The Top 100 Pound for Pound All-Time Greats

That's not nitpicking, that's outrageous nonsense. And close and controversial are not the same thing. And at least he won when he stepped up, which Chocolate cannot say.

Chocolate has a much worse record against this kind of opposition. Isn't it the case that he has only beaten one great fighter in four attempts? The guy managed two wins against the smaller Fidel LaBarbrara and both were easily as controversial as anything Berg had.

Fought Canzoneri twice. Lost twice.
Fought Berg twice. Lost twice.
Fought Battling Batalino. Beaten.
Fought Fidel LaBarbara three times. Lost once and got a "controversial decision" in the others.

Is his best win Al Singer? Or Peter Hayes?

 

Never mind, Hayes beat him

 

Negative.

I don't think that's his best win, but it might even be. Fitz was still in excellent form after all, 44 or not.

Are you sure about that? O'Brien was weighing between 155 and 158 at this time. Walcott was weighing between 145 and 148. It was probably about 8lbs. Nothing, in Walcott-World.

Tell you what. As your determined to destroy the record of O'Brien, lets see if it is possible to do it with any other fighters.

McCoy was the bigger man when he got smashed up in the biggest fight of his career against the limited Jack Root. Obviously he would have been disqualified for the disgraceful foul commited by his corner in the normal course of events, but he had been so thrashed and embarrassed that he was spared that final humiliation. Perhaps the referee was also worried the crowd would be furious at not seeing a knockout after seeing McCoy dropped 6 or 7 times.

The pattern continued throughout his career. Against Corbett, another massive fight, he seems to have agreed to throw the fight for money. The limited Kid Carter beat him up in 1902. Indeed, draws seemed to be the very best he could do at the sharp end of his career and he managed one against Tommy Ryan and in a fight that appears to have been faked with Joe Choynski. OK, he managed to beat Choynski earlier that year but he was also utterly embarrassed by the 7-10-2 Jack McCormick(!)

A good run preceded his points loss to Vern Hardenbrook, even managing to lift the Middleweight title when Dan Creedom quit in strange circumstances. He also scored his best win over Tommy Ryan in this time, but it was undermined slightly by his points loss to the little known Ted White which was not avenged.


You know what I mean?

Yeah, the guy is locked in now. Post away though there is definitely no harm in it.

 

Could be, after all the Berg fight came before the McLarnin fight. In reality, there is no way to know which was worse.

 

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#91 Fritzie Zivic (158-65-10)

Fritzie Zivic is another fighter to haul in more than 150 wins, but unlike Jack Berg, Zivic suffered a whopping 65 defeats. He lost a few. So what is the justification for ranking him so highly?

In part it is down to the way Zivic vetted his opponents: he didn’t. He makes Berg’s matchmaking policy look rather conservative. Zivic would fight anyone. He faced Ray Robinson twice, Billy Conn, Kid Azteca, Bob Montgomery, Beau Jack, Bummy Davis, Phil Furr, Izzy Jannazzo, Sam Angott, Lou Ambers, Jimmy Leto, the list goes on and on. It can be argued quite convincingly that Fritzie Zivic met the best array of fighters out of anyone on the entire list. I’ll say that again: Zivic may have fought the highest level of competition in the history of boxing.

And he won a fair share.

The jewel in his crown is unquestionably the twin wins over Henry Armstrong. Over the years it has become truth by repetition that Armstrong was past prime for those fights. I suspect it is true that he had slipped a little, but in the previous five months he had knocked out welterweight contenders Ralph Zannelli (TKO5), Paul Junior (TKO3), Lew Jenkins (TKO6) and Phil Furr (KO4). He was and remained the welterweight champion of the world, in full bloom—until Fritzie got a hold of him.

The first fight was close—Zivic had to knock Armstrong onto his ass in the last round to take the decision. The second fight was not. Armstrong had lost one fight in the last fifty-eight, down at lightweight to the rampant Lou Ambers, but it was Zivic who called time on the Armstrong party, stopping him for the first time since his pro debut.

Second and third are Fritzie’s wins over two fighters that were among the black murderer’s row of welter and middleweights that populated the era, ducked almost universally by the white contenders and champions of that time. Zivic ducked no one. He really had no business beating Charley Burley, who was faster, stronger, harder hitting and longer, but he did so over ten rounds in March of ’38. Similar things could be said of Eddie Booker, who narrowly missed out on this list and who was unbeaten in forty-one fights coming into his 1939 eight rounder with Zivic. Fritzie brought that streak to a juddering halt, snapping off five of the last six rounds with an aggressive punching performance against a man that would spend the rest of his career boxing as a middleweight.

Speaking of middleweights, Zivic met a great one in Jake LaMotta, on four separate occasions. The first, a split decision win for Jake LaMotta over ten, was a fight that Zivic swore all the way to the grave that he had won; it is true that, neither available wire report saw the fight for Jake, one scoring it a draw, the other having it to Fritzie. In a rematch over fifteen, LaMotta was said to be taking the fight “more seriously” but was confident that the longer distance would suit him. Zivic beat him out of sight, LaMotta getting as few as two of the fifteen rounds on some cards. LaMotta did win their two remaining bouts but wait a moment—what the hell was Zivic doing even fighting LaMotta? This was a smaller, older, past-prime welterweight taking on one of the strongest middles in history, ceding every single conceivable style advantage in existence and giving him nightmares. Beating him should have been impossible.

Yes, Zivic lost a few.

 

Yes, you can see the summary of Zivic just above the post you made. Please don't ****ing compare him to Jersey Joe Walcott.