Top 10 pound for pound Boxing Badass Motherf***ers

10 - Tiger Flowers. "Blessed be the Lord my strength which teacheth my hands to war and my fingers to fight."

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85 years before Pulp Fiction had been written, Flowers knew The Bible could be badass.

09 - Jack Dillon. The first man to carry "Giantkiller" as a nickname? Stood between five feet six and five feet eight, certainly no HW, but that didn't stop him taking on some of the best men from the two biggest divisions between 1908 and 1923, sometimes at the rate of one every 12 days. Fought around 30 times in 1912 and mostly in the world class. That's badass.

08 - Jack Chase. Supposedly racked up something like 60 fights unbeaten fighting under two different names before finding himself in a "situation" (Harry Otty) and, long story short, in prison for manslaughter. Years later he shot fellow middleweight Tiger Wade before adding injury to injury, the incurable badass.

07 - Bennie Briscoe. "Anybody I hit has to go. And if they don't, they'll be fouled up for the rest of their career." Briscoe fought badass, that ultimate chew-them-up-spit-them-out badass style. Monzon would keep him from the title, and the Argentine sure was better, but Briscoe was way more badass.

06 - Bernard Hopkins. If you want to sell t-shirts, put Muhammad Ali on there. If you want a man who can throw the flag of a Latin-American country on the floor whilst surrounded by men from that country and get out of the room alive, you want this badass.

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05 - Mickey Walker. Think of a fighter weighing over 200lbs. Mickey Walker would take that fight. Then, when the referee stopped it because he was being killed, he would be furious. You can tell we're in the top 5 now because Mickey wasn't just badass, he was a badass mother****er.

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And yes, he is in ahead of Greb. Greb supposedly beat Walker in the ring but Walker settled that one in the backalley's later that same night. There seems to be no real proof that this actually happened, but you know it's true. Look into his eyes.


04 - Sonny Liston. Whilst holding the heavyweight championship of the world, Liston disarmed a police-officer and hammered him. It's said that wherever he went, police at the local station were issued photographs of Sonny and told not to tackle this badass single handed under any circumstances. The photo probably looked something like this:

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03 - Marvin Hagler. Probably the only guy in the history of the planet badass enough to wear a cap with "War" written on it without looking like a twat.

02 - Roberto Duran.
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01 - Jack Johnson. My choice for #1 isn't going to meet with universal approval. But this is the way I look at it - if there was a non-combatant house of badassery, American society 1908-1915 would probably be in the top 3 - those were the years Jack Johnson held the title, and his enemy was the country of America. Being a black man in the US at that time was not easy. Being a black man in the US who drilled white women and showed no deference to the white power axis must have been near impossible. Getting into the ring and destroying one of the greatest white hero's of the time whilst the white crowd looked on and a former white champion screamed racial insults from ringside is perhaps the badassist thing to happen in ring history. The fact that Johnson did it smiling, joking, and carrying his white opponent puts him clean of my badassometer. The ultimate boxing badass, Jack Johnson:

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Near miss - Jack Blackburn, Iran Barkley, Mike Tyson, Fritzie Zivic.


Agree with the names on the list? Who did I miss? Who would your #1 be?

 

With his gun and his hat. Liston did a lot of bad things, but he seemed to know where the line was. If he starts shoeing that cop, it's an ugly, ugly story, but disarming a policeman who is pointing a gun at you before placing him headfirst in a bin and then retreating is kind off cool.

 

Whilst you're probably right, you just can't admit badasses on the basis of facial hair any more, the fake ones look so real.

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I don't think i'd have anyone on my list you can legitimately say, "...he should've fought [insert ducked fighter's name] about." You know?

 

Saddler was definitely badass.