Your Mickey Walker ranking?

This is exactly what I mean though, or the kind of thing I mean. It seems to happen a lot with Walker (or he belongs to a subset of fighters who benefit). In the above, you seem to want to give him extra credit versus his ATG peers for being younger when he won the title than most of them, and for winning a middleweight contest while he was the WW champ. You're right to say that he thrashed Britton to win the title, but he was, in turn thrashed, by Pete Latzo, who absolutely battered him one month before Joe Dundee opened up his face and basically chased him out of the division. His beginnings in the division included another good hiding at the hands of Georgie Ward. In between, he did do good things and that's why he should rate in the divisional top twenty I think - but it wasn't all as advertised.

Walker was involved in an absolutely disgraceful title defence which wound up a NC, against Jimmy Jones; wtf he was doing putting the title on the line against Bob Barrett only God knows - and there is plenty of evidence that he was handed a gift victory Dave Shade in 1925 (I don't personally think it can be fairly called a robbery - but Walker was lucky, of that there's no doubt). Overall, Walker gives me an impression of a champion who rode his luck a tiny bit and could have been deposed by a good fighter at pretty much anytime, pretty much borne out by his twin summer of 26 defeats. I don't see the absolute colossus you see, and as for underrated? Strictly the opposite.

Someone like Jackie Fields, taht's an underrated welterweight champion. Fields beat welterweight champion Young Jack Thompson, welterweight champion Joe Dundee, welterweight champion Tommy Freeman, welterweight champion Lou Brouillard, future middleweight strapholder Vince Dundee, future middleweight champion Freddie Steele, ranked men Joe Cooper, Sammy Backer, Gorilla Jones, Jackie Brady, King Tut and Jimmy Belmont. To put this in context, he beat more fighters who would go on to be called champion than Felix Trinidad beat ranked contenders. That's an underrated fighter, and i'd add, one who should be ranked above Mickey at WW, but almost never is - hence, Walker is overrated.

All of that said, it's in part only because he was spread more thinly. Walker himself is on record as saying he found it easier against larger fighters because he struggled with being outsped and he had that heart and guts to fight at very many divisional limits. But his welterweight achievements don't stand with those of the highest class, at all.

 

Well in the middle of that run he was pushed so close by Shade that about half of the paid observers thought he had lost. So maybe he burned out, but he could have very easily lost his title that night. He was lucky not to have lost his title. Therefore I consider he rode his luck. We can disagree about the semantics or we could just agree that there were plenty of eye-witnesses that thought he was lucky in that fight.

The overall point is he was aided by the judges and beaten by inferior fighters (relative to his standing) while also matching some very weak title opposition in suspicious circumstances. This is all just as true as the things you have written about Mickey that are positive and he was chased out of welterweight at a relatively young age just as he was the champ at a relatively young age. This is a lot for his welterweight career to absorb without damage. Put it this way: his overall welterweight career, let's say that it was as impressive as Ray Leonard's (it wasn't, but say it was) - think about how all this drag compares to the avenged loss to Duran drags on Ray. Think about where two lossses to lesser fighters, ones he had previously beaten, would have put him. Add a loss to lesser fighter right before he comes to the title, now some shenanigans with the judges and a fight he boxes in which appears to be fixed or his performance is a travesty - plus some very very weak title opposition. Where do you rank Ray now? Way lower. Way lower.

So I credit Walker for this win - at middleweight. This is because it was a middleweight fight.

If you want to construct ranking that include fights from different divisions where even the lightest fighter is three pounds over the welterweight limit you're going to be dragging a lot of fights out of the division they were fought in and into a different one. That's up to you, but it won't ever be me.

Britton - I hate to say it but while Britton is absolutely the right name, Walker was the right man at the right time, too. Benny Leonard had basically beaten him five or six months before. Right before that he'd boxed a draw with someone called Ray Long (don't know anything about this one - or even who Ray Long is). In the eight fights before that he was 3-0-5. The spark was clearly going out for Britton who was winning these fights at a canter previously (i think he even had an iffy draw with Walker himself in there). I don't like downgrading it because it's a special achievement to beat such an experienced fighter while Walker was relatively inexperienced but like his own WW defeat, it seems to me, it was a matter of time by the end.

 

Yes, but his record was a matter of public record, and was just as I described.

Yes, it was a disaster for him, but one that did occur. I'd say it indicates Britton was better off than his record indicates though.

Either way, Walker's welterweight record is not as impressive as you've indicated, to me anyway.

 

Yeah Pacquiao is a good comparison and a pretty good anchor for his all-time rating I think. I'd say Walker higher.

 

Yes, that's obvious enough, but losing twice in two months is still losing twice in two months. If Walker fought twice a year, he may have had fewer losses, but he also would have had fewer wins.

Someone could also take a close look at Walker, compare him to his peers, and find that his Welterweight resume is overrated. That is also reasonable and has nothing to do with cherrypicknig.

Yes, this is also obviously true, but what he did has to be directly compared to what others did. That is how you evaluate legacies comparitavely. Your post is just a long list of reasons to ignore Walker (or anyone's) losses when they are busy. What is your system? How do you appriase fighters? Or do you just ignore/reduce/deflate all losses of ye olde fighters thereby ending up with a heavily squewed list? What i've done is appraise the losses, appriased the wins, found that Walker was overrated, said so, and been presented with very little actual evidence that i'm wrong over a rather long series of posts.

Of course they do. If Leonard had won all of those fights, would he be greater or as great? That's a rhetorical question - he would be greater. So by losing them, he has "deterred" from his overall greatness.

I'll rephrase then. Walker lost badly against Latzo. Then he lost quite badly against Dundee. Then, despite the fact that he could continue to make 147lbs, he never boxed at that weight again.