The most underrated Middleweight Ever? (Monzon excluded)

Holman williams never beat the **** out of ezzard charles like lloyd marshall did, nor did he beat a prime jake lamotta. Take note this is the same charles marshall beat who twice whupped charley burley.

 

The Tony Zale that Cerdan beat for the title had just destroyed Graziano in three and looked terrific doing so. Zale did not look past his prime.
Cerdan also beat the great Georgie Abrams. The Holman Williams Cerdan beat had defeated Archie Moore less than a year earlier!
We will never know about Lamotta since Cerdan' shoulder was injured so early in the fight and had to quit on his stool, and since they never rematched due to Cerdan's death in the plane crash.

 

prior to cerdans shoulder getting injured(which was BECAUSE of lamotta manhandling him in the clinches)..........lamotta had ALREADY floored cerdan with a left hook and had been beating the **** out of him. with or without the injury, cerdan looked like he was in for a lonngg night.

so what? graziano was very mediocre....the very fact zale was losing and getting floored repeatedly by graziano at this stage shows how much he had lost. zale's reflexes had deteriorated rapidly since dissapearing to the war.

Sweet dude, Jake Lamotta beat that same holman williams as well

I once read a report that abrams deserved the nod. Impressive considering abrams barely had any fights in 4 years due to war.

Anton Raddick nearly kayoed cerdan, floored him 3 times. the chicago tribune had raddick winning the fight. tiberio mitri beat him. I would have liked to see cerdan vs villemain.

 

Well Cerdan faced the top Euro mws instead of that American bums!

See, it works both ways. Eurofighters were seldomly recognized, ranked or got a shot because it was an American sport at the time. All the important medias were American, the boxing organisations were American, and so on. That doesn´t mean Euro fighters were bums or worse than their American counterparts.

 

This paragraph leaves the impression Tiberio Mitri defeated Marcel Cerdan. I don't think he did. By the time Cerdan would have gotten around to fighting Mitri or Villemain he would have been pretty old.

by the way, Raadik is an underrated puncher. He almost ko'd Cerdan, and did ko Abrams, Tommy Bell, Anton Christoforidis, and Ernie Vigh.

 

Nobody has mentioned Gene Fullmer.

He's pretty much dismissed as the crude brawler type or just a tough guy. I sure don't think a crude brawler would've lasted anywhere near as long as Fullmer did & the guy had a long long career with a lot of scalps on it. He's the type guy that never does well on fantasy type matchups but was a handful for every guy he ever fought.

 

good call.

 

I agree totally, i believe he was the secnd best of that golden era in the 50s, one could make the argument as the best, but i give that to Robinson on the constant regaining of the title from the best around when seemingly past it. But Fulmer beat the top guys around him.

I dont mean he was the best of that following era with Tiger and Giardello though.

 

Dick Tiger gets my #1 vote. Was the unified, undisputed world champion at both middleweight and light-heavyweight (only one other middleweight has ever done that, Bob Fitzsimmons), and scored at least SEVEN wins over Hall of Famers in his career, most of which were very impressive and decisive. Had 10 title fights in his career, and all but one came against Hall of Famers (with a record of 5-3-1 against them). Off the top of my head, I can't think of any other champion that fought so consistently against such a high quality of opposition. He's also one of the best infighters/counterpunchers I've ever seen. Yet Tiger is not celebrated nearly as much as other middleweights than were clearly less accomplished IMO, such as Fullmer, LaMotta, and Cerdan.

Other nominees:
Lloyd Marshall (should've got in the Hall of Fame long ago)
Frank Klaus
Apostoli
Steele
Yarosz
Giardello

 

I wish there was a way to start some kind of petition to get this guy in the Hall of Fame. It's a shame that he isn't. The Hall has done good work recognizing great fighters who never won titles (particularly the black ones), but their efforts are tainted IMO by excluding the guy who may have the best resume of them all. What's worse, plenty of far less deserving fighters have gotten into the Hall while this guy sat on the sidelines.

 

Underrated Middleweights: Randy Turpin, Carl Olson, Rodrigo Valdes

 

I think Bobo Olson is slightly underrated.

 

jake lamotta

people only rate him high because of his chin but he had other skills as well

very underrated imo ya dig

 

Keeping in trend; Marcel Cerdan and Dick Tiger are top picks.