them basically setting up their own arbitrary champion in his own arbitrary weight class. Second, if you are going to recognize Darcy arbitrarily why not recognize Mike Gibbons who beat all the big names Darcy beat BEFORE Darcy beat them? AND he even held a win over McCoy! Why dont we recognize Gibbons? Because you dont just award titles to whoever you THINK is the best. This sport isnt about what you MIGHT DO its about WHAT YOU HAVE DONE. McCoy, as embarrassing a champion as he was, did what was necessary to win the title, and lost it in the same fashion. You cant just take it away from him for no reason. He weighed in under 158 and knocked out the champion in a fair fight LONG before Darcy ever claimed the MW championship (a full year before), and didnt lose it until after Darcy was dead. In short, Darcy NEVER had a legitimate claim to the championship.

As for the whole Gibbons/Darcy argument: Neither needed a victory over the other to claim the championship. They both needed a victory over McCoy. Had Darcy fought McCoy and won he would have been champion and he would never have HAD to face Gibbons to make that claim. Same with Gibbons. Its why today we call Gibbons one of the greatest fighters never to win a championship. He may have been recognized as the greatest pound for pound fighter of the age but he was not recognized as a champion.

 

As a youngster I'd hear a fair bit talk of Darcy and Young Griffo as our world champions (and some also claimed Fitz as one of ours). A bit of reading later on cleared the matter up pretty quickly

 

You and I both know that McCoy REFUSED TO EVER DEFEND while Darcy was alive and you ignore all the losses this dickhead had while he was the supposed champion. Anyway the belts are almost meaningless, I think era's with one dominating champ for around a decade means it's not up to scratch. We see this in the 10's, it's the overall strength of the MW Division during the 10's and 30's is why there's no full agreement as who the real champ is. You can't just shove the Australians out of your way, you can't say that we recognised McCoy, you can, but we don't just take Americas word for anything without investigating. Darcy is not just a fighter like his contemporaries, he is a national icon and you will never change it,..... I actually think a top 100 list without an Aussie is actually a top 100 EXCLUDING silly Aussies......... so hardly representative...... I could possibly accept a top 50 without one........--------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Incidentally, who would have won the Jem Mace V Ned Kelly fight if it happened ????..... I don't know what happened to the fight, maybe Ned was holding up a Cobb & Co. at the time .

 

Where do you get this **** from? McCoy did not dominate for a decade. He was champion for three years. And he was champion well within the accepted rules of the era. To say otherwise is asinine. If you want to say that someone deserved it more because of their record and not the fact that they actually beat the man who beat the man then you would still be faced with the fact that Darcy was fighting Mike Gibbons' leftovers and Gibbons actually had a win over McCoy, and the other claiment Jack Dillon, and he was actually able to make the weight. So sorry, but a bogus claim is a bogus claim, and Darcy's claim was bogus.

 

This is perhaps the most sensible post I've seen on this forum. Kudos to you sir.:good

 

Harry Greb at #1, right where he should be.

 

remember when the ring wasn't a joke?