The BN24 Classic Boxing Hall of Legends

HENRY ARMSTRONG

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"I'm not going to bleed any more. I'm not going to spit it on the floor. I'm going to swallow it. I'm going to win this title. Take the mouthpiece out. Don’t give me no mouthpiece. Just let me go."

Inducted At: Feathweight, Inaugural
Years Active: 1931-1935
Lineal Champion: 1937-1938 (Featherweight); 1938-1939 (Lightweight); 1938-1940 (Welterweight)
Boxrec Record: 149-21-10

Yes, he was skilled, so skilled in fact that he remains, seventy years after his retirement, the definitive exponent of the swarming pressure style, but it was not skill that defined him. What made Armstrong perhaps the most dangerous fighter in all of boxing history was more elemental;violent pressure, a blackout punch, an inexhaustible engine, an iron-chin, an iron-will; these were the tools Armstrong used to drive himself to triple-crown immorality. Armstrong was the ultimate executioner of champions.

The bloody slaughter of boxing royalty began in 1935 with a ten-round decision over the obese but brilliant former flyweight champion Midget Wolgast who he outworked in the back stretch to outpoint despite a left-handed rally from the canvas by an inspired Wolgast through the third and fourth. Next up, Baby Arizmendi, who not only enjoyed recognition in some corners as the featherweight champion of the world, but also held not just one but two wins over him; Hank. Armstrong would claim that those losses were caused not Arizmendi's ability but business arrangements combined with suspect officiating. True or not, Armstrong gave those accusations weight by way of his 1936 trouncing of the Mexican. Just two weeks later, Armstrong buzz-sawed his way through Juan Zurita, a fighter who would snatch up a piece of the lightweight title but could not last four rounds in the ring with him. Two months later, he crowded, bullied and decisioned NYSAC featherweight champion Mike Belloise in a non-title fight. In early 1937 he rematched the native New Yorker, still recognized as champion is his hometown and left him insensible and unable to continue after four; four rounds, too, was the limit for former light-welterweight champion and Kid Chocolate conqueror Frankie Klick who did well even to survive the first after swallowing a right hand that sent him clattering around the ring like a frightened pony; nobody can have been surprised when the ultra-durable former junior-lightweight champion Benny Bass also managed just four before hearing the first count of his career; a terrible and deafening scream of power-punching pressure was hurtling down the corridors of fistic history and champions were thrown before it like leaves before a hurricane.

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EDER JOFRE

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“I am never in a hurry.”

Inducted At: Bantamweight, Inaugural
Years Active: 1957-1976
Lineal Champion: 1961-1965
Boxrec Record: 72-2-4

Between 1957 when he turned professional and 1965 when Fighting Harada caught up with him, Eder Jofre was 46-0-3. He reached heights that so few fighters have reached that you could probably name them without straining. “At a young age,” wrote Chris Smith, author of the definitive Jofre biography Brazil’s First Boxing Champion, “[his father] put the gloves on Eder and started teaching him techniques and punching patterns…it wasn’t long before little Eder was jumping rope with the professionals.”

Jofre spans the eras. When he won his titles he was boxing for the old incarnations, the NYSAC, the NBA, by the time he lost them, he was defending the WBC and WBA championships, certainty ebbed even as his greatness flowed. The wonderful Fighting Harada was the man who came for him, by then tight at the weight and giving up a clear style advantage to his Japanese foe, Jofre was still able to make the rematch razor-thin after dropping a clear decision in the first fight. More glory awaited at featherweight in something of a second career, but Jofre’s best was behind him. He finally hung them up in 1976 during Muhammad Ali’s second reign; when he turned professional, Rocky Marciano had just retired.

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STANLEY KETCHEL

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"You might as well try to outrun a tornado." - 'Dumb' Dan Morgan

Inducted At: Middleweight, Inaugural
Years Active: 1903-1910
Lineal Champion: 1907-1908; 1908.
Boxrec Record: 49-5-3

Stanley Ketchel is the definitive middleweight monster and by astonishing coincidence, Stanley Ketchel shared an era with perhaps the only middleweight that could have rivaled him for the position of Chief Monster, Billy Papke. They fought wars, savage even for their savage era. Papke exalted in suffering to an even greater extent than Ketchel, and was delivered to exaltation by his nemesis in June of 1908. Ketchel boxed Papke carefully, “he was not in a hurry” but rather “the coolest man in the house.” He used footwork and a shifting, “sideways” style that reads as almost spiderlike, to keep the brutal Papke off balance and under control; the result was a beating one-sided and impressive, so impressive it led the great Abe Attell to name Ketchel “the greatest fighter that ever lived.”

The rematch, too, provoked admiration. Jim Jeffries, the legendary heavyweight champion, labelled him “the gamest fighter I have ever seen” as Ketchel absorbed perhaps the most hellish beating of an era accustomed to such; so devastating was the punishment that Papke inflicted that by the eighth the crowd, accustomed to the brutalities of boxing in this era, called for the fight to be stopped. Jeffries, a fighter who made his bones soaking up violence, allowed the blood bath to continue into the twelfth. Ketchel’s face “was battered out of shape, as if Papke had knocked him about with a baseball bat as opposed to two fists”. Distracted by talk of a match with world heavyweight champion Tommy Burns, comforted by his one-sided drubbing of Papke on points, Ketchel, perhaps, had not applied himself in the usual way. “His face crooked, his mouth a mere gash,” he vanished into the desert, even his manager apparently unaware of his whereabouts. In fact, while he was beaten by a light-heavyweight Sam Langford and a heavyweight Jack Johnson – no shame in either case – Ketchel was beaten just once at middleweight, by Papke, a defeat he three times avenged, twice upon emerging from that desert.

A lethal pressure fighter with off-scale power, an iron jaw, huge work rate and limitless stamina, Ketchel dominated a superb era of middleweights during a career that saw him reign twice as the champion of the world. It took a bullet to stop him.

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SAM LANGFORD

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"You'll forgive me gentlemen if I make this a short fight. I have a train to catch."

Inducted At: Heavyweight, Inaugural
Years Active: 1903-1926
Lineal Champion: None.
Boxrec Record: 178-30-38

What sets Langford apart is his domination of the heavyweight division which saw him beat, amongst other, Harry Wills, Sam McVey, Joe Jeanette, Stanley Ketchel, Jim Flynn, Iron Hague, Gunboat Smith, Jim Johnson, Dan Flynn, John Johnson, Jim Johnson and Jack O;Brien. He was never the champion, but Jack Johnson's refusal to meet him in the ring for the title, having previously beaten a middleweight Langford whilst enjoying a thirty-pound weight advantage, speaks volumes. Langford's heavyweight resume is vastly superior to that of perhaps his only peer, Harry Greb, and although Langford is naturally a bigger fighter if not a taller one, he also sports better wins below middleweight. Greb cannot equal Sam’s best wins in either the biggest or the smallest divisions they fought in. Aged just seventeen, Sam Langford had been matched a prime Joe Gans, who was knocking over no-hopers in the middle of a barnstorming tour but dropped an abrupt decision to Langford at 140lbs. Sam beat special lightweights, middleweights, light-heavyweights and heavyweights building perhaps the greatest resume in the sport's history.

It is not a new idea. Both Harry Wills and Jack Dempsey ranked Sam Langford as The Greatest, as did historian and promoter Charley Rose. Hype Igoe, the legendary New York boxing writer and cartoonist who covered the fights between 1907 and 1937, rated him the best fighter he ever saw. His peers Joe Williams and Grantland Rice agreed with him. Existing film gives clues as to why he was and is so highly thought of it, but there is simply not enough of it to ever satisfy.

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BENNY LEONARD

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“People ask me who’s the greatest boxer I ever saw pound for pound. I hesitate to say, either Benny Leonard or Ray Robinson. But Leonard’s mental energy surpassed anyone else’s.” - Ray Arcel

Inducted At: Lightweight, Inaugural
Years Active: 1911-1932
Lineal Champion: 1917-1925
Boxrec Record: 89-6-1

Just as the alphabet governing bodies are the enemy of clarity in the modern era, so the no-decision bout could confuse the title picture one-hundred years ago. A champion refuses to put up the title in anything but a no-decision bout against an emerging talent, that talent outboxes the champion for a one-sided newspaper decision, and what do you have? An outclassed champion who up and walks away with the title anyway. It is a wonderful thing then, when a truly great challenger finds a way to rip that title from the opponent anyway, by knocking out a champion who can box only to survive, by stopping a champion who only has to make the final bell to remain the champion of the world. This is what Benny Leonard was able to do against no less a figure than Freddie Welsh in 1917. Welsh had never been stopped before and never would be stopped again but Leonard, who had won and lost a newspaper decision to Welsh in the previous two years, did what the great ones do and found a way. Thirty seconds after the opening bell for the ninth of ten rounds, Leonard broke through with a right hand that sent Welsh to his knees. He hauled himself to his feet, as champions will, but after being dropped twice more he was rescued by referee Kid McPartland. The Leonard era had begun.

It lasted more than seven years and during it, Leonard definitively named himself one of the very, very best fighters in all of history.

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RAY LEONARD

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“I had that ice in me.”

Inducted At: Welterweight, Inaugural
Years Active: 1977-1997
Lineal Champion: 1979-1980; 1980-1982; 1987 (Middleweight)
Boxrec Record: 36-3-1

Leonard held a brutal shot, as he proved in fights with Tommy Hearns, against whom he also proved his power and heart. Against Hagler, whatever your own opinion of that decision, he demonstrated a maxed out boxing IQ and once in a generation type generalship. He was fast, fit, and technically brilliant but riffed with the best of them; he was close to perfect.

Between 1979 and 1987 he defeated Wilfred Benitez, Roberto Duran and Thomas Hearns, then after a short retirement came back past-prime to shade Marvin Hagler. Despite one of the lightest careers in the Hall having boxed fewer than forty contests, Leonard is over-qualified for membership.

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NICOLINO LOCCHE

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“The best defensive fighter I ever saw.” - Ray Arcel

Inducted At: All Other Wight Classes, Inaugural
Years Active: 1962-1976
Lineal Champion: 1968-1972, Light-Welterweight
Boxrec Record: 117-4-14

Nico Locche was brilliant. At his best, the Argentine redefined unhittable; standing rather than dancing, sometimes seeking out the ropes and corners and inviting his bigger-hitting opponents to lash out at him, making them miss by centimeters and then countering. In a sporting culture obsessed with technique, we hear a great deal about the rule-breakers who seemingly bend space and time to their very will, but even amongst the Alis and the Peps of the sport, Locche is King Maverick. On offense, his left hand was his weapon of choice and his left-hook was extraordinary, part feint every time he threw it because the arch of the punch was impossible to pick. Against champion and deluxe thug Takeshi Fuji he absolutely brutalized the ribs, forcing his guard down and taxing him with one of the neatest right uppercuts of his era, which he used in part to close one of Fuji's eyes. .

A true trailblazer, but one nobody can follow.

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TOMMY LOUGHRAN

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Inducted At: Light Heavyweight, Inaugural
Years Active: 1919-1937
Lineal Champion: 1927-1929
Boxrec Record: 90-25-10

Tommy Loughran boxed Harry Greb when he was just 19 years old. Loughran lost, inevitably, over eight rounds but he won admirers in doing so and impressed with his performance in the opening two rounds and in a sudden desperate rally in the last. He even managed to cut Greb, who spoke in glowing terms of the prospect. Loughran then matched Gene Tunney. Again, he did so over eight rounds and again he impressed against an all tim great in a close fight. “Not many boxers could outbox Tunney at this stage of his career,” wrote Tunney biographer Jack Cavanaugh. “But Loughran was one of them.”

This statement is far from inarguable but it bears examination. Tunney was one of the very best boxers of his era and is regarded to this day as one of the finest boxers of all time; Loughran, on the other hand, was a teenager. But he was a teenager with perhaps the most cultured, brilliant left hand in history. Whatever the details it is a fact that once Loughran made it out of his teens and into his prime, Tunney took nothing more to do with Loughran. One man who never shirked a challenge, however, was Harry Greb. Loughran fought Greb on a further four occasions, even boxing him to a draw in late 1924.

Most of the other luminaries of the era fell to him, including Mike McTigue (from whom he took the light-heavyweight title), Jimmy Delaney, Georges Carpantier, Jimmy Slattery, Young Stribling, Leo Lomski, Pete Latzo, Jim Braddock, at which point, Loughran departed for heavyweight where he made another significant mark.

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JOE LOUIS

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“You got to be a killer, otherwise I’m getting too old to waste time on you.”—Jack Blackburn

Inducted At: Heavyweight, Inaugural
Years Active: 1934-1951
Lineal Champion: 1937-1949
Boxrec Record: 66-3

The Bomber, Joe Louis, Chappy, the greatest puncher of all time at any weight, the greatest Champion of any weight in all of boxing history, “the greatest textbook fighter in history” according to Freddie Roach and a dazzling fistic icon rendered in stark black and white for the viewing pleasure of generation upon generation of boxing geeks. The man is not a fighter, the man is an institution. He defeated more Ring ranked contenders than any heavyweight in history. He won a ludicrous twenty-six world heavyweight title fights. He was King for one-hundred and forty consecutive months. He defeated an unprecedented six lineal heavyweight Champions. Every single one of those heavyweight Champions was destroyed.

First up was Primo Carnera just one year after he had been separated from his title, a veteran of the ring with over eighty wins to his name. Louis was 19-0. He first completely out-boxed the much bigger “Ambling Alp” and then he began to feint with his left and drop that booming right hand over the top. It was a performance of astonishing sophistication. “I was drugged!” Carnera protested in the aftermath. “These irregularities exist only in the pugilist’s imagination,” read a distancing statement from the Italian Boxing Federation. Three months later Louis was in the ring with iron-chinned power-puncher Max Baer, who had been the Champion of the world until his very last fight. Louis utterly destroyed him in a non-competitive match remembered most as a power-punching salvo, overlooking, sadly, Joe’s astonishing jabbing display in the first round. “He hit me eighteen times while I was in the process of falling,” Baer said post-fight. After posting his first loss to Max Schmeling, Louis was matched with another former Champion for his comeback against Jack Sharkey. ““I was getting ready to shoot the left,” Sharkey described. “ I said to myself, ‘here goes!’ Suddenly, I’m on the floor.” Incumbent Champion James J Braddock was next in the Champion’s parade, and he fared better than his near peers, actually flashing Louis on the way to suffering a beating that resulted in a face unrecognisable. The killing combination against Braddock was genius. Reported over and again as a “left to the ribs”, the rhythm of punches that made Louis a Champion actually began with a left to James J’s left biceps, eliminating the guard for the right hand that drove Braddock’s gumshield through his top lip opening a wound that required twenty-three stitches. Collapsed in other-worldly slow-motion onto the canvas, a crimson stain “a foot in diameter” ballooned around Braddock’s head. Louis was King.

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BENNY LYNCH

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"He was the first one to do it. He showed us that a little guy from Glasgow, a little guy from Scotland, could be champion of the whole wide world." - Jim Watt.

Inducted At: Flyweight, Inaugural
Years Active: 1931-1938
Lineal Champion: 1937-1938
Boxrec Record: 88-14-7

Born in the Gorbals, a notorious housing scheme in the city of Glasgow, Lynch was plying his trade in the thriving smokehouses and gyms of the Scottish fight scene by twenty-one. He would box almost one hundred and thirty contests. He would be stopped only in his last by which time he was weighing at a pudgy, drink-sodden 131lbs. An iron-born man hailing from an iron-hued city he had a natural talent and aptitude for fighting. Emerging from the terrible chaos that shrouded the division after the abdication of Fidel LaBarba in 1927, Lynch positioned himself for glory in dusting two elite French fighters tempted to Glasgow for sizeable purses, Maurice Huguenin and Valentin Angelmann. His reward was a crack at a piece of the splintered title against Jackie Brown. Brown, an ironman in his own right, had been knocked out just once five years earlier, a slight for which he had three times wrought vengeance. Having boxed Lynch to a draw up at bantamweight earlier in 1935, experts predicted Brown would keep matters tight once more. What they witnessed instead was a man possessed grasping his opportunity with both gloved hands.

He swaggered in the ring and launched sudden two-fisted attacks that sometimes seemed to have no end in front of crowds of forty-five thousand. He had it all. In October of 1937, already beginning to slip, he met the murderous punching Peter Kane, then 42-0, one of the great punchers. Lynch took what he had to give, doubled it, and banged him out in thirteen rounds. Harder, faster, better. But he would never make the flyweight limit again. Alcohol had overtaken him. By 1938 his career was over. In 1946, just thirty-three years of age, Benny Lynch was dead.

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JACK JOHNSON

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"I know i'm bad, but Jack Johnson was crazy." - Muhammad Ali.

Inducted At: Heavyweight, Inaugural
Years Active: 1897-1931
Lineal Champion: 1908-1915
Boxrec Record: 54-11-9

Before he came to the title, Jack Johnson trashed top tier heavyweights like Sam McVey, Joe Jennette, Sam Langford and other impressive men such us Sandy Ferguson, Denver Ed Martin, Jim Flynn, and when he was given the chance at a Champion, Tommy Burns in such one-sided and impressive fashion that a miserable title run becomes easier to forgive.

In defending that title, he did avoid his most qualified challengers, but he tended to thrash the opposition, embarrassing near misses against Jack O’Brien and Jim Johnson aside. And there is one more thing. Sometimes, Johnson must have felt that he was facing off against the whole world in matching the most qualified white challengers. It is said that during his ringwalks Johnson might hear a band play something like “All Coons Look Alike To Me”, and it is known that while he brutalised the former champion Jim Jeffries in the ring, “Gentleman” Jim Corbett screamed racial insults at him from ringside. Johnson spoke later, perhaps having added a dash of the colour for which he was famous, of a single black spectator watching from the furthest reaches of the stadium, having clambered upon the highest bleacher to watch the legend unfold. He was the loneliest man in the world on such occasions, and he kicked ass anyway.

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ROCKY MARCIANO

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"Why waltz with a guy for ten rounds if you can knock him out in one?"

Inducted At: Heavyweight, Inaugural
Years Active: 1947-1955
Lineal Champion: 1952-1956
Boxrec Record: 49-0

Rocky Marciano's numbers are astonishing. He was undefeated, the proud owner of one of an “0” tested by the best available competition; as a Champion, he only met his #1 or, on one occasion, his #2 contender; he knocked out every ranked man he ever faced; he won forty-nine heavyweight contests, including some near-great ones; he scored forty-three knockouts.

Marciano is a tiny heavyweight by modern standards but seems constructed of different material for all that.

“In defiance of accepted chemical analysis that humans are made of bone, blood and muscle, we must disagree where Marciano is concerned,” wrote the Pittsburgh Post Gazette in the aftermath of The Rock’s first fight with Charles. “There must be steel and iron somewhere in his makeup.”

Steel and a heart the size of a dump-truck compensate for that squat, iron frame.

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MIKE MCCALLUM

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“You can’t imagine, the first Jamaican world champion. That means everything to me. That was the best feeling to know that you are the first world champion boxer in Jamaica. We had some great fighters from Jamaica back in the day – Bunny Grant, Percy Hayles, Roy Goss – a lot of good fighters. I celebrated. I went all over Jamaica in a car – everybody was coming out, everybody wanted to see me. It was something else.”

Inducted At: All Other Weight Classes, Inaugural
Years Active: 1981-1997
Lineal Champion: No
Boxrec Record: 49-5-1

Mike McCallum was undefeated at light-middleweight against men such as Donald Curry, Milton McCrory and David Braxton, and was arguably the best 154lb boxer of all time. He did slip a little when the inevitable move to middleweight in search of big fights occurred, losing to and then avenging the defeat by Sumbu Kalambay, controversially drawing with and losing to James Toney (whom some will tell you he beat twice), but he also added the WBA strap, absolutely broke a superb Michael Watson and beat Herol Graham and Steve Collins. An ancient McCallum even lifted a strap up at light-heavyweight.

He chased tirelessly after both Roberto Duran and Thomas Hearns during an under-celebrated career - that was exactly that kind of marquee name away from obtaining the next level.

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JIMMY MCLARNIN

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"For one in ten thousand the money in boxing can be fast. But even for that one in ten thousand, boxing is never easy."

Inducted At: Wildcard, Inaugural
Years Active: 1923-1936
Lineal Champion: 1933-1934 Wetlerweight; 1934-1935 Welterweight
Boxrec Record: 55-11-3

As top-to-bottom win resumes go, McLarnin's is amongst the best of all time. As a teenaged flyweight he picked off the future all-time great Fidel LaBarba twice, then moved up to box a draw with a veteran Pal Moore and beat no less a figure than Pancho Villa. Still serving his apprenticeship, he defeated future welterweight champion Jackie Fields, future bantamweight champion Bud Taylor, world title challenger Joe Glick and when he hit his prime, contenders and greats fell like bowling pins. He took vengeance against Mandell on two occasions, beat Petrolle twice, Sammy Fuller, Ray Miller, Ruby Goldstein, an aged Benny Leonard, Al Singer who declared McLarnin the best puncher he had ever faced and that he feared his neck had been broken by the knockout blow.

A boxer of the highest class, he was also an elite puncher.

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PACKEY MCFARLAND

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"State law forbids a decision by the referee but every fan present handed the palm to Packey." - The Salt Lake Herald, February 15, 1912.

Inducted At: Lightweight, Inaugural
Years Active: 1904-1915
Lineal Champion: No
Boxrec Record: 70-0-5

Records list a single newspaper loss for Packey McFarland to an unknown in 1904, the year of his professional debut. Occasionally described as a fifth-round knockout, research has revealed the contest may have been awarded to the otherwise unremarkable Dusty Miller on a foul; McFarland reportedly took his revenge in an unlisted three-round knockout of the single man to beat him. Whatever the detail, he was never beaten again. Fighters of this era fought with great frequency, and McFarland was no different except in that one thing: he did not lose.

Sporting an upright stance of varied depth, he owned the most cultured left hand of his era and used it to dominate his competition with a stylist’s joy supplemented by a puncher’s gristle, although it was his speed that really set him apart. So fast at hitting and moving that words like "bewildered" and "uncertain" littered the sports reports of the era in relation to his world-class opposition and that Owen Moran actually laughed at himself whilst he boxed Packey, shaking his head at his own inability to land. Like Roy Jones he seemed to box under different physical laws than that of the opposition; unlike Jones, he got out before the mortals could catch up to him.

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