Who of the French 160 pounders was the best? Up for consideration are: Cerdan Thil Humez Bouttier Dauthille Jacquot Villemain Cherifi Tonna I suspect Cerdan will get this ,but I'm hoping for some input on Thil,Villemain, and Dauthille in particular ,maybe Klompton will oblige?
what do you make of cerdans victory over holman williams in france mcvey ?? looks good to me on paper...but a closer look...williams on the run in of his career, and the fight itself was supposed to be a very slow affair with both carrying injuries......this would have been cerdans fight before lamotta. http://news.google.com/newspapers?n...C4rAAAAIBAJ&sjid=NZkFAAAAIBAJ&pg=4792,2542732
Top 5 I would call Cardan, Thil, Villemain, Humez, Dauthille and right on their heels I would call Pierre Langlois, who did not make your list.
Feel free to include Langlois or any other French 160 pounders I didn't intentionally leave Langlois off, I forgot about him!
It's basically between Thil and Cerdan. Thil definitely accomplished more, but Cerdan's victory over Zale and his performance...even in defeat...against LaMotta, puts him on even footing in my opinion. The shoulder injury is the only reason he lost to Jake and I am fairly confident that he would have won the rematch.
WTF i just posted this in the Hagler thread without seeing you had made this. Pretty strange. Anyways Little detail on Thil's most notable victories Forgot his win over Len Harvey too.
LOL. LaMotta had a broken hand in that fight that was swollen twice its normal size (I have a photo to prove it). He did what great fighters do in sucking it up to take the title. Stating outright that Cerdan wins without his injury is wishful thinking. If, and its a big if, Cerdan beat LaMotta in a rematch it would have had more to do with LaMotta being a partially spent force after YEARS waiting for his shot. The real question is why Cerdan even got a title shot ahead of LaMotta If his injury is the only reason he lost to LaMOtta then age is the only reason Zale, Abrams, and Williams lost to Cerdan. Im not even sure Cerdan could beat Villemain and Dauthille much less LaMotta and why didnt he fight those guys?
Cerdan probably got the title shot over LaMotta because he had held the European title for almost 7 years and there was probably a lot of post-WWII "us vs them" talk going on, which undoubtedly put significant pressure on the powers-that-be to make the fight happen. Pure speculation, but I don't believe I'm too far off base.
While looking at the records of Marcel Cerdan and Marcel Thil, I was astounded that Thil faced far more top fighters than Cerdan and still compiled a very impressive record. Yes, Thil's win-loss record isn't as impressive as Cerdan's, but one has to examine each fighter's record very closely. - Chuck Johnston
