The Top 100 Pound for Pound All-Time Greats

http://www.boxing.com/the_100_greatest_fighters_of_all_time_part_two_90_81.html

 

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#90 Young Griffo (69-9-44; 9-1-3 Newspaper Decisions)

Say hello to the list-maker’s nightmare, the inscrutable, the irascible, the mercurial Young Griffo. Just look at that record—forty-four mysterious draws and one hideous robbery to be investigated and interpreted. The temptation to leave him out was enormous—in the end that proved impossible.

From the beginning then: Griffo (real name, Albert Griffo) boxed his way through the forest of featherweights then competing in his native Australia mostly in no decision bouts where a draw would be declared in the event that no knockout was scored—which was often for Griffo who hit without power but was almost impossible to tag clean. He picked up the Australian featherweight title in 1889 and after a couple of defenses annexed the world’s featherweight title with a fifteenth round stoppage of the hard-swinging “Torpedo” Billy Murphy who had rather impressively dropped Griffo twice in the first couple of rounds but by the eleventh was struggling. In the fifteenth, he quit, a bare-knuckle fighter by nature he seemed displeased at having to wear gloves, which he claimed had been tampered with; this seems not to have been the case but either way and although it was amidst no little controversy, Griffo was now the champion. His first defense ended in a 13th round knockout of Paddy Moran, a routine win, but the next day report in the Barrier Miner contains a line of great interest—“Moran had plenty of supporters and was in better condition than Griffo.” Whether Griffo was yet the alcoholic he surely became during his years in America is unknown to me but he seems to have developed distaste for hard training and a habit for turning up to important fights out of shape very early in his career.

With me so far? Good. Because things are about to get worse. Unless you are a director in search for a project for your next biopic, in which case things are about to get better.

First George Powell quit to Griffo in March of ’91 and then Griffo beat Murphy in a rematch that July after he pushed or punched Griffo to the canvas then threw himself on top of him, continuing the attack for which he was subsequently disqualified in a fight he was apparently controlling. Griffo defended his featherweight title once more, renounced it, and sailed for America where the deepest lightweight division in all of history was stirring.

Griffo met them all. He met the long-reigning lightweight champion Jack McAuliffe. He met the future champion Frank Erne. He met tombstone puncher Kid Lavigne. He met the brilliant Joe Gans three times. He met the genius that was George Dixon three times. And Griffo did not win a single one of these fights. Worse, many of them were total farces.

Nevertheless, this is the time from which is reputation as the most physically talented boxer of his era springs. Lavigne, who met him first over a drawn eight-rounder of which he had the better, described him as the cleverest and best boxer he had ever met. When the two fought again over twenty rounds in 1895, Lavigne again got the better of their draw although unfortunate reproductions of the Nat Fleischer story concerning the fight may have given the opposite impression over the years. Next day reports are clear; the draw was “inevitable” but Lavigne had the better of Griff—or perhaps Griff had the better of Griff. By this time he was drinking heavily and “carried a paunch.”

Against Erne, he fought a drawn four-rounder almost universally regarded as a fake. He claimed himself that his first fight with Joe Gans, fought in November of 1895, was also faked, although the 1897 rematch was a superb performance. “He completely out-boxed me,” Gans is said to have told The Washington Post. “He was the greatest defensive boxer that ever lived.” A draw was the result. Gans caught up with the shot version of Griffo and stopped him in eight rounds three years later.

The smaller George Dixon fought three draws with the Australian. Many sources have him holding the tiniest of margins over Griffo the first time around over twenty, both men boxing with utter brilliance in their second drawn fight over twenty-five. Griffo had gone to fat by the time of their third fight over ten and my impression is of a fighter who just doesn’t want to get hit rather than one who wants to win a fight. Such were his abilities in this area that nobody thought to complain. Another draw was declared.

Finally, to Griffo’s contest with the legendary Jack McAuliffe. It is in keeping with the perversity of Griffo’s career arch that his greatest win was a loss.

I am uncomfortable turning over the judges’ verdict for the purposes of historical rankings even when we have the film of the fight, so for me, naming Griffo a winner over McAullife is no small matter. It is a fact, however, that not a single next day report labels the reigning lightweight champion the winner. The best that can be seen for him is the draw declared by the San Francisco Call. The Witchita Daily Eagle wrote that Griffo had “punched [McAuliffe] all over Coney Island, slapped his face and wiped up the United States with Mr. Jack, the referee bobbed up and takes the battle away from him.” The Salt Lake Herald wrote that “there was never such a demonstration against a referees decision…McAuliffe attempted to speak to the crowd but was hissed down.” Griffo’s chance to be named lightweight champion was snatched from him.

Where does all that leave us? At #90, but you could rank him almost anywhere. If we were ranking fighters purely based upon their physical abilities he would be right there alongside Harry Greb and Roy Jones. If we were ranking him based upon squandered potential he would be #1. In an overall sense, I don’t think he can be higher than I have him here, however. His best results are draws and a loss, and my job is not to unpick what might have been had he turned up for his biggest fights sober and in shape but to appraise what actually occurred and what actually occurred was his matching some of the greatest fighters in all of history based upon a defensive style of boxing the like of which may not have been seen in the sport again until Nico Locche hit his stride nearly seventy years later.

 

Yeah, cheers guys, it's basically long because it had to be, most of 'em are shorter.

 

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#89 Marco Antonio Barrera (67-7)
#88 Erik Morales (52-9)

There are no ties on this list.

Nevertheless some fighters are so closely linked that it is not possible to write about one without discussing the other. How, in the end, do you go about separating Erik Morales and Marco Antonio Barrera? They couldn’t even do so themselves, in a trilogy as good as anything that side of Vazquez-Marquez.

I disagreed with the judges on every occasion in those three fights. The first, perhaps the best fight of 2000 and a split decision win for Morales, was a Barrera win on my card, Marco Antonio breaking off the last two rounds against a tired Erik to sneak the decision; the second, I saw a close Morales win whilst all three judges found it for Barrera. The third, another absolutely outstanding contest, I scored a draw whilst the judges again were split but came out with a Barrera win. Having said all that, I wasn’t ringside for these fights—the decision of the judges should be respected.

Part of Erik’s problem with Barrera was the difference in speed. Marco Antonio is quicker and so in a round where neither man excels themselves or momentarily overpowers the other the only way for Morales to win the round is to outwork an opponent who is an excellent counterpuncher and works well with angles. In other words, Barrera’s superior versatility made life hard for Morales, who was working at a slight style deficit.

But in the second fight I thought Barrera showed some tactical naivety, going away jabbing, taking the wrong range. Yes, he was more versatile but that versatility was not always put to the perfect use and it gave Morales space to box his fight here. In the tenth round of this fight Morales perfected his thinking aggressor’s offense for three breathtaking minutes in which he dominated with three different styles, arguably the highest level either of these men reached in the ring, stopping a rush by Barrera on the scorecards. I came away from these first two fights with the strange impression that Barrera had more but that Morales knew better what to do with what he had. This impression was confirmed for me by their respective go-rounds with the great Manny Pacquiao. Morales did not just beat Pacquiao, he told us before the fight exactly how he was going to do it, mixing boxing and punching to produce the “intelligent fight” he needed to defeat the Filipino. In the build-up, Freddie Roach spoke endlessly of “the Manilla Ice”, his nickname for Pacquiao’s newly included right hand, the final piece of the puzzle in making Manny the complete fighter. Prime-for-prime, Morales bested the Filipino.

At their respective bests each was a wonderful talent that probably failed to distinguish one from the other, but whilst Morales was beaten only by Barrera, Barrera himself lost to stop-start herky-jerky stylings of Junior Jones in their 1997 contest. Outboxed and, bizarrely out-dogged, Barrera not for the last time seemed a tiny bit confused by his own possibilities. A more accomplished fighter overall that Morales in my opinion, he won straps at super-bantamweight, featherweight and super-featherweight.

Erik won titles of various meaning at these weights and added a bauble at light-welterweight.

Beating Cesar Cano for the vacant WBC 140 lb. trinket is not what separates him from Barrera by the tiniest of margins though. That would be preposterous. It’s a feeling—you have one too. It could be the same as mine, or it could be quite different and I am satisfied with either one—we only have two things we must agree upon.

One: it is close.

Two: they are great.


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#87 Nonpareil Jack Demspey (50-4-11)

In April of 1887, Jack Dempsey stepped into the ring with Billy Baker, a heavyweight out of Buffalo New York and knocked the bigger man around the ring for four rounds. Due to the rules the two men had agreed, however, Baker took the win—the 145 lb. Jack Dempsey had agreed that if the 180 lb. Billy Baker remained upon his feet after just four rounds, he would be named as the winner. And that was it. That was the only loss Jack Dempsey posted between turning professional in 1883 and the infamous “lucky punch” landed upon him by George LaBlanche in 1889. For six years he was undefeated and for much of that time was regarded as the best fighter on the planet pound-for-pound, to the extent where he was considered a serious proposal as an opponent for the then legendary heavyweight champion, John L. Sullivan, who frequently carried more than 200 lbs. to the ring with him. This may have been something of a reach, even for Jack, but it is true that he made a habit out of thrashing men who were bigger than he.

“Denny Kelliher,” wrote The New York Evening World of Kelliher’s 1887 contest with Jack Dempsey, “is a big muscular pugilist whose weight is upward of 220 lbs.…still, Dempsey defeated him in the usual invincible way…Kelliher could no more land his right in the neighborhood of his small but wonderfully scientific opponent than he could wing a swallow with an ape.”

This was the essence of Dempsey’s boxing, and it worked at odds with what had gone before him. Fighters worked always to avoid being hit, but the Nonpareil seems to have been the man to make this de rigueur. His contribution to boxing, in conjunction with the wonderful lightweight champion Jack McAuliffe, seems to have been nothing less than the legitimization of defensive boxing at the expense of the heartfelt slog to the finish—but nor can he be accused of abandoning his offense.

“Dempsey made a chopping block of the big Philadelphian in the fourth and last round. He counted on Kelliher with both hands. The audience went wild over the wonderful exhibition of cleverness.”

A legitimately two-handed boxer-puncher, Dempsey was the sublime general of his generation with the ability and the fighting intellect to adopt whatever strategy was necessary for winning, sans drama. ITALICThe New York Evening World is quite right; the “usual invincible way” is the exact manner in which he dominated an era.

Dempsey lost two fights during his extraordinary prime, the 1889 shocker against previous victim LaBlanche (“Chance blow”—The Helena Independent, “Dempsey had the best of it”—The St.Paul Globe, “Demspey was considered a sure winner at all times during the contest”—The Sacramento Daily Record-Union) and the 1891 drubbing by Bob Fitzsimmons. Fitzsimmons represented yet another evolution in boxing’s lightning development in that late part of the 19th century and he marked the end of what was likely the most clear domination of a division by any fighter up until that point.

Only a lack of truly great opposition keeps him from scaling the very heights; but the ease with he dominated the thirty-plus men he bested during his prime assures his inclusion.

 

Yes, nice catch, i'll tidy it.