Timeline of the premiere WW in the world.

The bits that i've put notes next to i'm happy with I think. The rest i'm looking through tonight.

 

So I'm up to the 50's now. Freddie Cochrane was a total joke of a champ and doesn't deserve to ever be recognised as the best imo. Kaplan was the first man to beat zivic after the armstrong victories so he deserves credit for that (at 148 pounds). He then shortly loses to montgomery whilst cocoa kid is on fine form to raise above bob. Him burley and williams then duke it out for the next 18 months (ray is winning but not doing as good as these 3 imo) and all do get to the top at some point imo but when ray blasts janazzo (a guy who'd been giving the row some problems) he gets recognised as the best.

now in 1948 the first ray-kid fight, ray weighs at 150.5 pounds so the fight means little in terms of who the best ww is for me, even still, all the experts of the day think ray deserved the victory and I'm willing to take their word for it above a crowd who might be swayed by daft things like who presses the action.

A couple of fights I couldn't really find much info about in terms of deserved winner are the zivic vs kaplan fights and the gavilan vs costner fight. I've taken the official results at face value there because there's little I could find out myself.

I'm gonna hopefully look through the next 50 years over the next couple of days in a bit more detail now.

 

think i'm happy with this.

any thoughts?

 

duffy died in 1990 but didn't fight after march 1889.

In december 1889 needham knocked out paddy smith which, as far as I can tell, is the best victory after duffy's abence. combine that with his prior victory over gleason (a man duffy drew with ) I think out of the claimants, he has the best claim in light of duffy's absence and subsequent death.

In 1991 Tommy Ryan knocks out Danny Neeham to give himself the best claim (this unifies two of the claims here) and although smith has a good run, (stopping gleason, needham and williams) he then faces against tommy ryan (which is another claim unification [not too disimilar to today's alphabet era in principle] but they draw, rematching a few months later and draw again. in 94 they have a rubber match and ryan beats him.

To summise I think Ryan at every point during those years has a better claim than smith and was a better boxer than smith.

 

cheers mate :good

I'm like a dog with a bone once I get an idea in my head, I;ve done from hw-lw and over the next month I intend to get every weight done with the end goal being to evaluate every guy I think was "the premiere" fighter in a division at some point in their career.

 

Yeah my mind's always open recent rebuttal's on this thread led me to reread everything I could on robinson v gavilan 1 and I think they're right; robinson did deserve the victory.

I choose the word premiere because it allows for a more fluid way of thinking. Basically it's a measure of "what have you done for me lately" and that's currently how I judge who the best is by a combination of opponents and performance.

I respect the idea that once all the claims have been unified and we have a generally accepted champion, it's fair for him to keep his title of "champion" until he loses it in the ring. I just don't think it tells the full story as to who the top man is at any given point and what's the use of being a champion if you aren't the best? Especially considering bad decisions and those willing to sit on their title.

As I said, lineal is fine and I don't wanna get into a debate about it; i'm merely justifying my project at present.

 

No way man, teacher's is the **** it's amazing!

It's hard to tell with manuel because his fights with emile are that close it's a matter of who you score it to. I've not watched all the fights yet, just a clip of 8 rounds with no label or date so i'm not sure which fight it's from. I've taken the official results at face value for now.

 

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