The Golden Era of the Welterweight, Middleweight and Light Heavyweight divisions

The period between the late 1930’s and early 1960’s is often regarded as the strongest era in the sports history for the Welterweight, Middleweight and Light Heavyweight divisions which I think it undoubtedly was. The most interesting part of that era isn’t so much the men who were champions but more so the men who weren’t champions.

To start with the Welterweight division the main standouts would be Sugar Ray Robinson, Kid Gavilan and Carmen Basilio, the careers of the trio overlapped to such an extent that their success was in large part down to the circumstance of the others. For instance Gavilans first crack at the Welterweight title was against Robinson much like Basilios was against Gavilan so you can get a clear understanding of their standing amongst themselves.

Its beyond the champions that it starts to be become far more complicated across all three divisions with a whole host of worthy contenders who were never able to secure a shot. The most notable of these would be the black murderers row including the classy Charley Burley and Jimmy Bivins widely acknowledged to be among the best around at the time. When you have fighters the class of Burley and Bivins being cut out from the title scene how does it affect our perceptions of the champions themselves?

A stick to beat Robinson with is that he at no point faced his greatest potential challenge in Burley, in his case being widely regarded as the sport’s greatest ever fighter it doesn’t seem to have affected his reputation. Moving up the divisions slightly to light heavyweight, after the title was relinquished by the great Billy Conn it took many years for it to find its way into the hands of the worthiest challenger namely Archie Moore. Not a slight against Lesnevich, Mills or Maxim but during that period they did not represent the best the division had to offer far from it. While they were busy defending against each other and other unworthy challengers the likes of Charles, Bivins, Moore and Marshall had to be content fighting each other, the other black murderers row fighters and the three men who held the title in non-title affairs.

Does the lack of a world title make Bivins or Marshall any less of a fighter than they were or does the grandeur of being world champion make a difference?

Below the well-known names we find fighters such as Alabama Kid, Cocoa Kid, California Jackie Wilson, Big Boy and Shorty Hogue, all of whom were of varying ability but still vital to the outlook of the subsequent eras. All were seen as strong tests for up and coming fighters and could even have periods of excellence where a title short would seem an obvious career direction but never came. Where would we rank such men based on today’s climate? Would they be contenders, belt holders, gatekeepers or glorified journeymen? In the case of Jackie Wilson during his purple patch he was in some sections regarded to be the best Welterweight in the world after victories over Baby Arizmendi, Kid Azteca, Garcia and Cocoa Kid, he would a couple of fights later lose to Sugar Ray Robinson, where does a victory over him stand?

Well to give it some context how do you see Ray Robinson?
Best of all time for me
Try the "patchy middleweight".. oxring called it last on here and we can debate
Ray beats them all for me and remains the greatest welter or middleweight ever
Bring it on
Ray will stand the Burley comparison for me but might be the only one who does
Will go with Ray to light heavy if we can slip Ezz and Archie

Nowhere near the greatest middleweight of all time, arguable if he was even the best of his era in that division.

Pick a middleweight to beat him.Over 3 fights .Not even Greb

Monzon and Greb would be heavy favourites over him, he lost far too many fights in the division to be considered the best.

Monzon, Greb, Fittzsimmons, Ketchel favourites at MW against him for me. Hagler has a good chance for come forward pressure. SRR lost a lot of fights at MW - this wasn't his WW unbeatable pomp.

oxring wrote:Monzon, Greb, Fittzsimmons, Ketchel favourites at MW against him for me. Hagler has a good chance for come forward pressure. SRR lost a lot of fights at MW - this wasn't his WW unbeatable pomp.

Nope Ray Beats them.Best of all time.Late callers like Fitz dont do it(even with an exta t)
Patchy at middleweight?Back it up?.Age ..second fights and quality of opponents?Who beat Ray a second time?
Lost a lot of fights at middlleweight?

skidd1 wrote:

oxring wrote:Monzon, Greb, Fittzsimmons, Ketchel favourites at MW against him for me. Hagler has a good chance for come forward pressure. SRR lost a lot of fights at MW - this wasn't his WW unbeatable pomp.

Nope Ray Beats them.Best of all time.Late callers like Fitz dont do it(even with an exta t)
Patchy at middleweight?Back it up?.Age ..second fights and quality of opponents?Who beat Ray a second time?
Lost a lot of fights at middlleweight?

His Middleweight world title record is something like 8-6-1 and includes losses to Turpin, Pender, Basilio and Fullmer. Thats quite patchy and suggests most of the all time great Middleweights would have a decent shot against him.

Fullmer and Pender beat him twice in title fights.

He lost 6 world title middleweight fights.

He was mid to late thirties for most of his middleweight championship years.

All the back up is there if you research it.

In todays multi weight and multi belt climate you would have to think that most of the tier two or even tier three guys from the 30s and 40s would be able to capture titles at some point. As things are now the divisions are not particular strong between LWW and LHW and with so many titles available its easy to think they would be belt holders.

I think its difficut to say beyond that because while many of them hold quality victories, indicating that they could be a match for anyone on their day, they are also characterized by inconsistenty and have poor losses to accompany their good wins.

I find it very difficult to gauge the impact of fighting less for many of these fighters also. So I think its a safe bet to say they probably pick up world titles. Beyond that if you look at who the considered top guy in those weights are I would guess Mayweather is safe at WW. Khan/Bradley at LWW would be close, would back the old guys to topple Alvarez/Cotto at present at LMW and would see Martinez at MW as being close.

The vast majority of the Murderers Row would dominate the current boxing scene. I think that much goes without saying. Marshall, Bivins, Burley, Wade, Booker,Williams, Chase and these kind of fighters would all rule current divisions and I see them as uncrowned champions really. Especially in todays age where titles are two a penny. The only thing preventing them from being dominant champions would be having to fight each other!

Assuming you take out the Murderers Row, I think the contenders of the past era in question are easily able to win world championships. The likes of Hogue, Alabama Kid, Jimmy Leto, Jackie Wilson are far better than many of the titlist around today. Senchenko, Zavec, Chavez Jr, Bundrage, Sturm and even old hats like Morales or Judah holding titles I dont see as being anything as good as men who were capable of beating the likes of Moore, Marshall, Booker and Wade on their day.

Slick and elusive counter punchers like Cocoa Kid or Alabama Kid with his southpaw awkward stance I think would cause somebody like Pacquiao a world of problems. There are probably only two or three fighters at the moment across thise weight classes that I would see capable of beating that level of contendership that existed back in those days. The reaon most of those fighters didnt hold titles was down to lack of opportunities and extraordinary competition which simply doesnt exist today and is almost the opposite scenario.

Its dreadfully difficult to translate I think. The conditins now are far more friendly in terms of picking up titles so you would assume they are capable of that at least.

But Hogue for instance was retired by the age of 21 or something. The Alabama Kid fought at every weight from flyweight to heavyweight so how do you even try to figure him out. The Cocoa Kid was about as inconsistent as you get so he could beat Bradley and then lose to McCloskey you get the impression.

I would say you could categorically rule them out as being journeymen as they are way too talented for that. Id say you could also be confident they could pick up versions of the world title in todays climate. Outside of that I really couldnt say and would be surprised if anyone could tell with any real confidence.

Cocoa Kid is the hardest of the lot to rate but he would certainly pick up a title at some point and probably lose it to Holman Williams before winning it back and vice versa.

Shorty Hogue has a very incomplete record mainly due to the war, it's likely he was fighting on well past the age of 21 but what a waste of talent, at one point capable of beating Booker, Moore and Marshall then his career just fell away.

Bumping this for Ghosty, feel there are plenty of legs left in this debate.

The lack of a world title has nothing to do with anything, least of all in the days when the colour of one's skin determined whether one got to fight for a crown or not. The easiest example to give is that of Ezzard Charles; never fought for the title at 175, and yet I have no hesitation in making him the finest fighter at the weight who ever lived. The BMR were an extraordinary coalescence of talent that fused seamlessly between three divisions over a period of about a dozen years. It is no exaggeration to say that any of the top 25 of the day might have been a world champion in today's middleweight or light-heavyweight divisions, such was the depth. That certainly applies to fighters like Wade, Hogue, Cocoa Kid and Williams - remember that this was a time when a fighter as talented as Len Morrow was regarded as merely a journeyman. An era of extraordinary talent, really, not to be compared with any other.

Len Morrow is a name i'd never heard before Captain, after a quick scan see he holds wins over Moore, Bivins and Smith, there seems to be so much depth to the resumes of fighters during that era that oft gets forgotten. How does a win over Morrow, Hogue or Wade compare to that of say Miguel Cotto or to a lesser degree Paulie Malignaggi?

Ghosty this is an excellent article mate.

My knowledge on the subject however is shamefully poor so unfortunately as they say on dragons den I'm out! Fascinating stuff reading the other guys replies and I'm not ashamed to say I'm learning something new reading this.

Well, you wouldn't call Malignaggi or Cotto a journeyman, so in using strictly the same standards, a win over Morrow would have meant less in 1947 than a win over Cotto in 2007 or even one over Malignaggi a couple of years before that. A win over Wade, on the other hand, was a bloody impressive achievement, fit to be compared with any win over a paper titlist of the modern era, in my opinion.

It's probably an unfair comparison, mind you. There's no way known that a real journeyman of today is going to dump the modern equivalent of Archie Moore on his backside - I just can't see it happening. Arguably the last time it ever did was when Barkley KO'd Hearns and even then, he had risen high enough in the rankings to earn a shot. A guy like Morrow was light years away from a title shot, and always would have been, yet he was good enough to beat Bivins and Moore. Should say all that is necessary about the respective depths of two very different eras.

It is of course all relative to the time and from the looks of it Morrow wasn't an elite fighter but a very capable one all the same, seems to do men like Charles and Moore an injustice when so few of their wins gets highlighted when there's so much more to it than that. It's an era of particular interest and after months of research and reading I feel i've only just skimmed the surface.

Thank you for the kind words PBK, my knowledge of the era is severely lacking so try and tap into the reserves of the others as much as I can.

Not holding a world title does not, even in the slightest, detract from what fabulous fighters men like Bivins, Burley and Marshall were - it simply made them less famous and less financially secure ones. There is a tendancy to act as if world titles were always more meaningful and richly-deserved back in the forties, fifties and sixties than they are now. While this is often true, I'm glad that there are enough realists on 606v2 to acknowledge that this wasn't the case in every scenario.

Of course, not all champions between 147 lb and 175 lb during that twenty-odd year period were overly protected or have a particularly big black mark (no bad pun intended) hanging over them - but when it comes to the likes of Mills, Maxim and, to a lesser extent, Tony Zale, you have to conclude that their being able to call themselves world champions was a misscarriage of justice in many ways.

Im not sure its fair to consider Morrow a journeyman, even in those days. His colour probably meant he was kept away from a title shot but at one point he had risen to the number 2 ranked guy in the light heavyweight division ahead of the likes of Moore, Marshall and Johnson so I would say he was definately considered as more than just a journeyman during his best years.

I really didn't know that, manos. Number 2! Goodness, as they say. You learn something new every day - my impression had been very clearly that he was regarded as a dangerous hitter, but not even a "gate-keeper" as such. Not dissimilar to someone like Violent Ray, who was obviously a few pounds further up the scale. I'm assuming that Morrow didn't have this status for that long?

Think he was rated as a top contender for a couple of years in the late 40s which coincided with his victories over guys like Lytell, Bivins Billy Smith and Moore which saw him rise up as high as number 2 behind Lesnevich. But his career seemed to tail off quite dramatically which saw him disappear off the ratings after losing to his main rivals in the late 40s and early 50s and it seemed he was all but retired by the age of 30.

He was ranked at number 2 in 1948 and then at number in 1949 never to return to the rankings thereafter.

There were an awful lot of champions during that period whom in an ideal world wouldn't have been, sounds on men such as Maxim and Zale but they were very good and at a different time would have prospered but weren't among the elite.