The Top 100 Pound for Pound All-Time Greats

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#37 Kid Gavilan (108-30-5)

The Keed was a Cuban exile so brilliant that we name him here the greatest of all time to ever drop off that conveyer belt of talent. Gavilan served his apprenticeship on that boxing paradise and, like his fellow exile and welterweight Jose Napoles, actively sought out the massed ranks of Mexican opposition, twice to his detriment in those early years. When he left his home behind in 1948 it was to escape the political gangsterism that plagued that island in the precursor to Castro’s revolution and fought for territory in his knew turf against no less a figure than Ike Williams, lightweight champion of the world. The fight was close but Williams had pulled off the rare feat of dropping Gavilan on the seat of his trunks (granite jawed, Gavilan was never stopped despite his boxing on way past his prime) and this turned the fight barely in his favor. The New York Times and Daily News both scored the fight for The Keed as did the not inconsiderable numbers in attendance who booed the decision. Gavilan picked himself up, dusted himself off, and picked off former world champion Tommy Bell before matching new champion, a man named Ray Robinson, in a non-title fight. It is fair to say Gavilan had little luck in terms of timing. He arrived on American shores just in time to meet one of the greatest lightweights of all time on the hunt for the welterweight title and then ran into a man who might just be the greatest, ever, who also happened to be peaking.

Robinson outboxed Gavilan but that didn’t stop the crowd booing another decision going against The Keed, who was already a hugely popular fighter. The reaction guaranteed him a title shot and although Robinson won once more, the first half of the fight was close as could be and only a deeply conservative approach from a cut Robinson seems to have led to his taking over in the second half for a clean win.

Unable to solve the Robinson problem, he turned instead to the Williams problem twice beating the lightweight champion in rematches. He had adapted his style, swarming in on Williams from a crouch, pressurising relentlessly whilst showing off his superb accuracy. Williams, a hard puncher, was used to having his way when he landed, but not against Gavilan. Such was his durability that he could afford to take even those cracking punches; like Dick Tiger, Gavilan was brilliant in such a way as to negate brawlers—no puncher himself, he was busy, stinging, accurate with a brilliant line in punch selection and timing. He could outwork, out-snipe or out-maul. Power aside, he was complete.

This completeness brought him victories over Rocky Castellani, Beau Jack and Laurent Dauthuille before being outright robbed against Lester Felton and dropping a widely criticized decision to Billy Graham then Robert Villemain. Not for the last time, judges had played a questionable role in a Gavilan loss. He did lose legitimately to George Costner but also twice avenged himself upon Graham and an earlier loss to Gene Hairston. He then picked up the welterweight title from Johnny Bratton in ’51 and defended it against all comers, highlights including his defeat of Carmen Basilio and the brutal stoppage of Gil Turner. In all he managed seven defenses before the judges did what no welterweight on the planet could do and took his title from him in a joke decision against the connected Johnny Saxton. Twenty of twenty-two ringside reporters found for Gavilan.

At middleweight, Gavilan had come within a whisker of beating Bobo Olson for the title having previously scalped several 160 lb. contenders including Rafael Merentino and the huge punching Eduardo Lausse but his second tilt at the middleweights went less well. He was able to add to his resume in the form of Ralph “Tiger” Jones and Gaspar Ortega, but he was not the same fighter post-Saxton and lost fifteen of his last twenty-five fights. In his fierce prime, he was almost as good as it gets.

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#36 Tommy Gibbons (57-4-1; Newspaper Decisions 38-1-4)

For a certain type of purist, Tommy was the weaker of the Gibbons brothers. He lacked Mike’s phantasmical qualities and was perhaps regarded as the less skilled overall during their primes, but Mike did not have Tommy’s astonishing career arch.

Turning pro in 1911, Gibbons boxed a fourteen-year stint that saw him lose just two decisions, one newspaper decision, once by knockout and in a disqualification loss to Billy Miske. The knockout came in his last fight, way past his best, against heavyweight champion Gene Tunney. Of the three decisions, two were to Harry Greb and one was to a peak Jack Dempsey—in his own prime, Gibbons proved himself all but unstoppable against that particularly nasty piece of offensive machinery.

Between 1911 and 1922 he was only beaten by Harry Greb and in the same period of time he also beat that great fighter twice. He was so good as to be worthy of Harry’s prime and he handed him one of the worst beatings of his career in 1920, knocking Greb around the ring like he was a preliminary fighter. In addition to Greb his top scalps included Billy Miske on four occasions, George Chip on five, Kid Norfolk, Georges Carpentier and Battling Levinsky, who called Gibbons the best defensive fighter he had ever faced—given that he had faced Greb, Sullivan, Tunney and Stribling, this is high praise indeed.

Whilst he laid claim to the 175 lb. title in his time, he was never universally recognized, although the men who held that recognition during his time in the division, Carpentier and Levinsky, were both outclassed when he got them into the ring. Up at heavy he was heavily avoided with both Tex Rickard and the New York Commission complaining about the difficulty of making fights for him at the weight, such was his reputation.

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#35 Julio Cesar Chavez (107-6-2)

Eighty-six knockouts in one-hundred and seven fights posted across three different decades is not normal for a fighter who retired as recently as 2005. That he posted just six official losses, the first coming only after his fourteenth year as a professional fighter is even more astonishing. His habit of winning was matched only by his habit of hoovering up titles.

He won a vacant super-featherweight strap in 1985 against the favored veteran Mario Martinez via an eighth round stoppage, and although his failure to match linear champion Wilfredo Gomez casts doubt over the validity of the title, he did defend against former champions Roger Mayweather, brutalizing him in two, and Rocky Lockridge, whom he decisioned in spite of an injury to his right hand. In total he made nine defenses of his strap and at the time of his move up to lightweight his record stood at 55-0 (reported in some corners as 54-1 due to controversy surrounding his twelfth fight which was originally ruled a DQ loss upon his landing the knockout punch after the bell).

His first fight at lightweight was, naturally, a title fight, and arguably his finest moment as he weaved an offensive tapestry that forced the aggressive and brilliant Edwin Rosario back to the ropes time and time again. Making his man miss repeatedly up close even as he threaded his own blows through the eye of the proverbial needle, Chavez exposed Rosario’s defense, which was excellent, and offense, which was superb, arguably winning every single round on the way to a late stoppage. Three more defenses of that strap followed, one of them making him linear champion, the eleventh round technical decision over Jose Luis Ramirez, then it was off to light-welterweight where things got a little more hinky.

He picked up the customary strap straight away of course, against old-time opponent Roger Mayweather, but this time Mayweather lasted ten rounds instead of two. In his third defense of his strap Chavez met with Meldrick Taylor and near disaster, winning by perhaps the most controversial stoppage of all time at the very end of the twelfth in a fight he was losing against an opponent who claimed he was able to continue—but who did not respond in time for referee Richard Steele. Chavez remained champion and added a further nine defenses carrying him into the nineties and the welterweight division where he was gifted a draw by horrific judging against clear winner Pernell Whitaker which all but tolled the bell on his prime, though he would still manage 6-1 in title fights until he was twice beaten down and out by Oscar De La Hoya in ’96 and’98.

As extraordinary a career as has been boxed entirely in color finally ended with defeat to journeyman Grover Wiley in 2005. The raw statistics for that career are astonishing. He fought in 37 world title fights winning 31, including an unbroken streak of 27 successful defenses across three weights, winning 21 by way of knockout. Even allowing for the fact that many of these “world” titles were straps rather than true championships and that he sometimes failed to meet the best in his division, Chavez has earned the right to call himself great.

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#34 Marvin Hagler (62-3-2)

They say Marvin Hagler had a chip on his shoulder. I say, no wonder. Sometimes a mass of journeyman, gatekeepers and local toughs can be as intimidating as the ranked men that lie just beyond, tantalizingly out of reach. Hagler seemed to have reached them when, in January of 1976 he got top-ten Philadelphian Bobby Watts into the ring having already chomped through 25-0-1 worth of boot-tough steak. Dropping a questionable decision to Watts, who held, spoiled and mauled his way to a win in spite of Hagler’s crisper punching dropped him right back in that meat-grinder and when he lost another decision to an even tougher Philadelphian, Willie “The Worm” Munroe, it seemed as if he might be stuck there for good.

Hagler did what he always did, and gritted it out.

He beat the superb Eugene Hart, the third Philadelphian brother Grim, making him quit no less, then brought Monroe out to Boston, smashing him up in twelve then followed him back to Philly and switch-hit him to the canvas in two. A superstitious soul might consider that he had taken Monroe’s victory over him personally…

In 1980 he’d give Watts the same treatment to prove his dominance over Philadelphia once and for all, but before that he’d kick the hell out of Kevin Finnegan twice, best the menacing Bennie Briscoe over ten add Ray Phillips and Mike Colbert to his lengthening list of unbeaten records busted and smash Ray Seales to pieces in a single round ending their three-fight rivalry forever and sending himself into the stratosphere. He’d made it. All he had to do now was take the title from the solid but unspectacular Vito Antuofermo and he was champ—only instead he dropped another strange decision. This one perhaps was less bizarre than his loss to Watts and as in that fight, where he seemed to miss a chance to close the blinds on his opponent, Hagler let his man back into the fight with the championship in sight. It would be the last big mistake of his career but not the last questionable card.

Before that the title passed to Alan Minter and when Hagler got his hands on him it was as though he was seized with the ghost of those past failures and he brutalized Minter in three, the British ring, disgustingly but perhaps fittingly given what Marvin was about to do to the middleweight division, pelted with bottles and anything else that came to hand. Hagler then brutalized and stopped his first seven title opponents, among them Antuofermo , upon whom Hagler wrought a terrible revenge opening his face like a watermelon. His destruction derby of world-class opposition was halted only by Roberto Duran, who managed the full fifteen rounds. Four more knockouts followed including the destruction of unbeaten John Mugabi and that fight against Thomas Hearns but it was clear Hagler was beginning to slip. Even so, I would argue like so many others, that he was unlucky in losing his last fight to Ray Leonard. It seems to me that he went out of title affairs in boxing the same way he came in—furious, embittered and, on my card at least, the victor.

Even if you allow that Leonard defeated Hagler, it is the only un-avenged defeated of a career that made him one of the great champions and amongst the greatest one-weight competitors of all time.

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#33 Eder Jofre (72-2-4)

Jofre spent better than fifteen years fighting at the sharp end and lost just twice, to Fighting Harada, a great fighter in his own right. He first came to honors in February of 1960, beating the ranked (some sources have him #1) Ernesto Miranda for the South American bantamweight title and then beating him again several months later by knockout. Joe Medel was then stopped in ten in a title eliminator before he picked up the NBA title against the slipping but still ranked Eloy Sanchez, whom he overwhelmed in just six. He defended against the #3 contender Piero Rollo and the soon-to-be ranked Ramon Arias before polishing off Johnny Caldwell and Herman Marques to unify. Jofre added four more defenses and then ran into Harada who merrily carried his title off, consigning Jofre to history. Three years later “The Golden Bantam” hoisted himself back into the ring, and having made what I consider the toughest leap in boxing, beat Jose Legra for a piece of the featherweight title. In his very next fight he knocked out all-time great Vicente Saldivar. He was thirty-seven years old. He went unbeaten in his second career—unheralded—and beat world-class fighters like Octavio Gomez, Juan Lopez, Jose and Antonio Jiminez. It may be the greatest comeback in the history of the sport.

Arguably the definitive box-puncher, Jofre knocked out fifty men, something he was capable of doing with either hand, but also boasted a superb defense and speed. He pulled of the rarest of tricks relying upon no single attribute to get the job done—when he was in his absolute prime it is possible that there is not a bantamweight who would have beaten him.

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#32 Jimmy Wilde (132-4-1)

Sources would have us believe that Jimmy Wilde turned professional very late in 1910 or early in 1911 but such are the vagaries of the era that either of these dates is highly debatable. Wilde seems to have fought for money for many years before this, perhaps as early as his fifteenth year. Can we credit his own claim of 850 fights? Although this seems unlikely I would also consider it a given that Wilde fought more than the 150 fights he is credited with by BoxRec.

Tracing Wilde’s title claim is difficult. For some it can be counted first from 1914, when he first lifted the European flyweight title against the even smaller Eugene Husson a fight also billed for something called the “gnatweight title,” a world title. Unfortunately, this claim is opposed by fellow Welshman Percy Jones, who held the IBU flyweight title at the same time, who then lost the title to Joe Symonds. Symonds claim is strengthened over Wilde’s because he was able to defeat the man who stopped Wilde in 1915, Tancy Lee, ending his run of one-hundred fights unbeaten. Furthermore, the gnatweight title fell by the wayside (thank goodness) and the European title Wilde held remained just that in terms of lineage; the IBU title, held by Jones and Symonds, morphs into the flyweight linear title—although Wilde’s holding the European title leads to his claim as world champion being recognized by many due to America’s failure, at this point, to recognize a flyweight division. I prefer to recognize the IBU champion, meaning that Wilde doesn’t come to the title until his victory over Symonds in 1916.

What does all this mean for Wilde’s legacy? Well, whilst his involvement in all manner of weird and wonderful title fights from 1914 speaks of his elite status, he cannot be named the best flyweight in the world until 1916, especially not in light of his knockout loss to Lee in 1915. This, in addition to concern over his level of competition and a lack of any real longevity starts to make Wilde’s status questionable; fortunately he removes such concerns with his career post-Lee.

First, he renewed his status at fly (boxing as a light fly—Wilde would never weigh in at the division limit of 112 lbs. in his career), mowing down former flyweight champion Sid Smith in eight one-sided rounds before lifting the IBU title a year after his first failed tilt, knocking out Joe Symonds in twelve. These are two of the outstanding fighters in the division’s infancy. He then avenged himself on the still red hot Tancy Lee before anointing the world flyweight title proper against American contender, Young Zulu Kid, in a fight where Wilde for once found himself the taller man. A red hot war for the first few rounds, it was Wilde who emerged, as he almost always did from any firefight, triumphant in eleven.

Then things started to get a little spooky.

Jimmy Wilde dispatched featherweight Joe Conn. Conn was on a hot streak but couldn’t live with Wilde in spite of a weight advantage of around 20 lbs.—around 20% of Wilde’s total bodyweight. Jimmy chopped him off in twelve. Next was Joe Lynch who would go on to become one of the definitive bantamweights of a golden generation for that weight division. Wilde nipped him over three rounds in December of ’18 and over fifteen in March of ’19. More bantamweights followed including world-title claimant Pal Moore, whom he shaded over twenty with an aggressive punching display that nearly saw him knocked out late in the fight. Moore was a handful for any of the era’s superb bantamweights—that Wilde proved his master whilst outweighed by 8-11 lbs is extraordinary. A three-round defeat to Moore and a poor performance which saw him drop a decision to Jackie Sharkey are the only losses he suffered in this extraordinary period.

His going 1-1 with Tancy Lee, likely the best flyweight he met, and my decision to acknowledge his title claim from his lifting the IBU rather than the gnatweight or European flyweight titles, undermines his supposed domination at flyweight and there is no question that his level of competition, for the most part, is a concern in what was a semi-recognised division. But Wilde rendered most of that irrelevant by stepping up to an established division and beating some excellent bantamweights in what was a true pound-for-pound achievement. The man Gene Tunney named the best fighter he had ever seen may rank lower here than on similar lists but his incredible run between his 1915 loss to Tancy Lee and his 1919 loss to Jackie Sharkey makes him a lock for any top forty.

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#31 Carlos Monzon (87-3-9)

Carlos Monzon systematically destroyed opponents. Perhaps most instructive was his deconstruction of former world champion Nino Benvenuti. Benvenuti had quit with an injury in a non-title fight in March of 1970, but wouldn’t be knocked out in a fight until his fifth defense of the middleweight championship that November, a fight in which he was devastated by a Monzon right hand. In the rematch, Monzon showcased what was to make him the greatest middleweight champion ever to live.

As thumping a jab as has been seen in the weight division, consistently thrown from maximum distance is the first crucial ingredient. A points gatherer and a sadistic softener it also worked as Monzon’s first line of defense—even the toughest fighters took their durability in their hands when pressuring the Argentine. It also worked as a direct challenge to the opponent’s balance, inviting counterpunchers to travel the entire length of what was essentially a staving maneuver, and lurking at the end of this stave was Monzon’s devastating right hand. His own balance, meanwhile, bordered on supernatural. he temptation when analyzing a fighter’s offense is naturally to concentrate upon the punches a fighter lands, but even the punches Monzon misses are important. If he misses a straight right hand, he’s bringing a left to the gut behind it. No matter how compromised he appears to be physically by some winging miss, he finds a way to bring some unwanted gift in compensation.

An inside game that was less nuanced but that married great strength with a mauling aggression, Monzon was every bit the boxer-puncher Eder Jofre was but with added malice. He may have been an even better general, moving opponents with a combination of careful footwork and shepherding punches that gave him eventual control of pacing in every title fight he ever fought. Even the rematch with Rodrigo Valdez, fought past his prime in his final match, eventually ended up in his control despite his being outgunned in the first half of the fight; Monzon, ice in his veins, remained calm and outthought his physically superior opponent for a UD.

It is a combination of skill and will that made Monzon almost unbeatable. The three losses he suffered all occurred within the first eighteen months of his career. Between late 1964 and mid 1977—for thirteen years—he went unbeaten, stopping fifty-nine opponents. He was never stopped himself. He was victorious in a record fifteen middleweight title fights, none of which he came close to losing. He retired the undefeated champion of the world—his two-time victim Valdez beat out Hagler-era contender Bennie Briscoe for the title.

Monzon was brilliant, and purely in terms of ability may rank even higher. Above him, there are only monsters.

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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 - Gene Tunney
30 -Roy Jones
31 - Carlos Monzon
32 - Jimmy Wilde
33 - Eder Jofre
34 – Marvin Hagler
35 – Julio Cesar Chavez
36 – Tommy Gibbons
37 – Kid Gavilan
38 – Jack Britton
39 – Emile Griffith
40 – Jose Napoles
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

 

Jimmy Wilde is also in that picture.

 

He may not end up above them, but I would think it's probable if he did.

 

A fine choice.