Who were some of the best boxers in history with some of the lowest knockout percentages?

Never a champion but just a great old contender was Orlando Zulueta of Cuba who fought everybody. I had always heard that he used to really shred a fighters eyes with cuts, so I figured he would be up there with stoppage wins. How little i knew. In 128 bouts he scored 7 stoppages. Boxrec has his % at 5.47.

 

Historically, Floyd's KO% of 54 is actually pretty healthy. The majority of pre-WW2 champions/top boxers had far lower percentages.

For example, looking at Ring's end-of-year ratings from 1925, only a few of those won more than half of their total fights by ko. More specifically, if we take the Top-10 in each of the 8 original divisions (a total of 80 boxers), only 5(!) retired with a 50+ ko percentage:

Godfrey 64.29% (81/126)
Berlenbach 62.96% (34/54)
Dempsey 59.46% (44/74)
Tunney 56.47% (48/85)
Wills 50.45% (56/111)

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Total number of fights.