Top 50 Heavyweights 1930-1960

****, reznick got booted again? Come on.

 

I don't know. No sign of Bob Baker who beat your #27 man 3 times, your #30 man twice and your #38 man. I think he could have snuck into the top 50 over a barn-stormer like Butterbean, I mean Lamar Clark.

 

I would put Charles over Liston. I would put Carnera higher than Elmer Ray and Billy Conn. and Tommy Farr higher than Tommy Jackson.

 

Charles beat way more men on this list than Sonny Liston.

 

No matter. Sugar Ray Robinson lost his title a lot of times but still goes ahead of Monzon at middleweight.

Another way of looking at it might be what ratio of rated fighters did Charles fight in comparison to Liston? Nobody fought more world class men.

 

"Sugar Ray Robinson lost his title a lot of times but still goes ahead of Monzon at middleweight."

Not to me. Exactly because he lost his title so many times and Monzon was so consistent.

"what ratio of rated fighters did Charles fight in comparision to Liston? Nobody fought more world class men."

Well, according to the boxing register, Charles was 40-17-1 against opponents rated when he fought them. Liston was 8-4.

While one could add a couple of names like Cleveland Williams & Henry Clark to Liston's list, Sonny is way, way behind Charles on this score, and his ratio is actually slightly behind Ezzard. I have to consider this a valid point.

Perhaps Suzie has a rebuttal.

So your position is Liston didn't defeat enough men to rate higher? I think that is a reasonable criticism.

But wasn't he very dominant? And why did most folks think he was so much better than Charles back when Sonny was champion? Also, much of Charles career was at middle and light-heavy.

 

Johnson--He didn't meet our criteria, which was that his career peak between 1930-1960. If I were rating the whole 1900 to 1960 era, I would rate him right where you did at #3 just behind Louis & Marciano.

Liston--well, Suzie and I settled on a criteria of, did the guy make the top 5 in the rankings (or did his career peak) before 1960. If so we included him and his entire later career. Thus Liston was in and his Patterson wins were eligible for us. Using our criteria, where would you put Sonny? You have a valid point that Sonny's list of victims is short of some of his competitors on this list.

Rademacher--I think your case is weak. Alberto Lovell was also an Olympic champion, but did much better than Rademacher as a pro. Hard for me to get excited about Rademacher's fights with Patterson or Folley as both were KO defeats. Pete's best pro win was Chuvalo. That doesn't get him onto my list. As for Lamar Clark, go to box rec and check the records of the guys he ran up his great KO record against. I don't think any had five pro victories.

"The reason 1935 to 1965 makes more sense"

Too bad we didn't talk to you before drawing up this list. But it is from 1930 to 1960.

Stribling--well, he did have a DQ over Carnera. The problem is anyone might win on a DQ. It doesn't prove much to me. At heavy, I don't see many worthwhile victories myself, but Stribling was always high in The Ring rankings. You make a valid point about that.

Carmine Vingo--a good prospect, but really was just on the way up when KO'd by Marciano which ended his career. I can't see having him in the hunt for a place on a top fifty over so many guys who had full careers.

 

"Bob Baker was rather a showmaster/moderator in my view: of "What's the Price".

No that was Bob Barker. Bob Baker was a singing cowboy movie star of the 1930's. But good someone has a sense of humor about these issues.

 

but how consistent was Sonny at world level? Charles had a much larger number of successful title defences. Sure Sonny gets a pass for losing to Ali but he sat around between title defences with Patterson and Ali where as Charles defended more often.

This seems a key point worth consideration. The merit of any fighter should be ratio of class fighters, this is a way of measuring levels.

 

"how consistent was Sonny at world level?"

I would say very. After all he went all the way from the Marshall fight when green to the Martin fight when old losing only to Ali. I don't see much inconsistency there. After all, the man he lost his title to might have beaten anyone anytime.

Charles was much more inconsistent. He lost to Ray. He was KO'd by Walcott. He lost to Layne and Valdes and Johnson. He fell apart after the Marciano fights, eventually losing to all kinds of guys. That didn't happen with Liston.

One problem is ratings can be misleading. I think Williams was rated when Liston fought him. Valdes had fallen out of the ratings. But I have a hard time viewing a KO of Valdes as less impressive than Charles' wins over Beshore, Barone, Harrison, etc., regardless of whether those men were in the ratings at the time while Nino wasn't.

"He sat around between title defenses against Patterson and Ali where as Charles defended more often."

But I think Patterson and Ali were the #1 contenders. How many number one contenders did Charles defend against? Louis for certain. I am not sure anyone else was. Savold actually was a rival paper champion, and even if not, had been around for a long time and deserved a shot. He and Charles didn't fight for whatever reason. Walcott was coming off a loss to Layne, and even got a second shot. Why not Layne? In contrast, hard to see criticizing Liston for defending against Ali.

Also, Liston was in the era of pay-for-view fights. The tax situation made it hard for him to defend all that often. Liston was only champion for about 17 months. Hard to see pulling him down because he only made two defenses against #1 contenders.

"ratio of class fighters"

I agree this is valid. I am going to go through both the Liston and Charles resumes and see who was rated at heavy at one time or another that each man fought, how many were in the top five, etc., and how the two men did against these opponents. The vast gap in numbers is due quite a bit to Charles' earlier career at middle and light[-heavy, but we are evaluating his performance at heavy. I will post on this after I do the spade work.

 

It terms of impact you might be right about this, however, in terms of “did Charles beat anyone as good as Patterson?” I think the answer is yes. I think Walcott was as good if not better head to head than Patterson. Did Liston beat many fighters as good as a 1950 Joe Louis? I don’t think so. Apart from Patterson I don’t think Sonny beat one guy good enough to beat that version of Joe Louis. How good was Elmer Ray? I never saw him so I cant say but he has to be level with men like Williams, Machen and Folley or even above. Then there are others like Baksi, Moore and Bivins. Charles fought a lot of quality. He beat a lot more quality than Sonny did too.