Ring Magazine's All-Time Top Fives Per Division. Thoughts?

I'm sure a couple of you will have seen this already, but last week the Ring Magazine published their lists of who they believe to be the five greatest fighters of all time for each of boxing's seventeen established weight classes. Link to the full article here: Division by Division: The Greatest Fighters of All Time

The link above gives their brief thoughts on each fighter and their reasoning for placing them where they have. Not too many controversial picks, but nonetheless still a few which will raise eyebrows. Here are the lists by division, would be good to get people's thoughts on this and see if there are any placings or omissions which don't sit well. Lists are always a good way to get some debate flowing!

HEAVYWEIGHT
1) Muhammad Ali 2) Joe Louis 3) Larry Holmes 4) Lennox Lewis 5) Jack Johnson

CRUISERWEIGHT
1) Evander Holyfield 2) Oleksandr Usyk 3) Carlos De Leon 4) David Haye 5) Juan Carlos Gomez

LIGHT-HEAVYWEIGHT
1) Ezzard Charles 2) Archie Moore 3) Bob Foster 4) Michael Spinks 5) Gene Tunney

SUPER-MIDDLEWEIGHT
1) Joe Calzaghe 2) Roy Jones Jr 3) Andre Ward 4) James Toney 5) Carl Froch

MIDDLEWEIGHT
1) Ray Robinson 2) Carlos Monzon 3) Garry Greb 4) Marvin Hagler 5) Bernard Hopkins

LIGHT-MIDDLEWEIGHT
1) Thomas Hearns 2) Mike McCallum 3) Terry Norris 4) Winky Wright 5) Nino Benvenuti

WELTERWEIGHT
1) Ray Robinson 2) Ray Leonard 3) Henry Armstrong 4) Thomas Hearns 5) Jose Napoles

LIGHT-WELTERWEIGHT
1) Julio Cesar Chavez 2) Aaron Pryor 3) Kostya Tszyu 4) Barney Ross 5) Antonio Cervantes

LIGHTWEIGHT
1) Roberto Duran 2) Benny Leonard 3) Joe Gans 4) Pernell Whitaker 5) Ike Williams

SUPER-FEATHERWEIGHT
1) Alexis Arguello 2) Floyd Mayweather 3) Julio Cesar Chavez 4) Azumah Nelson 5) Manny Pacquiao

FEATHERWEIGHT
1) Willie Pep 2) Salvador Sanchez 3) Henry Armstrong 4) Sandy Saddler 5) Abe Attell

SUPER-BANTAMWEIGHT
1) Wilfredo Gomez 2) Marco Antonio Barrera 3) Erik Morales 4) Guillermo Rigondeaux 5) Daniel Zaragoza

BANTAMWEIGHT
1) Eder Jofre 2) Ruben Olivares 3) Carlos Zarate 4) Manuel Ortiz 5) Panama Al Brown

SUPER-FLYWEIGHT
1) Khaosai Galaxy 2) Jiro Watanabe 3) Johnny Tapia 4) Gilberto Roman 5) Sung Kil Moon

FLYWEIGHT
1) Jimmy Wilde 2) Miguel Canto 3) Pascual Perez 4) Pancho Villa 5) Frankie Genaro

LIGHT-FLYWEIGHT
1) Michael Carbajal 2) Humberto Gonzalez 3) Jung Koo Chang 4) Hilario Zapata 5) Roman Gonzalez

STRAWWEIGHT
1) Ricardo Lopez 2) Ivan Calderon 3) Roman Gonzalez 4) Rosendo Alvarez 5) Chana Porpaoin

I'll give proper reasoning at some point but the ones I do disagree with.

Robinson at number one at Middleweight, his form at 160lbs was very up and down. The consistency of Monzon and Hagler edges them ahead.

Toney above Froch based on talent is perfectly but on record less so.

No Donaire at any weight, would have him at 4/5 at super bantamweight.

Light heavyweight, good luck getting that five in the right order but Tunney is definitely top two, his resume is superb there.

Jack Berg, Cervantes or Canzoneri as the fifth man at 140lbs?

Pleased to see Lennox as high as fourth, he's definitely getting his dues in retirement. The rest of that top five is set in stone.

Arguello or Mayweather is the flip of a coin, possibly Corrales edging it for Floyd.

Saddler at four is also refreshing, fouled his way to three wins against Pep.

I find it very strange that RJJ is listed at Super Middle, where he only had 6 fights, whereas he had 20 or so LHW bouts and almost completely cleared out the division - only Michalzewski is missing from his resume. I guess it's because the LHW division is absolutely stacked and they HAD to get Roy in there somewhere.

If we're basing achievements in the 168lb division, Ward surely trumps him there? Odd.

Obvious one is to swap Wilfredi Vazquez for the ordinary Daniel Zaragoza...Nothing World class about Zaragoza..

Foreman for Lewis at Heavy.

Hearns smashed Cuevas but though he was a better fighter than Curry...Starling twice..Unifying against McCrory and a near four year reign puts Curry in.

Whittaker 2nd at Lightweight..

Pryor number 1 at 140....five year unbeaten reign and Alex is twice.

Qawi at 5 at Cruiser....Beat Lee Roy Murphy..Robbed against Ocasio...Thought he drew with Holy...Plus other decent scalps..

Mr Bounce wrote:I find it very strange that RJJ is listed at Super Middle, where he only had 6 fights, whereas he had 20 or so LHW bouts and almost completely cleared out the division - only Michalzewski is missing from his resume. I guess it's because the LHW division is absolutely stacked and they HAD to get Roy in there somewhere.

If we're basing achievements in the 168lb division, Ward surely trumps him there? Odd.

A few factors to consider there, Bounce.

Super-Middle is a relatively young division so you don't necessarily need a slew of fights there to make a big splash. Jones was arguably at his absolute best at the weight - he maintained throughout his career that it was his most natural weight, and as late as 2008 before facing Calzaghe he was floating the idea of the fight being contracted at 168 lb so that Calzaghe's Super-Middleweight belts (before he vacated them that year), along with this Ring Magazine Light-Heavyweight one, could all be on the line in one night. Similar to the Leonard-Lalonde fight twenty years before.

Also have to remember how big a deal his win over an unbeaten Toney was at the time, particularly when you consider the manner of it. Toney was widely considered Whitaker's closest challenger to the pound for pound title in 1993 / 1994. Super-Middleweight had never really had a champion of that kind of stature or reputation before (at least not anywhere near their peak) and it was by far the biggest fight in the division's history until that point. Calzaghe and Ward would probably swap a small handful of their wins to have one win as significant and impressive as that on their record.

Soul did a good thread on the Super-Middleweights a while back and the general feeling there was that Calzaghe, Jones and Ward are easily the top three in the division, and you can make a case for any of them being number one depending on your criteria. They're pretty much interchangeable.

@Soul, apparently it was Cervantes for #5 at Light-Welterweight. Can't say I rate him that highly and I think any of Berg, Canzoneri, Locche and maybe even Loi could be higher than him. Tszyu maybe a shade too high at #3 as well? Either way it was always going to be either Chavez or Pryor at number one, and I think they've just about got it right with Chavez.

Super-Flyweight looks a bit off to me. I don't rate Galaxy quite as highly as I used to, for example. Incredibly consistent performer at championship level but his and Roman's reigns overlapped quite a bit without them ever facing off. Galaxy has the knockout reel and more consecutive defences but there's actually more quality on Roman's record in terms of good wins, even if he maybe got one or two of them at a decent time. It's close but I might be tempted to swap them over.

Also I think realistically you'd have to put Sor Rungvisai in there, certainly ahead of Tapia or Sung-Kil Moon. Rungvisai stopped an unbeaten Gonzalez in his tracks twice over when he was supposed to be pound for pound number one, or at least very close to it, and also has that big win against Estrada. Lost the rematch but to me that was a fight he threw away with a very curious performance in the early rounds. Either way, going 1-1 with Estrada is not bad considering Estrada himself might be in line to gate crash that top five list in a few years.

Some of these heavyweights of the past would be cruiserweight / (small) heavyweight of today.

Some of the listed boxers cleared out their weight division in their day and then ascended the weight classes chasing bigger fights.  It must be difficult judging them in a given single weight category.

A little strange that they've put Barrera above Morales at Super-Bantam. Morales was undefeated at the weight, unlike Barrera who had those setbacks against Jones, and when they met at that weight it was Morales who came away with the victory.

Maybe the fact that Morales is generally deemed slightly lucky to have got that verdict in their first fight played a part in that, I don't know.

But overall if you evaluate their careers side by side I'd say Morales had the better of it at Super-Bantam, Barrera clearly had the edge at Feather (beat Morales in the second fight, has that huge win over Hamed around the same time Morales was struggling with Espadas) and then it's close at Super-Feather. Barrera got the win when they fought there, but to counter that Morales has that tremendous win over Pacquiao at 130, albeit he lost his form alarmingly after that.

Benvenuti being fifth at Light Middleweight doesn't quite look right, had very few fights at the weight and think he's being given added credit for being a small Middleweight. Alvarez or even Mayweather have better championship credentials at 154lbs.

I'd also want to try and wedge Saldivar above Attell because of his affiliations with the mob, never quite know what to make of his record.

Griffiths, Donaire, Burley, Canzoneri and Benitez whilst having more impressive overall records than many of the boxers in and around their weights don't fit nicely into one division.

On another note if you want a good chuckle, check out the most recent IBRO lists. Those voting are stuck in the past

Soul Requiem wrote:On another note if you want a good chuckle, check out the most recent IBRO lists. Those voting are stuck in the past

Blimey. Only one fighter past 1980.

Soul Requiem wrote:Benvenuti being fifth at Light Middleweight doesn't quite look right, had very few fights at the weight and think he's being given added credit for being a small Middleweight. Alvarez or even Mayweather have better championship credentials at 154lbs.

Yeah that last spot for Light-Middle is tricky, Soul. I think most would agree that Hearns and McCallum are the top two, and interchangeable depending on what you like. Similarly I think the majority would agree that Norris and Winky are numbers three and four, and again are pretty interchangeable.

Like you, I tend to think of Benvenuti primarily as a Middleweight. I think his foray into the Light-Middleweight division was more a case of opportunism and a chance to boost his profile because the division was in its infancy and he had a big domestic showdown against Mazzinghi to benefit from. Tremendous knockout of Mazzinghi in their first fight, but to be honest from what I've seen of Mazzinghi (admittedly only a couple of fights) he seems to have been a bit of a Sven Ottke figure for Italian boxing at the time. I thought he lost the fight against Kim Ki-Soo when I watched it....And Kim himself wasn't all that good, and in fact was the Sven Ottke figure of Korean boxing at the time!

Most people who saw the fight tend to agree that Benvenuti probably deserved to keep his title against Kim, but to be honest a more interesting and forgotten man of the early years of the Light-Middleweight division seems to be Freddie Little. Unfortunately there's precious little footage of him, but virtually every account of Little's loss to Kim in Seoul (including Korean ones) indicates that the decision was deemed to be an absolute disgrace at the time, and he was totally stitched up against Mazzinghi in another title effort later on as well, with the Italian being the beneficiary of some incredibly shady carry-on in his backyard (well worth looking into for anyone who hasn't before).

Mazzinghi apparently wanted no part of a rematch and decided to vacate the title, which Little got his hands on eventually. But by now he was arguably already a shade past his best and lost it in his third defence.

Who knows, had it not been for boxing politics we might be talking about Little as one of the best 154 pounders ever. As it turns out, unfortunately he's not much more than a footnote and a bit of a mystery to many. Seems a terrific puncher though, and one of the very few fights (might even be the only complete one, I'm not sure) which you can find of him is him laying out an admittedly overmatched Hisao Minami for the count with a devastating right hand.

In terms of who does deserve that last spot, though...As you mention though they've done better work elsewhere both Canelo and Mayweather would be in with a shout simply because of the notable wins they have there. I'd be tempted to go with someone who was a bit more of a natural there and who produced their best (or at least some of their best) form there, which I don't think either Canelo or Floyd did.

Vasquez racked up a lot of defences and has a very good win over an emerging talent in Winky, but Winky was far from the finished article at that point and a blown-up Whitaker made Vasquez look pretty ordinary. Jackson had that short war with McCallum, beat a slightly faded Drayton and iced a future great 154 pounder in Norris, so his claim is a decent one albeit like Nino you'd probably tend to see his peak at Middleweight.

I wonder if Trinidad might be worth a shout? Had a lot more title fights as a Welter to be fair, but he arguably peaked at 154 and the importance of his win over Vargas can't be overstated here. Vargas was maybe moved towards that fight a little too soon, but he was genuinely a big, big talent and it was a great fight, easily Trinidad's finest moment. That fight was to 154 what Jones-Toney had been to 168 and Trinidad did well to overcome a rough patch in the middle of the fight where it looked like it was possibly getting away from him, as he did against Reid too.

Hearns, McCallum, Wright and Norris are the shoe ins, in that order for me.

I did consider Trinidad but do think Alvarez and Mayweather did better work at the weight. Mayweather's win over Alvarez is looking better and better as time passes, yes it was at a catchweight but the emphatic nature of the victory cannot be overrstated, chuck in Cotto and De La Hoya and it's marginally more impressive.

There's a fair few possibles but ultimately nobody who deserves the spot but someone who has less drawbacks than the others.

TRUSSMAN66 wrote:Obvious one is to swap Wilfredi Vazquez for the ordinary Daniel Zaragoza...Nothing World class about Zaragoza..

I guess it's Zaragoza's longevity at 122 which got him the nod there, Truss. Vazquez was obviously the more consistent performer in title fights, but Canizales aside his opposition wasn't all that great at 122 and he has some nice performances either side of that division to bolster his reputation, whereas Zaragoza stayed put at Super-Bantam for over a decade and fought most of the bigger names who passed through that division, albeit he generally lost against the very best.

I guess Zaragoza just gave more to the weight class than Vazquez. The fact that he was in some truly phenomenal wars also tends to help in these kind of lists. His win over Hatanaka was carnage, and as for those fights with Banke...Bordering on the absurd.

Which is a point - hasn't Super-Bantamweight produced an incredible amount of instant classics? It must be the best value-for-money division of them all when you consider how young a division it is, and how it's not really considered one of the glamourous ones.

You've got the aforementioned Zaragoza fights - his trilogy with Banke and the win over Hatanaka. Then there's Carrasquilla-Soo Hwan Hong (scarecely believable comeback), Pintor-Gomez, Ki Joon Lee-Banke (insane fight!), McKinney-Barrera, the first instalment of Barrera-Morales, the first three fights of the Marquez-Vazquez series (and those three were the ones which mattered) and Dunne-Cordoba.

That's an amazing amount of must-see fights. Obviously some of those fights don't have the fame or glamour / significance of title fights from other weight classes, and some of them weren't the most technically brilliant scraps. But in terms of pure excitement, drama and brutality I'm not sure any other division - certainly amongst the 'junior' ones - can match it.

Another thought is that Napoles has to be above Hearns at Welterweight, his pair of wins over Griffith trump anything on the hitmans record. In a head to head I'd potentially back Hearns but would be a close fight that ebbed and flowed, Napoles propensity to cut could prove the difference.

Yeah Hearns is always a difficult one to rate at Welter, Soul. It's that age old question about what your balance is between head to head capabilities, peak performances, overall consistency and record at the weight etc.

Tommy record on paper at 147 doesn't put him amongst the elite. Never unified, small amount of defences, lost his biggest fight there. But in that short space of time he made one of the most fearsome punching Welters in history in Cuevas look timid and gun shy, and being two or three rounds up against a prime Leonard before being stopped in the fourteenth probably tells you more about him as a Welter than fifteen knockout defences against many other Welterweights would.

I'm still a bit too set in my ways and into overall records and accomplishments, so for me Hearns wouldn't be that high as it takes more guesswork to put him there. But if someone values head to head ability more and puts him top five I can't complain too much. He's an absolute monster in that regard and it's hard to see more than maybe three Welters in history getting the better of him at his very best. Just bad luck for him that one of them happened to be around at the same time.

B-Hop as low as  number 5 ?Just no.And please tell me that Garry Grebb is a typo..

Derek Smalls wrote:B-Hop as low as  number 5 ?Just no.And please tell me that Garry Grebb is a typo..

Who would you have B-Hop above? Monzon and Greb are the clear one and two for me, while Hopkins and Hagler are interchangeable. Robinson is the difficult one to place, his status almost demands top spot but he lost to a lot of boxers who I simply do not see beating any of the aforementioned four. Splitting a series with Gene Fullmer, ok but losing to Basilio and Jones?

There always seems a disconnect between how the older crop of historians and notable writers / publications view Robinson the Middleweight, and how he's viewed by the fans there.

For the old guard, his Middleweight exploits seem to be the main reason for him consistently being placed as the greatest pound for pounder of them all. The IBRO also have him #1 at Middleweight for instance, and one of the first boxing books I ever owned (Harry Mullan's 1999 The World Encyclopedia of Boxing, expanding on Gilbert Odd's original) declares with no room for argument that Robinson was, 'The greatest Middleweight of all time, and very probably the greatest Welterweight as well'.

For the fans it's almost always the other way round - it's his Welterweight claims which are much stronger and unquestionable, whereas his Middleweight record, while obviously still more than enough to make him one of the greats in that division, is more indicative of him still being human and beatable. I think us fans are much closer to the truth as it goes, and he probably gets a touch overrated as a Middleweight by the historians because there's so much more film available of him there than there was at Welter.

I've got no issue with him scraping into a top five, but he should never be top three and definitely nowhere near number one. I think that was still basically a prime Robinson which lost to Turpin and struggled in the rematch, for instance, and the Luc Van Dam fight not long before had a bit of good fortune about it for Ray. After that first retirement there's no shame going more or less even with Fullmer (I thought he should have got the decision in their third fight) and Basilio, because they were great fighters in their own right and Ray had seen better days by then. But Basilio was no bigger than Robinson and had been through plenty of wars himself by then, not far away from being swept aside by Gene....So no real excuses for Robinson there.

It's one of the reasons you could argue that, purely on record or hard numbers, Greb has a claim to edge him out as the pound for pound number one, as Harry did seem to perform slightly better overall against the bigger guys he faced in the mature years of his career. That's not a fact, mind you, just one way you could interpret it, and the lack of footage of Greb along with the amount of No Decisions on his record (par for the course back then) makes it much more difficult to stick him ahead of Ray.

That's a fair summation Chris; Robinson was still a very good Middleweight but I do think there's a degree of trying to be too clever with some of these ratings and it seems a bit pointless. Those of us who care about the opinions of boxing historians know have a degree of knowledge to know when they're talking nonsense and those whom they could convince otherwise do not care.

Light heavyweight is a case in point; Archie Moore is a historically important fighter and it's a shame the cross arm defence isn't a thing any more but he does tend to get an elevated status. He's in the argument for being top five and i'd personally have him at five but second seems too high considering there was a significant gulf between he and Ezzard Charles. He had a lengthy title reign but aside from Harold Johnson and the fact he was an old man at the time, the overall quality he faced at that time wasn't great. When you combine his inconsistency with the consistency of Spinks, Foster, Tunney and even possibly Roy Jones i'd say he's a tad high.

I've tended to place Moore #2 at Light-Heavy, Soul, but I think it's quite close between him, Spinks and Tunney for those #2-4 spots behind Charles.

There was a relatively big gulf between Charles and Moore as proven when they squared off (Archie claimed he was unlucky in the decisions he dropped in the first two fights but he seems to be the only person who thinks he was), so I agree in some ways it's hard to imagine that the gap between a historical #1 and #2 could be so big, thus harming Moore's claim...But then again it's rare that two fighters of such magnitude are competing against each other in the same era. Would Charles have gone 3-0 (1) against either Spinks or Tunney? I guess your opinion on that must influence where you place Moore.

Moore was mastered in or around his pomp in a way that Spinks and Tunney weren't (albeit Gene had his hands full with Greb even in a couple of the fights he won), and if he'd declined at a similar age, or at a similar point in time, to Charles and Bivins we'd probably saying he hadn't even proved himself the second best of his own time, never mind all-time. But he basically had another career on top of the one he forged amongst the Murderers' Row once he'd finally won the title. His 4-1 record against Johnson does a hell of a lot for me, because Johnson was an immense fighter in his own right (if he misses a top 10 at Light-Heavy it can't be by much) and the fact that Moore was able to bow out while still champion is a big feather in his cap.

Moore's long career probably coincided with the deepest years ever seen at 175 which can be a blessing and a curse. You're likely to pick up more losses than a lot of other great Light-Heavies due to the level of competition, but they can usually be mitigated against for that same reason.

For me at Light-Heavy I'd probably go Charles, Moore, Spinks, Tunney and Foster in that order. But pound for pound I'd put both Spinks and Tunney ahead of Moore, as they both have much better Heavyweight credentials.

It's not something i'd grumble about too much and the Old Mongoose was one of the very best there has ever been. The Middleweight and Light Heavyweight divisions were stacked to the hilt with talent and you do rightfully point out that losses were invetiable when you have six fights with Bivins, Marshall, Doc Williams and Hardwick in as many months. I've long held the view that the world title meant very little back in those days, you look at Joey Maxim for instance and aside from the heat doing for Robinson he lost almost every time he stepped in the ring with one of the top black fighters of the day.

When the California State title means more than the world title you know something is very wrong. I do find it interesting that you can almost rate the murderers row in order and the man at the bottom still has a deeper record than the white champions of the day.