I have to agree with you. As a fighter he was brillaint, as a boxer he should never be considered top 5 of Scots ever.
I definitely was drunk when I wrote that list. It's not consistent with any top 10 British fighters list I usually post, and I responded to an article in The Sun atsch
my little town of 60k people can put together 3 excellent boxers howard winstone johnny owen eddie thomas
Scotlands Best... Benny Lynch Bert Gilroy Ken Buchanan Jackie Patterson Alex Lafferty Jim Brady Peter Keenan Walter McGowan
****ing hell, talk about a random bump. Nice OP, T. :yep You realise that that top 5 we're all from within a 20/30 mile radius of my house as well, not even talking about the whole of Wales.
Scotland and Wales are both very strong. Conteh was the most skilled IMO, on his best day. Lynch probably my favourite of the bunch. Fitz was a Kiwi/Aussie/Yank, he cared not for Britain.
And, if I exclude Ruby Robert, Wales' top 3 are all ranked in my top 100. Welsh, might not make it actually, but he could do on a good day. Clearly he fought in auto-pilot unless it was a big fight, and I felt he looked poor against (admittedly great!) Packey MacFarland. Damn, it is still close.
Don't know if you've seen it, there is new footage of McGowans second fight with Burruni when he won the world title on youtube. It's a masterclass.
They were certainly both highly talented operators. I would say McGowan has the edge, but whilst he fought a mad list of opposition, he never had Saldivar in his way. Both had massive bollocks. McGowan took on the creme de la creme on at fly in bantam in amazing era's for both weights. Winstone's defining win, over Seki, a good fighter of course, was less than conclusive IMO.