The importance of title reigns

Everything has to be kept in perspective. A guy like Charles is every chance of being the greatest ever fighter at 175 but never got the chance to contest that title. Look at his resume there tho. We also have guys like Burley who were shut out yet are obviously high level ATG's in the ring and who beat a top array of fighters. The rest of the Murders Row too. A guy like Sonny Liston went a fair way to cleaning out the division pre/title. You have to look at the whole picture.

Did you have certain pugilists in mind?

 

A lot of fighters can get to the top, and far fewer can stay there. It's harder to do and takes a different kind of discipline and strength. I put a lot of weight on good title reigns and records in title fights for that reason.

Sometimes, politics get in the way, and I account for that. But if a fighter's work ethic or level of competition plummets when he becomes champ, I'll assume it would've happened had he gotten the title earlier. Too often I see people get credit for a "what-if" reign when their actions once they got the title would've never led to a long reign.

 

Competition faced during title reigns matters. How many #1, #2's or #3 were given title shots? The amount of title defenses also matter, and not looking good vs. mediocre opponents in winning or drawing affairs to me slides the champion backward.

If the competition wasn't the best in the time, it's not the fighters fault, so extra consideration to how dominate he champion was in his title defenses matter.

 

Title fights are more important than non-title fights in that they are more likely to present the fighters at their peak performance when they have worked their way up in the ratings and have taken the time to train themselves to as close to perfection as they can get. Particularly in the "old days" when fighters fought every couple of weeks or so, they would often enter the ring in at less than perfect condition, i. e., with hurt hands, a cold, the flu, or whatnot.

 

Exactly. It's one thing to reach the top when everyone else is gunning for the champion. It's another thing to stay on top when you're the champ everyone else is gunning for.

 

An undisputed title reign takes precedence for me. I really value that and for fighters without title reigns or long ones they’ve really got to go through murderers row (ala Charles) for me to consider them next to guys with long reigns. It’s tough to hold it against some guys that were denied title shots though.

 

What annoys me though, is when said fighter makes it to the throne and then just defends it against crap. Two fighters that stick out in my mind are actually from the same stable, Tommy Hearns and Milt McCrory. Hearns defeats a great champ in Cuevas, then defends against Primera (a nobody), Baez (a clubfighter), Shields (well-worn and made for Hearns), before fighting Leonard. McCrory defeats a good fighter in Colin jones for the vacant title then defends agains Guest (a prospect), Elbilia (nothing), Vilella (nothing), Trujillo (nothing) before being blown away by Curry. Now if you want to look at an awesome title reign, look at Fighting Harada. Defeats ATG Jofre for the title and defends against Jofre, Medel, Caraballo, Rudkin and loses to Rose. And Rose was a sub for Pimental. What a run against great competition. Now that's a title reign.

 

I think we tend to put all of these into context.

For example, Armstrong is seen as a lower top 10 welter at best because the majority of his title defences were against lightweight contenders.

Hopkins didn’t fight in the strongest MW era (nor did Monzon)

Ortiz I wrote about recently. I have him no.6 at bantam. Wasn’t the strongest bantam era. Still undeniably an ATG and I’ve seen him higher and can understand that as his numbers were phenomenal.

Perez could easily be the no.1 ATG Flyweight and sometimes gets ranked as such.

But it doesn’t mean that those that had fewer/no defences but beat ‘better’ opposition shouldn’t rank higher. All about context.

 

Villela was quite good. Beat Starling and Finch before he fought McCrory and was a good amateur.

 

Yes, but it did seem a bit opportunistic that he comes out of nowhere, wins a majority decision in a big upset over Starling and he is immediately offered up as a challenger. Legit? Maybe. But a rematch with Starling would have been the right thing. I recall at the time saying, "this is all the excuse McCrory needed to avoid Starling himself" (I was quite vocal on these things in my youth). And Vilella never won another fight in his career. It was the same with Elbilia. He gets a gift cut eye stoppage over Nino LaRocca and is immediately dragged in as a challenger. Thus, avoiding LaRocca. There was a real pattern here.