Boxing.com 100 Greatest Heavyweights

Matt McGrain has started to publish a top 100 greatest heavyweights list after the highly entertaining (and contentious) 100 greatest fighters project. So far, he's done 100-80:

http://www.boxing.com/the_100_greatest_heavyweights_of_all_time_part_two_90_81.html

This might be one to follow and update.

And it's already curled my eyebrow: John Ruiz over Tucker, Dokes and Cooney?

He did scrape past a 40 year old Tucker.....

I imagine Tua must be top 30 then !!!!

Agree with you Mate...Bollox..

Cooney would kill him..

Still a great read. I hadn't heard of some of them!

With Ruhlin and Maher in the 80-90 bracket it will interesting to see where he has Tom Sharkey.

Not afraid of a challenge or a bit of hard work is McGrain.

Aye, this Hurricane jackson sounds quite interesting.

Really well written series this, very enjoyable.

Part three here:

http://www.boxing.com/news/comments/the_100_greatest_heavyweights_of_all_time_part_three_80_71

100. Luis Firpo
99. Denver Ed Martin
98. Walter Neusal
97. Bob Baker
96. John Henry Lewis
95. Gerry Cooney
94. Mickey Walker
93. Joe Bugner
92. Mike Dokes
91. Maxie Rosenbloom
90. Tony Tucker
89. Tommy Jackson
88. Peter Maher
87. Niño Valdes
86. Tommy Farr
85. Gus Ruhlin
84. Arturo Godoy
83. John Ruiz
82. George Chuvalo
81. Joe Goddard
80. Jess Willard
79. Roland LaStarza
78. George Godfrey
77. David Tua
76. Mike Spinks
75. James J. Braddock
74. Hasim Rahman
73. Mike Weaver
72. Steve Hamas
71. Rex Layne

Part four here: http://www.boxing.com/the_100_greatest_heavyweights_of_all_time_part_four_70_61.html

100. Luis Firpo
99. Denver Ed Martin
98. Walter Neusal
97. Bob Baker
96. John Henry Lewis
95. Gerry Cooney
94. Mickey Walker
93. Joe Bugner
92. Mike Dokes
91. Maxie Rosenbloom
90. Tony Tucker
89. Tommy Jackson
88. Peter Maher
87. Niño Valdes
86. Tommy Farr
85. Gus Ruhlin
84. Arturo Godoy
83. John Ruiz
82. George Chuvalo
81. Joe Goddard
80. Jess Willard
79. Roland LaStarza
78. George Godfrey
77. David Tua
76. Mike Spinks
75. James J. Braddock
74. Hasim Rahman
73. Mike Weaver
72. Steve Hamas
71. Rex Layne
70. Oscar Bonavena
69. Tommy Gibbons
68. Ray Mercer
67. Larry Gains
66. Oliver McCall
65. Joey Maxim
64. Trevor Berbick
63. Razor Ruddock
62. Billy Conn
61. Buster Douglas

Michael Spinks hands top 5 Larry his first two defeats and stops the once-beaten Cooney...and Mercer who lost to a senile Larry and Jesse Ferguson...

Is 8 places above..

What a sack of S**te....

4-1 is a pretty measly career at heavyweight (culminating in the capitulation to Tyson). Mercer ranks higher for me.

I guess you don't have Tunney top 20 like the rest of us then !!!

Hmm probably not. His ledger of 7-0 was better, though, and he didn't go out like a collapsed deck chair like Spinks did with Tyson. Are you suggesting Spinks rates with Tunney?

How are we going to squeeze Haglar into this thread?

I don't know about Hagler but it will be interesting to see where Louis's opponents wind up on the completed list.

Rahman above Tua is an odd, yes he beat Lewis but based on their overall careers Tua is a good margin above.

According to Haz ....Spinks was undisputed heavy till Tyson beat him....85 - 88...Mercer was never champion apparently..

You not see the problem with your argument Haz..It's all over the place..

Bit like no Floyd in a Top 10 list because he's a cherry picker and then having Jack Johnson at 7..

Then again I'm no journalist so what do I know !!!!

TRUSSMAN66 wrote:According to Haz Spinks was undisputed heavy till Tyson beat him....85 - 88...Mercer was never champion apparently..

You can't argue with an idiot...Is the bottom line..

And here I am doing just that....

Spinks was a poor champion according to you. So poor, you refuse to acknowledge he was the boss when Tyson broke through.

The Holmes victory was historic, that's why he made the list but Mercer fought an entire career at heavyweight. Whether wins over Cooper, Damiani and Morrison coupled with sterling shifts against Lewis, Holyfield and a resurgent Witherspoon outrank Spinks is up for debate but I'd side with Mercer.

TRUSSMAN66 wrote:According to Haz ....Spinks was undisputed heavy till Tyson beat him....85 - 88...Mercer was never champion apparently..

You not see the problem with your argument Haz..It's all over the place..

Bit like no Floyd in a Top 10 list because he's a cherry picker and then having Jack Johnson at 7..

Then again I'm no journalist so what do I know !!!!

I agree. Johnson is too high at seven. Floyd's nowhere near top ten, though. And yup, I'll take any number of opinions over yours - most decent writers included.

Part five here: http://www.boxing.com/the_100_greatest_heavyweights_of_all_time_part_five_60_51.html

60. Joe Choynski
59. Fred Fulton
58. Billy Miske
57. Kid Norfolk
56. Marvin Hart
55. Pinklon Thomas
54. Ernie Shavers
53. Ernie Schaaf
52. Tommy Loughran
51. Primo Carnera

Miske is a little low for me. Bitches. Should be in the 40 region. Shavers a little too high. Choynskis quite low but thats on instinct rather than any analysis.

Carnera at 51?

I know doing these lists is a thankless task but it does throw up some absurd placings, can't have Choynski above Ruhlin at purely heavyweight either.

Hammersmith harrier wrote:Rahman above Tua is an odd, yes he beat Lewis but based on their overall careers Tua is a good margin above.

Tua was given the verdict in their first fight but it was due to a bad decision by the ref not to allow Rahman to recover from a blow thrown after the bell,and though Tua was throwing plenty of punches Rahman was in no danger of being hurt.In their second fight Tua was lucky to get a draw in my mind. I agree Tua did have some good results on resume but so did Rahman.

Part six here:

http://www.boxing.com/news/comments/the_100_greatest_heavyweights_of_all_time_part_six_50_41

50. Chris Byrd
49. Michael Moorer
48. Bob Pastor
47. Harry Greb
46. Ron Lyle
45. Eddie Machen
44. Jerry Quarry
43. Zora Folley
42. Harold Johnson
41. Ingemar Johansson

Greb???

Poor Michael Moorer, having the ignominy of being beaten by the (to be) oldest ever heavyweight champand now he's beaten in a list of Top 100 greatest ever HW's by a Middleweight

Getting to the business end now:

40. Jimmy Bivins
39. Tom Sharkey
38. Archie Moore
37. Ernie Terrell
36. Jimmy Ellis
35. Tommy Burns
34. Tim Witherspoon
33. Jimmy Young
32. Jack Sharkey
31. Elmer Ray

Chris Byrd above Pinklon Thomas....and Mike Weaver...

Yep. If he's ranked Byrd that highly I shudder to think where Wlad has wound up.

Absolutely...

I wonder who he will have as the highest ranked fighter never to win the title.


Edit: scratch that.......McGrain is a Langford freak.

Almost sure to be Wills or Langford.

Who did Archie Moore beat at Heavyweight that puts him anywhere on this list? Maybe I'm having a shocker here and have gone completely blank but I can barely think of a win of note at the weight. Nino Valdes maybe?

Don't think you're having a mental block Bellchees. Would tend to agree a place in the top 40 seems very generous to Archie, terrific fighter, but his acheivements at heavy seem very thin on the ground.

Still can't get over Spinks at 76............Beat the great unbeaten Holmes twice...........Beat once-beaten Cooney and then the European champion............

His wins mirror Tunney's who's not on the list yet..........and he has all sorts of crap in front of him...

Yes he got embarrassed by Tyson but Walcott lost even more shamelessly to the Rock and he's not on here either !!

I love Pinky T but Witherspoon and Weaver....a draw with Coetzee and a shocking loss to Berbick............Really enough to go 21 places higher...

Ol' Archie getting a bit too much leeway in these kind of lists is pretty common due to his personality, style and the era he fought in, as well as his position as the all-time mack daddy of age-defying fighters (although Hopkins is a serious challenger to that mantle now). He was a maverick and one of the foremost stars of the TV boom era in the sport when it dominated the ratings (Gillette fight night specials across the pond racked up an unbelievable share of the viewing throughout the fifties) and as a result divisions were perhaps deeper and more competitive.....Certainly the case throughout Archie's peak years and championship tenure when he had contemporaries like Charles, Bivins, Johnson, Maxim etc.

He's also inexorably linked to the Marciano legend. Rocky was one of the most bankable Heavyweight stars in history and Moore's fight for the title against him has taken on mythical status because of the knockdown and the subsequent 'long count' and dilly-dallying by the referee Kessler, and also because there's a bit of a misconception that Moore pushed Marciano to his very limits after that, like Charles did in his first tilt at the Rock. The truth is that Moore made a great start with the knockdown but then had little success and got slowly beaten down by Marciano.

Valdes is his standout win north of 175, but when you look at Moore's performances against Rocky and also Patterson (granted, he was an old codger in boxing terms by then, but still Light-Heavyweight champion, let's not forget) then it makes it pretty hard to absolve the likes of McGrain from charges of bias or being swung by the legend of Archie which was built at the lower weights, and shouldn't really have any bearing here.

Will be interesting to see how he has the ratings at the business end. There are still some relatively obscure guys such as Jennette and Mcvea who are yet to appear, could be some controversial picks to come. Big Frank is still yet to appear, is Bruno due for an eye brow raising appearance in the top ten?

Heaven only knows where Peter Jackson will rank in this list...I'm quite excited...but then again, we don't know for sure if Johnny Nelson and Audley will feature due to them holding the WBF title so let's not get too carried away yet.

I always look for the discrepancy between Dempsey and tysin in these lists...

Basically the same careers..........Though Tyson fought longer than he should..

Both also beat the great 175ers of their era..

But hey no one holds Holmes and Berbick against Ali............

Dempsey and Tyson should be together....Whether it be in or outside the Top 10

Tyson above Dempsey every day of the week for me, Truss. Probably puts me in a minority, though, and I've had a couple of rollockings from the likes of Jimmy and Rodney in the past for my views on Jack.

I tend to have slightly Dempsey higher on my list!! But very close......Both Top 12....Both reigns were lauded...and good ones but lacked something after the hype..

Then again I have Louis at 2 and think there are at least 15 heavies who bang him out ...Including Wlad..

Louis fought stiffs...........Hagler fought stiffs...........Holmes fought stiffs....(Thought I'd get that in before somebody else does!!)

Have Spinks top 20/25 too...........which is conflict with another list doing the rounds which has all sorts of crap above him....

I think most of the criticisms chucked at Tyson can be levelled at Dempsey to be honest, Truss, but with more weight behind them. The brutal nature of his performances (Willard) or the fact that they were sometimes exciting, topsy-turvy kind of fights (Carpentier, Firpo) makes it easier to ignore the fact that those opponents weren’t really from the top plate and while Tyson gets blasted for his short prime, Dempsey holding the title for seven years doesn’t glimmer all that much considering he only cobbled together five successful defences in that time.

Appreciate that he, Rickard and Kearns all had legal problems both in and away from boxing during that period, but you cannae just give Dempsey credit for fights he didn't have. He could still have kept himself sharper and fought more often during those years, but for the most part preferred Vaudeville tours with his Hollywood wife Estelle Taylor!

Dempsey's wins over guys such as Carpentier and Gibbons were good ones, don't get me wrong, but pale when compared to Tyson's demolition job on an unbeaten Spinks (a better 175 pounder than the pair of them with better Heavyweight credentials too, albeit at 220 lb Tyson was a bigger man for a former Light-Heavy to try and conquer  than Dempsey) and outside of that I don't see Dempsey's wins over the likes of Willard, Firpo, Sharkey (given that he was being outboxed before Sharkey's built-in doziness made an appearance!), Fulton etc as any more impressive than Tyson's over Holmes, Bruno, Thomas, Smith etc.

No shame in a faded Dempsey being outboxed by Tunney, as Tunney for me was the best technician boxing had ever seen up until that point, but I do think those fights highlight how vulnerable Dempsey could be against guys who didn't just stand in front of him (have to remember that, at the time, his performance against Gibbons, despite being dressed up these days, was received pretty poorly by most observers) and showed a lack of real adaptability on his part. Compare that to Tyson's showing against Tucker where he was gung-ho early on, got countered for being so but then settled down to his boxing, changed his tactics and ended up giving Tucker a lesson in the sweet science rather than just going in there to take his head off.

Tucker was no Tunney, of course, but you get my jist.

Tyson was just the more complete, polished fighter for me and was dominant in a manner that Dempsey never really was in my opinion, despite popular opinion telling us that Dempsey appeared omnipotent in his prime.

I expect the next batch to include the likes of Cleveland Williams, Zora Folley, Riddick Bowe and (hopefully) Klitschko.

Theres also dempseys fight with billy miske to consider as further evidence of his struggles against very good boxers that tyson perhaps would not have have struggled with.

Rowley wrote:Will be interesting to see how he has the ratings at the business end. There are still some relatively obscure guys such as Jennette and Mcvea who are yet to appear, could be some controversial picks to come. Big Frank is still yet to appear, is Bruno due for an eye brow raising appearance in the top ten?

I expect Jeanette and McVea will be up there in the Top 20. Looking at McGrain's other lists he values the guys struck behind the colour line highly.

I think people who knock Dempsey are doing it using the record books. Dempsey was a revolutionary fighter and an incredible talent as is testified to by anybody who ever saw him. Some of the more bookish types have claimed to have a blind spot to Dempsey on here in the past but I'm pretty sure Dempsey was very special.

I guess we only saw Ali, Dempsey, Robinson etc on film....So WTF do we all know about them !!!!!!

I guess we can forget the determined slugger we saw against Carpentier taking plenty of shots......Firpo, Willard and Tunney.....and listen to a a few w**k**s instead...

Well that's it then Dempsey top 3 for me....

If we put too much weight on reputation then certain fighters like Dempsey become untouchable because of it, at the time he was a brutal puncher with the mindset for destruction but he was fallible as shown on numerous occasions. His record is very thin on the ground and the Wills affair does go against him.

Similar to Tyson again in that regard Hammer...

Reputation in many quarters surpasses achievement..

Though in fairness to Tyson other fans go too far the other way......

Dempsey is just top 10 for me and Mike is right behind..

TRUSSMAN66 wrote:I guess we only saw Ali, Dempsey, Robinson etc on film....So WTF do we all know about them !!!!!!

I guess we can forget the determined slugger we saw against Carpentier taking plenty of shots......Firpo, Willard and Tunney.....and listen to a a few w**k**s instead...

Well that's it then Dempsey top 3 for me....

Not Top 3 but Top 10.

Strongback wrote:

TRUSSMAN66 wrote:I guess we only saw Ali, Dempsey, Robinson etc on film....So WTF do we all know about them !!!!!!

I guess we can forget the determined slugger we saw against Carpentier taking plenty of shots......Firpo, Willard and Tunney.....and listen to a a few w**k**s instead...

Well that's it then Dempsey top 3 for me....

Not Top 3 but Top 10.

Seen as we all have him there ...You're arguing with yourself..

Nowt to do with being bookish, Strongy. Dempsey was clearly one of the greatest fighters to have lived up until and including his own generation, but there has been almost ninety years of fighters that have come and gone since Dempsey left the sport and a hell of a lot of them have surpassed him. Definitely not an automatic top ten Heavy for me if you're stripping away his cultural and financial impact on the sport, which was huge of course and something boxing owes him a debt of gratitude for.

Against Tunney, save for that flashing moment of brilliance which resulted in the 'long count', his performances were pretty flat, pedestrian and slow. They were the kind of showings that you'd slate a modern-day fighter for, I suspect (come to think of it, Alvarez looked more sprightly and lively against Mayweather than Dempsey largely did against Tunney, and we all know how rubbish you thought Canelo's showing was there!). Not a peak Dempsey, I get that, but the gap was so great between him and Gene that you have to wonder if Jack simply being a few years younger would have eben enough to close it.

Dempsey definitely had special traits. Brilliant starter, power in both fists, good speed etc but a lumbering, old and inactive guy like Willard or a wide open slugger like Firpo allowed his style to look sensational. He failed to shine against Gibbons and after the Tunney bouts the likess of Hype Igoe were writing that, "In defeat, Dempsey has been exposed as overrated. A good fighter, but never really great." Granted, it's a book primarily about one of Depmsey's opponents, but Jack Kavanaugh's 'Tunney' biography covers a lot of contemporary accounts of Dempsey as he was on his collision course with Gene, and demonstrates that not everyone saw him as the invincible machine he's usually painted as now.

But he was exciting and brutal, which accounted for him drawing five gates which exceeded a million dollars (never been done before and not done again until the Louis-Conn rematch in 1948) and once he'd gone, the division became pretty unexciting with more workmanlike fighters such as Braddock, Schmeling, Carnera etc playing pass the parcel with the title. I think with Dempsey there was a slight case of not knowing what you've got until it's gone, and as a result some have gone a bit over the top in stressing just how great he really was.

Brilliant fighter in his own right, but more flawed than history would have us believe and not usually inside my top ten Heavies to be honest.