Post-War Middleweight knockout tournament

First topic message reminder :

Afternoon lads,

These knockout tournaments usually drum up some decent debate so thought I'd do a small one of the Middleweights. All fights over fifteen rounds, imagining each man is in the best run of them we've ever seen them show at 160.

It's a post-war tournament as so many of the great Middleweights from years before that - Greb, Steele, Fitzsimmons, Walker etc - are tough, sometimes impossible to properly gauge in a head-to-head sense, and I wanted to try and make sure anyone who contributes has seen at least a little something of all of the participants. Each decade, from the fifties up until present day, has a representative and a decent mix of styles are on show. Other names might rank higher in the all-time Middleweight lists, but hey, this is about head to head picks, not necessarily resumes.

I muddled together a random draw and this is what has come out for the first round:

Marvin Hagler versus Bernard Hopkins
Dick Tiger versus Gennady Golovkin
Roy Jones versus Ray Robinson
Carlos Monzon versus Gerald McClellan

If anyone's interested then take a shot and give me the winners and how they'd do it. Hopefully I can get a few responses, get some high-quality boxing talk going and see who makes the final four from the above bouts.

Fire away if you fancy it, chaps. Ta everyone.

hazharrison wrote:

Rowley wrote:

ShahenshahG wrote:

Rowley wrote:One of the worst Coxy, there are plenty every bit as bad as Ruiz but the point still holds up to this point nobody has replicated the feat.

Aye but a smallish poor heavyweight, .

And my point still holds Shah, that there has been plenty of them. When the feat has been replicated countless times I will willingly dismiss it as others do, but the fact that it has not yet been replicated it still leads me to believe it is not as easy to achieve as some would have you believe.

This feat, though, Rowley is only possible due to the proliferation of world titles. You're grading Jones against a million and one other middleweights who weren't privy to the same fortunate circumstances.

Jones, lest we forget, was extremely careful who he picked to fight. He turned down a chance to face a faded Buster Douglas on the advice of his father.

Ruiz was a paper titlist - no more than a top ten contender if we look at it sensibly.

He also said to not fight Tarver, thankfully he ignored that and the bubble burst.

Easy to p**s on any record........

Let's look at my alltime number 1..

Ali beat a green Foreman
Frazier was Foreman's leftovers..
Young got robbed....
Liston threw both fights......
Lost to a novice in Spinks....
Got decked off a British cruiserweight..
Williams was past it....
Norton beat him three times......

It's all silly billy..

TRUSSMAN66 wrote:Easy to p**s on any record........

Let's look at my alltime number 1..

Ali beat a green Foreman
Frazier was Foreman's leftovers..
Young got robbed....
Liston threw both fights......
Lost to a novice in Spinks....
Got decked off a British cruiserweight..
Williams was past it....
Norton beat him three times......

It's all silly billy..

Take out the first two and you've more or less stated the obvious (Norton won two at least).

Or did he not lose to Spinks, suffer a knockdown against Cooper and face a shot fighter in Williams?

Not that any of that matters - as if I even need to point that out (seemingly I do!)

Rowley wrote:

hazharrison wrote:

Rowley wrote:

ShahenshahG wrote:

Rowley wrote:One of the worst Coxy, there are plenty every bit as bad as Ruiz but the point still holds up to this point nobody has replicated the feat.

Aye but a smallish poor heavyweight, .

And my point still holds Shah, that there has been plenty of them. When the feat has been replicated countless times I will willingly dismiss it as others do, but the fact that it has not yet been replicated it still leads me to believe it is not as easy to achieve as some would have you believe.

This feat, though, Rowley is only possible due to the proliferation of world titles. You're grading Jones against a million and one other middleweights who weren't privy to the same fortunate circumstances.

Jones, lest we forget, was extremely careful who he picked to fight. He turned down a chance to face a faded Buster Douglas on the advice of his father.

Ruiz was a paper titlist - no more than a top ten contender if we look at it sensibly.

I'm not arguing otherwise Haz, but my point is and remains the era of multiple titles was around before Jones did it and shows no sign of ending any time soon, likewise the era of god awful heavies shows no sign of ending. Despite this being the case nobody has replicated the feat and until countless folk do so the feat will remain pretty remarkable in my eyes.

If John Ruiz was classified as a heavyweight champion in every era of boxing in 125 years I think there would a whole host of light heavyweights who could have beaten him.