Willie Pep is he the 'Greatest Pure Boxer' Of all time?

No you dont, lets not over complicate things, we all now roughly what a pure boxer is.

I agree with the thread title, Willie Pep was probably the best boxer to ever lace them up, some will disagree but thats life.

:smoke

 

Agree, good post.

 

Since when ?

Whitaker gets more than enough praise on this forum, especially the classic section.

 

'let's not over complicate things'??

I don't think you can say that of all people seen as though what you have as your location underneath your avatar!

Kidding, funny that.

 

So where does Hearns fit into all this?

 

He doesn't, let's nip that one in the bud.

 

He'd outbox Pep though.

 

:rofl

 

Quite high on the list IMO, he really was a terrific boxer, from distance at least.

 

Why isn't Pea being mentioned................Pernell is right up there for me.

 

No mention of Wilde in a Pure boxing sense ? Driscoll used to be a fine exponent of the sweet science as i was brought up to understand it , hit and not be hit , use your skill to negate your opponents strenghts . Wilde was a master Boxer as 100 plus pro fights v men who out weighted him by great margin tells us this lads . Driscoll sparred Wilde many times and was his Chief second on numerous occasions Wilde is on record as saying Driscoll figured out the opponent for him a few times when Wilde was stummped . The Art of Boxing is it seems is a forgotten art these days IMHO .

 

It's just the lack of actual footage to make an assumption with Driscoll really (i think we do need footage for an analysis of the nature of a thread like this one), but from my knowledge you are spot on with Driscoll. The very short snippet of him on youtube is one i was actually very impressed with. He absolutely schools his opponent there.

 

I like the idea of defining a pure boxer in terms of being able to hit and not get hit. I would tighten the definition though to make it exclude things like power (hence Tommy Hearns would rank lower in the list) and chin (hence James Toney would rank lower in the list). Further more, I would include some things like in-fighting ability and the ability to stand in front of your man whilst making them miss as aspects of pure boxing, even though they are not often thought as such.

Given that definition, the best pure boxer of all time is Tommy Gibbons

It's very hard to narrow it down to one guy, we haven't seen the best of plenty of great pure boxers like Driscoll, Benny Leonard, Nicolino Locche, Tippy Larkin etc.