The Top 100 Pound for Pound All-Time Greats

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#42 Michael Spinks (31-1)

Michael Spinks doesn’t look like a fighter. He looks like a car mechanic.

A good car mechanic. The type of car mechanic that gets it from his wife for knocking money off, for people who are friendly with him, for people who might be poor. A nice guy; but not a fighter.

He looked like a mechanic, like a nice guy, even after Larry Holmes threw him to the ground in the opening seconds of their 1986 rematch. “That’s okay ref,” he reassured Mills Lane. “That’s okay.” Unequaled in terms of temperament, he then got back to the job at hand, taking the fight on two of the three judges’ cards against a hyper-aggressive version of one of the greatest heavyweights in forever: mission accomplished.

This is what defines Michael Spinks. Professionalism. Generalship. Generalship is the most professional aspect of a boxer’s make-up—the discipline of engineering the circumstances necessary for your victory. In just thirty-two fights he achieved a level of awareness in the ring that take the few men who reach that level many more fights to do so. His herky-jerky style and hurtful rather than devastating punching were so properly nursed as to make him a world-beater. His 1983 light-heavyweight unification fight with Dwight Muhammad Qawi (then Dwight Braxton) was a masterclass, moving to his right with the uncanny discipline of a career soldier, and only throwing his right hand as a counter to the Qawi right hand, taking away his man’s best punch and best draw with reads and discipline alone.

Between 1981 and 1988 he engaged only in world title fights (uncertainties surrounding his masterful five-round knockout of the thirty-pound heavier Gerry Cooney notwithstanding) and with the exception of the one-round devastation wrought upon him by Mike Tyson he won them all for a total of 15-1. His run at light-heavyweight included wins over Qawi, Eddie Mustafa Muhammad and Yaqui Lopez and his step up to heavyweight was as brilliant as any ever made by a light-heavyweight. Michael’s gain in early retirement, money and health intact, was the sport’s loss, but even in such a short space of time he was in the game he did enough to earn a place in the top fifty.

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#41 Alexis Arguello (89-8)

Between his being decisioned by the superb Ernesto Marcel in early 1974 and his failed attempt at becoming a four-weight world champion in the controversial loss to Aaron Pryor in late 1982, Arguello lost just one of forty-two fights against fleet-footed lightweight Vilomar Fernandez, who exposed in him a stylistic weakness to elusive, dancing boxers. In the other forty-one fights, everyone else revealed a stylistic weakness to an all-time great punching technician with every punch in the book and unerring accuracy. Those that demonstrated this universal Achilles heel included Art Hafey, Ruben Olivares, Royal Kobayashi, Bobby Chacon, Ruben Castillo, Jim Watt and Ray Mancini. He lifted titles at featherweight, super-featherweight and lightweight, holding the linear title at featherweight and lightweight but ironically not the weight at which he was most deadly, super-featherweight, his failure to meet Sam Serrano costing him that particular badge of honor. Whilst his height, genuinely freakish for a featherweight, helped him immensely in moving through the weights Arguello’s dominance through those classes remains impressive.

Furthermore, Arguello lost none of these titles in the ring, only parting from them each time he moved up in search of new challenges. His failure at light-welterweight can hardly be held against him as he was approaching the end and allegedly facing a doped opponent in Aaron Pryor.

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01 – Sam Langford
02 – Harry Greb
03 – Sugar Ray Robinson
04 – Henry Armstrong
05 – Ezzard Charles
06 – Bob Fitzsimmons
07 – Benny Leonard
08 – Muhammad Ali
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09 – Willie Pep
10 – Joe Louis
11 – Roberto Duran
12 – Joe Gans
13 – Packey McFarland
14 – Archie Moore
15 – Sugar Ray Leonard
16 – Mickey Walker
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17 – Barney Ross
18 – Terry McGovern
19 – Tony Canzoneri
20 – Pernell Whitaker
21 – Charley Burley
22 – Holman Williams
23 – Jimmy McLarnin
24 – Sandy Saddler
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25 - George Dixon
26 - Barbados Joe Walcott
27 - Stanley Ketchel
28 - Billy Conn
29 - Kid Gavilan
30 -Roy Jones
31- Gene Tunney
32 - Tommy Gibbons
33 - Jimmy Wilde
34 – Jack Britton
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35 – Eder Jofre
36 – Jose Napoles
37 – Carlos Monzon
38 – Julio Cesar Chavez
39 – Marvin Hagler
40 – Emile Griffith
41 – Alexis Arguello
42 - Michael Spinks
43 – Tommy Loughran
44 – Thomas Hearns
45 – Jimmy Bivins
46 – Ike Williams
47 – Floyd Mayweather
48 – Manny Pacquiao
49 – Tommy Ryan
50 – Jack Dillon
51 - Bernard Hopkins
52 - Carlos Ortiz
53 - Fighting Harada
54 - Ruben Olivares
55 – Evander Holyfield
56 - Young Corbett III
57 - Mike Gibbons
58 – Ted Kid Lewis
59 - Freddie Welsh
60 - Freddie Steele
61 - Lou Ambers
62 - Salvador Sanchez
63 - Wilfredo Gomez
64 - Vicente Saldivar
65 - Rocky Marciano
66 - Abe Attell
67 - Manuel Ortiz
68 - Harold Johnson
69 - Dick Tiger
70 - Luis Manuel Rodriguez
71 - Carmen Basilio
72 - Carlos Zarate
73 - Miguel Canto
74 - Oscar De La Hoya
75 - Azumah Nelson
76 - Mike McCallum
77 - Lary Holmes
78 - Bob Foster
79 - Teddy Yarosz
80 - Jim Driscoll
81 - Panama Al Brown
82 - Pascual Perez
83 - Lloyd Marshall
84 – Jake LaMotta
85 - Juan Manuel Marquez
86 – Wilfred Benitez
87 – Nonpareil Jack Dempsey
88 – Erik Morales
89 – Marco Antonio Barrera
90 - Young Griffo
91 - Fritzie Zivic
92 - Joe Frazier
93 - Pete Herman
94 - Lennox Lewis
95 - Jack "Kid" Berg
96 - Philadelphia Jack O'Brien
97 - James Toney
98 - Nicolino Locche
99 - Jung Koo Chang
100-George Foreman

 

All due love and respect to your lists luf, but **** that...Holmes was linear and #1 when Spinks beat him.

 

Put it this way: he got lucky more than once. But I think that Witherspoon and Norton are the guys to feel aggrieved, if anyone should.

 

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#40 Jose Napoles (81-7)

In appraising fighters I’ve become accustomed to trying to understand the boxing cultures that birthed them. In my opinion, nothing was tougher for a young fighter than the lower weight classes in Mexico in the 1960s and 1970s. It was strange, then, that Jose Napoles, the last of that generation’s great Cuban émigrés, settled not in Miami, as was custom, but in Mexico City. It made him. He did outstanding work in the lightweight division beating toughs like Carlos Hernandez, who would be light-welterweight champion in 1965, and the Mexican champion Raul Soriano whilst embracing the burden of the exile, traveling to places as far as Japan in search of money and glory. By the time he was matched with the superb Eddie Perkins up at light-welterweight he was more than ready, setting Perkins down on his backside en route to a near shutout. Mantequilla had arrived.

Between this victory and mid ’75, he would lose three fights—one to L.C. Morgan on cuts, thrice avenged, once to Billy Backus on cuts, also avenged, and once up at middleweight to the welterweight’s bane, Carlos Monzon. One of the legitimately great champions, he picked up the linear title from Curtis Cokes in early ’69. Cokes had stopped no less a figure than Luis Rodriguez on his way to the title and had himself posted five defenses. Napoles thrashed him. Their fight was not competitive. To chants of “Mex-i-co! Mex-i-co!” Jose’s adopted countryman cheered him home as he brutalized a stunned Cokes to body and head. Cokes quit, or was pulled, after the thirteenth round.

Complaining that “something was wrong” Cokes was honored as a former champion with a rematch. The same thing that was “wrong” the first time around was “wrong” again, namely Jose’s utter brilliance, and Cokes was stopped once more, this time in just ten. Napoles brought the most educated pressure it is possible to imagine in the ring. He boxed in a fashion so close to faultless as to make the apparently so. Fast, what he lacked in terms of absolutely elite hand-speed he made up for in the shortness and accuracy of his snapping punches, punches that brought stoppages in fifty-four fights. A crackling left hook to body and head may have been his best punch by virtue of the fact that it was so difficult to pick at mid-range, but this is a question open for debate. There was not a punch he did not excel at.

This formidable skillset brought him a successful defense against perhaps the only fighter who might have rivaled him for the title of best welterweight between Sugar Ray Robinson and Ray Leonard, Emile Griffith, ditched and beaten wide over fifteen. A routine defense against an ever willing Ernie Lopez followed. Then Billy Backus got to borrow the championship for a while courtesy of Mantequilla’s only real weakness, the sometime tenderness of his skin, the Cuban taking it back in eight the following year. In the interim, slickster Hedgemon Lewis had achieved a sparsely recognized counterclaim to the welterweight title; Napoles shut it down with a knockout. This was one of ten more defenses that ran down his prime, only the ill-advised trip up to middleweight punctuating the winning streak, and then at the end of 1975, eleven years after he first defeated a world champion, he bid farewell to his title, losing to John Stracey.

He immediately retired, ending a career had taken him to all corners of the world, and to the very heights of boxing greatness.

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#39 Emile Griffith (85-24-2)

Emile Griffith is the two-time linear welterweight and two-time linear middleweight champion of the world. He also lifted a strap at light-middleweight going 2-1 in “world” title fights at 154 lbs. with his first and last contest for belts at that weight separated by fourteen years. His first ever title fight was at 147 lbs. and was fought less than three years after his turning pro, but by this time Griffith had already served one hell of an apprenticeship. After beating perennial contender and veteran Gaspar Ortega having boxed just sixteen times as a professional, Griffith was matched twice with the future light-middleweight champion of the world Denny Moyer, going 1-1. Immediately, he was thrown back into the deep end, taking an unpopular decision over another welterweight veteran, Jorge Jose Fernandez, immediately rematching him for a cleaner win. Florentino Fernandez, the immensely strong “Ox” followed just a month later, outpointed over the distance and after stopping Willie Toweel in eight and shading the great Luis Manuel Rodriguez in ten, Griffith was deemed ready, faith he repaid by stopping world champion Benny “Kid” Paret in thirteen to lift the title. After knocking out Ortega, Griffith rematched former champion Paret and was controversially beaten on points. Two of the three judges went for Paret, but the ringside press went almost exclusively for Griffith—surviving footage shows Paret being generally outhustled in a close one. Whatever the detail, Griffith would win back the title in what was arguably a needless third meeting between the two in a fight that Paret, tragically, would not survive. He was stopped by a huge attack and died of his injuries ten days after the fight. Griffith would later claim that he had left the most brutal percentage of his offense in the same ring which took Paret’s life.

It didn’t stop him excelling. After winning three more title fights, Griffith lost his title on a razor-thin decision to the man he had finished his apprenticeship against, Rodriguez. Pressmen barely favored Griffith, the judges barely favored the challenger. The two met again three months later and he took a controversial decision but the two would meet for a final time in 1964, Griffith winning clean to pick up their series 3-1. Between their third and fourth fights, he had begun his invasion of the division that would yield him his third title, 160 lbs. Despite a disastrous first round knockout loss to Rubin Carter, Griffith beat Holly Mims on his way to taking the championship from all-time great middleweight Dick Tiger. It was a classic Griffith performance, all hustle, a beautiful coagulation of his stymying the opposition offence whilst making room for his own sharp punches. Griffith was no stylist, and the New York crowed loved him for his heart and work-rate rather than his brilliance—there was something honest and workmanlike about his performances that the people responded to in spite of its aesthetic limitations, limitations that didn’t interfere with results. Griffith won ten welterweight title fights against generally outstanding competition and added two wins at title level at 154 lbs. When he got up to middleweight, in addition to Dick Tiger he beat the outstanding Joey Archer twice and Nino Benvenuti once before losses to the Italian and to the brilliant Jose Napoles signaled the end of his prime. It didn’t stop him turning in two tremendously brave losing performances against the deadly Carlos Monzon, but he lost ten of his last twenty fights, damaging an otherwise absolutely outstanding record.

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#38 Jack Britton (103-29-20; Newspaper Decisions 136-27-25)

We don’t have room to document in any level of detail where Jack Britton’s career is concerned—that in itself is a ten-part undertaking. One of the great ring careers it stretched from 1904 to 1930, a chasm spanned by more than three-hundred fights.

By the time he beat Mike Glover for what was widely billed as a title fight in June of 1915 he had already fought two careers, listed at 41-7-8, but having fought in as many “no decisions” where the fight reaches a limit but where no verdict is rendered.

Against Glover though, he was made the winner over twelve rounds, but immediately lost that title to the man with whom he would form the greatest rivalry in boxing history, Ted Kid Lewis. Boxing.com allows us as writers and readers to sprawl beyond the normal barriers where wordage is concerned but even here there isn’t room to get into these battles in any detail, so to put it in a nutshell: Britton won. But it wasn’t easy. Given an almost immediate rematch, he dropped another decision. Britton was lucky. Had he dropped two against Lewis even three years before, Ted could have made him wait as long as he wanted, and given how much these two despised each other it was a real possibility—but the fledgling American Boxing Association was flexing its muscles and leaning on fighters to defend their titles. Lewis did so, in a manner of speaking, facing Britton in a no decision bout which was rendered a draw. The two were making money and Britton was getting closer. He came closer still the following February, winning a newspaper decision by most accounts but not taking the title—the title could only change hands in a no decision affair if the champion lost by a knockout. Britton was a defensive genius and master-boxer with a granite jaw and the professionalism and stamina to match, but he lacked a punch. He needed to meet the champion in a decision affair, and he got it in April, beating Lewis clean over twenty rounds following this with a rush fifteen unbeaten, including wins over future middleweight champion Mike O’Dowd and more wins over Lewis. In the middle of 1917 Lewis took his turn to rush, grabbing a clutch of newspaper decisions and then the welterweight title. When Britton was then outclassed by Benny Leonard he looked as though he might be on the slide, but he put together another run of wins, including over Lewis, who was by now only meeting him in non-title affairs or non-decisions. Like all the great ones, Britton did what needed to be done and despite his dearth of power found a way to knock the steel-chinned Lewis out. Britton fought with an uncharacteristic “spiteful and determined aggressiveness” according to the Pittsburgh Press. After being repeatedly smashed to the canvas, Lewis was knocked out in the ninth round. It was one of only two knockouts he suffered in his prime, the other coming at the hands of light-heavyweight Georges Carpentier.

Britton added another dozen defenses, lucky to retain his title in a majority draw to Dave Shade and involved in an even more controversial fight when Benny Leonard was disqualified in strange circumstances (Britton was apparently ahead on the scorecards). Having beaten Mickey Walker in 1921 he was then separated from his title by him in 1922. He was thirty-seven years old. Incredibly, he boxed on for another eight years and when he finally retired in 1930 it was as an unquestioned welterweight great. He had been knocked out just once, twenty-five years before.