50 fighters that must be considered

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I think we agree that after the first few names, it's an almost impossible job to try and compile a precise top 50 from 130 years or so of boxing history under Queensberry rules. There's so little between so many great fighters.

However, in a bid both to collect my own ideas and perhaps to stimulate a bit of debate among some of you, I thought that I would jot down the fighters from whose ranks a credible top 50 might be drawn. There is a top 8 or so with which I'm fairly content - after that, it's almost a matter of personal taste.

See what you think and whether you consider any of the inclusions here to be suspect or any omissions to be perplexing or just plain wrong:

My "set in stone" top 8 are Robinson, Armstrong, Greb, Charles, Ali, Langford, Jofre and Fitzsimmons After that, the names that I would need to sort out would be, I stress in no order: Benny Leonard, Ray Leonard, Roberto Duran, Pernell Whitaker, Floyd Mayweather Jr, Gene Tunney, Archie Moore, Joe Louis, Carlos Monzon, Marvin Hagler, Joe Gans, Julio Cesar Chavez, Willie Pep, Sandy Saddler, Manny Pacquiao, Roy Jones Jr, Barney Ross, Bob Foster, Salvador Sanchez, Alexis Arguello, Thomas Hearns, Bernard Hopkins, Michael Spinks, Tony Canzoneri, Jimmy McLarnin, Mickey Walker, Oscar de la Hoya, Jimmy Wilde, Ted Kid Lewis, Jack Britton, Carlos Zarate, Pancho Villa, Ricardo Lopez, Juan Manuel Marquez, Wilfredo Gomez, Wilfred Benitez, Kaosai Galaxy, Ike Williams, Terry McGovern, Carlos Ortiz, Charley Burley and Azumah Nelson.

Does anyone see any major discrepancy here? Have I missed someone? Been too kind to someone else? Interested to hear your views.

Fitzsimmons was the worst of Boxing News offences for me Chris. Beats a truly great middle in Dempsey at 151 and then moves up and beats a fighter of the quality of Corbett for the heavyweight title, add to that the likes of Choynski, Creedon, Maher as well as annexing the light heavy title at nearly 40 year old and having Fitz outside the top ten is difficult having him at 73 is just nonsense.

Aye, Ruby Robert's placing was a load of cobblers too, Jeff.

Now that Coxy is gone and Oxring has seemingly taken a long leave of absence, I can say it a little more freely, but I'm still not sure how Wilde continues to command a top ten spot, wonderful fighter though he was. Britain's best for me (the usual straggles of 'Is Fitz British?' and the like aside!), nailed on top fifty pound for pound at least, and certainly one of the very, very best the world had seen up until that time......But top ten even now? I just can't fathom it, personally.

My own personal candidate for the Boxing News Black Museum, next to Fitz at 73, was LaMotta included at all, let alone as high as 56.

Just shows what being the biographical main character in one of the best films ever can do, captain! La Motta was top class of course, and a great character in his own right, but you'd be hard pressed to find a fighter where the reality falls short of the myth as much as it does in his case. Highly unfortunate that he's been treated much kinder by history than the likes of Basilio and Fullmer, who are more deserving. No axe to grind with Jake though, who still played a big role in helping the legend known as Sugar Ray flourish.

88Chris05 wrote:Just shows what being the biographical main character in one of the best films ever can do,

Does this mean we can expect to see Mickey Ward making his debut the next time they publish the list. Got to be honest have tended to stay out of the Wilde debates as he was always a bit of a knowledge blackspot for me but have tried to redress this a little and got to say I agree with you, a fine fighter no doubt and if not the best then certainly one of the best from these shores but like you Chris struggle to see him as top ten worthy. Just looking at his record does he really deserve to be so many places and so consistently above a guy like Joe Gans to pick one of my current favourites?

The thing with Wilde which bothers me is that when you go back that far, is anyone really all that qualified to make an assertion? Even a historian who studied Wilde and wrote a book, is he really able to say whether he is greater than x, y or z? How does he compare? Its hard enough evaluating legacies of fighters that exist in your own generations but going back and trying to make a judgement on someone like Wilde pretty vague to me, and I honestly dont know how someone can have such strong convictions. I wouldnt argue his greatness, but Ive never seen a convincing argument put forward as to why his wins rank him so highly.

No problems with him being great, but often do with the means of comparing and evaluating him, especially if I see modern wins being put under the microscope and devalued while Wildes are taken at face value over opposition I think very few people are able to get a real handle on.

I think that with Wilde, manos, it's not so much the time span that one has to bridge that's the problem as it is the division in which he fought. The flyweight division was in its infancy when Jimmy was fighting, and although he was clearly one of the best hitters at any weight in history, frequently KOing lightweights and so on, not many high-class ones feature on his CV.

The quality of opposition is certainly inferior to a number of the top 50, particularly when we bear in mind that for the most part, the Asian and Latin American fighters who have dominated at 112 since the war were not a factor in Wilde's day.

Jimmy was clearly a great and vies with Ted Kid Lewis to be the greatest Brit, in my book. A 117-3 record, or whatever it was, speaks of a pretty sizeable talent, and I'm in no way seeking to decry it. However, I do agree that the legend has been burnished slightly more than is either sensible or realistic.

I can see, in some ways, why there's a temptation to maybe give Wilde an inflated ranking; in an era where even the best fighters on the planet regularly sported records littered with losses, draws and 'No Decision' matches (afterall, this was very much the norm in the tens / twenties), Wilde's 136-3-1 record does stand out.

However, it wasn't until he was 81-0-1, with 55 early, that he actually fought a fighter of any real repute (from what I've read, anyway!). Eugene Husson, who apparently had a reputation as a good fighter over in France, was brought over primarily because he was smaller than Wilde (according to Gilbert Odd's research, he actually scaled under 100 lb for the fight) and because Peggy Bettison, chief match maker of the NSC, had previously been reluctant to give Wilde a booking as he was concerned that the club's members would simply think he himself wasn't big enough for prize fighting, and was concerned about possible complaints of bad match making.

Wilde won in style and was then guided forward very quickly towards a title shot, but there was basically over eighty fights before all of this against coal miners, journeymen and part-timers. I'd be willing to bet that some hoary old timers would scream "Jimmy Wilde has twice as many knockout victories as Floyd Mayweather has had total fights!" if they saw Floyd ahead of Jimmy in anyone's pecking order, but I tend not to put too much emphasis on those kind of statistics.

Obviously, there was the fact that Wilde was a freakish puncher too, which helps. If you can bring carnage to the ring whenever you fight, chances are you'll be remembered a little more fondly, as the respective historical popularity of Archie Moore and Gene Tunney shows!

Anyway, I'm not trying to discredit Wilde as an all-time great - he was one. But I don't see the wins, utter dominance and overall quality on his record to warrant a top ten or twenty spot, which he's almost always given by the high brow.

I'm not even totally convinced that he was the greatest Flyweight ever, which will likely get me (cyber) lynched on here.....But that's a different story!

captain carrantuohil wrote:I think that with Wilde, manos, it's not so much the time span that one has to bridge that's the problem as it is the division in which he fought. The flyweight division was in its infancy when Jimmy was fighting, and although he was clearly one of the best hitters at any weight in history, frequently KOing lightweights and so on, not many high-class ones feature on his CV.

The quality of opposition is certainly inferior to a number of the top 50, particularly when we bear in mind that for the most part, the Asian and Latin American fighters who have dominated at 112 since the war were not a factor in Wilde's day.

Jimmy was clearly a great and vies with Ted Kid Lewis to be the greatest Brit, in my book. A 117-3 record, or whatever it was, speaks of a pretty sizeable talent, and I'm in no way seeking to decry it. However, I do agree that the legend has been burnished slightly more than is either sensible or realistic.

I agree but I also think the era itself is hard to to evaluate with a great deal of authority. Wilde established himself as the best in Britain with good wins over good fighters like Symonds, Lee, Smith etc but how do those wins measure up? As you mention, it was quite insular back them with a lack of real division outside of Britain for Wilde and few transatlantic bouts to really form an accurate pecking order. I fully appreciate that being the undisputed best of Britain at that time means alot more than it does now but thats still all it was I feel. Beyond thats its hard to know. He has a good win over Moore (reported to be very close) and can probably be cut slack for losses to Villa and Herman. Aside from Herman and Villa who I think were arguably the best he fought, his best opponent was Moore who he seemed to go life and death with and was Moore really a truly great fighter? But is his dominance in Britain and wins over guys that fought pretty much exclusively in Britain only enough to warrant such a lofty place? Im not convinced really.

I also have an untouchable 8 which reads as;

Robinson
Ali
Greb
Armstrong
Charles
Tunney
Fitzsimmons
Duran

Duran????............sorry no one who gets squashed like that is in my top 10..

Like the other 7.....

No way can Tunney be above Leonard...for my money

Tunney was never beaten by someone who gets squased like Duran though did he, you can't diminish Duran in one sentence and then big up Leonard the next.

Duran was world class...........Not sure Leonard would have drawn with someone called KO Jaffe though....

I'm suggesting Duran shouldn't be top 10............your being silly...

Leonard lost a close decision and then thrashed him twice..

I see your Duran and raise you Harry Greb
I see your Hagler and raise you Jack Dempsey
I see your Benitez and raise you Tommy Loughran
I'll give you Tommy Hearns

As talented as Leonard was his record is too thin on the ground to break into my top 12 Truss. Based purely on talent he's up there in the top 5 with Robinson, Charles, Mayweather and Ali.

Thin record? How many of your top 8 beat recognised top 50 ATGs? We're not talking about beating great bartenders, coal miners, blacksmiths, sparkies and sheep and alfalfa farmers, but beating great professional boxers?

How about Rocky Marciano and Floyd Patterson??

Az there is far more to a record than just 4 fights and unfortunately for Leonard that is pretty much all he has so yes I would say his record was thin.

The second Sugar Ray is always a difficult one to rate, isn't he!?

The thing about Leonard is that he's arguably the most complete and perfect all-round fighter since the original Sugar. As fast as greased lightning, genuine knockout power, sound defence, could fight going forwards and backwards, had the feet of a ballet dancer, was a clever bleeder who could out-psyche and unsettle his opponent, had a great engine with proven stamina and, when he needed them, could call upon a top chin and great courage when the going got tough.

I take on board Ghosty's point about Leonard's list of notable wins being short when compared to some other pound for pound greats, but what a list it is. It's a tough job trying to find that balance between quantity and quality, but take Mayweather's wins over Corrales, Ortiz, Castillo and Judah all rolled in to one and they still fall away in to insignificance when compared to Leonard's win over Tommy in 1981. Floyd's a bona fide pound for pound legend in his own right, of course, but I'm just trying to highlight how meritorious Leonard's 5-1-1 ledger against the other 'Kings' plus Benitez is.

For me, there has seldom been as much quality crammed in to the 147 lb weight class (or any other division, as it goes) as there was in those few late seventies / early eighties years, what with Leonard being there along with Benitez, Duran and Hearns, and Leonard's inside-schedule wins over all three of them are proof enough for me that we're talking about a truly special fighter here. His remarkable comeback to usurp a genuine Middleweight legend in Hagler (I had him winning that fight) cements him as one of the true immortals, as far as I'm concerned.

I can see the appeal of having the likes of Mayweather, Tunney and Jofre ahead of him, but in my eyes none of them are quite as 'special' as Leonard was and I'd have him above all three. I accept his highlight moments are fewer in quantity, but they shine brighter than all but an incredibly small amount of others do and being the best of that aforementioned quintet entitles him to a very, very high pound for pound ranking in my eyes, certainly inside the top ten in any case.

Can't be inside the top ten with just over thirty fights for me, Chris, despite the undoubted quality of his early work. We must also accept that he was beaten by a great lightweight rising up the weight charts, which has to put him down slightly. I've got Leonard at around 15, below Jofre, Whitaker, Mayweather and Tunney, as it happens. A golden fighter, Leonard, but not for as long as the aforementioned quartet. If we include his win over Hagler as evidence for his coronation, must we not also damn him slightly for the draw (should have been a loss) with Tommy and the emphatic defeat against Norris?

Good post captain, but I'm not really convinced (yet!) that those sticks you've used to beat Leonard there can't be used on those other names you've mentioned as well, number of fights being the only exception there.

Why should Leonard be marked down for losing to the smaller Duran and Tuney be given a pass for losing to the smaller Greb? By the time they fought, Duran had at least developed in to a Welterweight (albeit a small one), whereas Greb was still basically a Middleweight (he scaled just 162 lb) when he boxed Tunney for the American Light-Heavyweight title. He beat Tunney in 1922 while being outweighed and, according to most ringside reports, was damn unlucky not to do so again in one of their subsequent rematches. On the other hand, after Montreal there was little dispute that Leonard comfortably had the upper hand whenever he met Duran again.

If Norris had come immediately after Hagler, or within a year or two, then I'd be more inclined to agree wholeheartedly, but those fights were four years (and another 'retirement' lasting about a year and a half in between all of that) apart. Four years is a hell of a long time in boxing; Leonard was thirty-five by the time Norris beat him, too. It was a case of a well past his peak fighter losing to someone who was right in the middle of theirs, much like Whitaker-Trinidad. I deduct no points from Pea for that one and I see no reason to do so for Leonard, either.

Fortunate to get a draw with Tommy second time out, yes, but this was still at the point in Hearns' career when he could say he'd never been outboxed. That fight gets a bad rap, but it was actually a valiant effort from Leonard against a Hearns who produced his best performance in years. If anything, the gap between them in that second fight in 1989 was actually smaller than the one which had existed over the first twelve of their 1981 contest; the rounds themselves were very evenly split, but Tommy's two knockdowns should have certainly given him a hard-fought decision, I admit.

Just over 30 fights...Is just a poor reason to downgrade a guy you obviously don't like..

Benitez and Hearns both at the top of their games......Duran was controversial....and he showed him up in the rematch..

Kalule....beat the undisputed middleweight great in Hagler....

Top 5 for me...screw the 30 fights......

Leonard still had Hearns x 2, Duran x 3, Hagler and Benitez with wins over all of them. For me thats a better true indication of his ability than say Mayweathers maybe longer list of wins but lacking that really elite level win. We still question whether Mayweather would beat guys like Hearns, Duran, or even Benitez if he was on form. We dont need to ask those questions with Leonard.

Just find it unbelievable how a guy can rule at lightweight against no marks for 7 seven years.......lost to Dejesus.....the only quality boxer he faced apart from the tricky Buchanan....

goes on to get trashed against every quality boxer he fought...I recall Benitez, Laing and Hearns all beat him comfortably...

and he's lauded.......

Where as some guy fights all the cream at their peak and loses out....

So he lost "Contentiously" in a brawl....so what.

Leonard should jhave stuck around beating the Dave boy Green's of this world...

Benitez and Hearns are reasons why he is top 10 and above Duran alone...

Hagler wasa sensational. win...

It's only you who calls the brawl in Montreal contentious Truss.

I have Leonard just outside the top ten for the sole reason there isn't enough on his record and there are numerous fighters who wins that stand up to his.

It was contentious.......certainly in America.....plenty of publications had it for Leonard..

What were the card scores again??????

Won by one point on two cards....

But it wasn't contentious..

The American poster boy gets beaten and the Americans can't handle it. It wasn't as close as the scorecards had it.

Well then, Don't say stupid things like "I'm the only one who say's it was contentious"

When you've no idea!!

Well Truss ive seen the fight and can safely say the decision was in no way contentious. It's a more credible win than Leonard's over Duran and hagler.

I have Leonard inside my top 10 (just behind Duran) but with him it really is a balancing act of quality over quantity. I think the sheer quality ofhis wins tips the balance in his favour for inclusion in the top 10 but he could have taken away any doubt with a few more fights.

I have to say Truss that, although I'm fighting Leonard's corner for a top ten spot here, I'm yet to know of these American publications who you regularly speak of who apparently had Leonard in front in Montreal. I think it might have been Sports Illustrated who had the fight dead even, but from what I've seen / read virtually everyone else was unanimous in their agreement that Duran had won a close but in no way arguable decision; I honestly don't remember seeing any major publication or pundit saying that they scored it for Ray.

Whenever I've scored that fight I tend to come up with exactly the same score each time, with the same rounds going to each man every time as well; the first four to Duran, next four to Leonard, then five on the spin to Duran before Leonard rallied to win the last couple. 144-141 to Duran. Ray definitely fought very courageously and gave Duran one hell of a fight, but I don't see how a case can be made for him winning it, personally.

Talking about newspapers my friend and network tv in the main......

It was contentious more than controversial..especially the 148-147 muppet.

It was also pointed out that Canada is/was no friend of America!! .....

Sure ghosty was right in that the glamour all American boy had been defeated...

However take my word for it there were plenty of dissenters.