Who's the best of these Heavyweights?

Not too familiar with these old eras of boxing, but Braddock and Risko are the first two names I think I'd nominate. Not sure on a third one.

Firpo? Roper? Hart? I got no idea.

 

I know Firpo beat him very late in his career but I'll put Bill Brennan at number 1, Luther McCarty based on potential at number 2, followed by Braddock who put it together for a good, little run at heavy.

 

Braddock by a fairly large margin. Morris and Coffey would be 2nd and 3rd though. Weinart is mainly a LHW great as he was something like 25-1 at that weight class when he moved up to HW. The rest of the list are "underrated" types.


Luthar McCarthy being put over Braddock is sacrilige. He wasn't even the best HW with the name McCarthy in his era.

 

I would rank them by height.

 

There were literally bets on whether Carl Morris would show up to his fights, not whether he would win or not. And there were the issues around some fixed fights in which he partook. He was seen as a fairly safe, durable stepping stone, but nothing extraordinary. Did not train, did not have discipline.

At the time of his death McCarty was seen as the logical Great White Hope to face Johnson, he had strung together impressive wines against Moran, Flynn x2, Palzer and Al Kaufman. And he had already KO'd Carl Morris. So, based on potential I rank him that high because this is a head-to-head assignment, not one of swinging complete career records at each other.

Interesting to note that both Morris and McCarty were of Native American extraction and both were giants for the day.

Braddock got beat a lot so I don't reckon he won't slip up in a tourney style event. But I still have him at number 3.

 

Jim Coffey is on this list and knocked out Luther McCarthy. Easy.

The "white" heavyweight title was honestly a joke before Gunboat won it. And Gunboat was viewed as the top white HW in 1913/1914 whether he won that stupid meme belt or not. Luther and Pelkey were nowhere close to being in the discusion. There was a thread about whether some posters on this site could beat any HW champion. Guess where my mind instantly went. Arthur Pelkey. Luther DID have potential but he did not really stand out in any way where he should be compared favorably to the types on this list. Like I mentioned wasn't even the best HW with his last name. Neither was Jim Johnson but his last name was "Johnson". Thats different.

Morris was the number one contender on mutliple occasions. Morris was the best win of Willards career. He was an incredibly dirty fighter. But that doesn't mean he wasn't good, he was.

Braddocks career is(mostly) winning streak, losing streak, winning streak. He was actually incredibly consistant whether it was as a winner or a loser.