The king of middleweight division!

[blackbelt2003]

I'm not a fan of ranking guys we can't really see.

Greb, Ketchel and the like may have been fantastic early pioneers, but I don't like to include any fighters from before WW2 a) because boxing was still undeveloped before then and b) most of the ranking is done simply on their record and contemporary media articles, since there is no fight footage.


Therefore, my middleweight list would be:


1) Ray Robinson - won 5 titles amidst the toughest competition any champ EVER had to face in ANY division
2) Carlos Monzon - his middleweight reign was close to perfect
3) Marvin Hagler - Dominated for 7 whole years and featured in some of the 80's finest fights
4) Bernard Hopkins - 20-odd defences and a unified title says a lot in this day and age.
5) Jake La Motta - His reign wasn't as impressive as it could have been, but there were so many other great wins!


Black

[paulmmv]

Sugar Ray Robinson was the best

[wmute]

i dun wanna be mean by are u ****in stupid
did u not see tha tunney-dempsey fight?
tunney was down for 14 seconds
i dun care how good he did after he got knocked down he was down for 10 seconds he LOST!
EVERYBODY KNOWS IT
so think twice b4 sayin, he won, in tha record book it mite say he won, but he really lost

the count was longer than needed because dempsey did not walk to the neutral corner, as required by the rules, which were new (1st HW title fight with neutral corner rule), but still rules.

the referee started counting after dempsey moved to the corner, as required by the rules

so the record book says tunney W10 and it's really W10 (on pts)

and btw if you watched the fight you can notice that tunney was looking at the ref by the 3 "count" which would have been the "real" 9 (of the timekeeper guy), but being smart decides to wait until the ref's 9.

[McGoorty]

Easily Sugar Ray Robinson. Look at his wins. He beat Jake Lamotta 5 times, beat Kid Gavilan, Randy Turpin, Carmen Basilio, Gene Fullmer. I believe he was champ 5 times. The man was unbeatable in his prime. Most complete fighter ever.

I agree, Robinson is number 1 in my book. My main Problem with Greb is the ridiculous set up they had in America in Greb's first half of his career in particular, namely lot's of 10 round No Decision fights, WHY?, it sometimes inflated their records out of all proportion making records of H of Famers look far better due to the hiding of many actual losses. The farce of N.D.'s is a joke, all a humbled fighter had to do was go 10 measley rounds except overseas like in Australia where there was always a decision IF THEY COULD GO 20 rounds. This often resulted in one guy knocking an opponent down a DOZEN times and the poor punch drunk fool comes out after 10 rounds to GET A DRAW ??? , weird. In regards to Harry's incredible amount of fights, take a second to look at Les Darcy, DEAD age 21, best fighter on the planet in 1916 and 17 and then DEAD, gone by late 1917, a PERSECUTED And HOUNDED boy with the heart of gold. in just under 2 years, Les DARCY had all but annihilated the entire division as well as knocking out cold the Australian Heavyweight Titleist, Harold HARDWICK to be THE CHAMP after losing some teeth AND Had a fight every 2nd week for almost the whole period racking up at least 30 plus fights and losing just One fight by D.Q.,... At that sort of rate, Les DARCY could have had well over 250 fights by 1932, and by that time he'd have over a 100 KO's and over 200 wins too. Any further study on him and I think most reasonable people would have LES in The TOP 10 Middleweights along with RAY and HARRY, all 3 are Phenomenal.

[McGoorty]

I'm not a fan of ranking guys we can't really see.

Greb, Ketchel and the like may have been fantastic early pioneers, but I don't like to include any fighters from before WW2 a) because boxing was still undeveloped before then and b) most of the ranking is done simply on their record and contemporary media articles, since there is no fight footage.


Therefore, my middleweight list would be:


1) Ray Robinson - won 5 titles amidst the toughest competition any champ EVER had to face in ANY division
2) Carlos Monzon - his middleweight reign was close to perfect
3) Marvin Hagler - Dominated for 7 whole years and featured in some of the 80's finest fights
4) Bernard Hopkins - 20-odd defences and a unified title says a lot in this day and age.
5) Jake La Motta - His reign wasn't as impressive as it could have been, but there were so many other great wins!


Black

WHAT are you serious ????????? What on earth gives you idea that boxers and boxing was undeveloped before 1945,.........TOTAL RUBBISH, I'd reckon that your Top 100 1950-present, team 9divs for instance against my 1892 - 1950 team will blow your team away by about 75 wins to 25. Obviously all fights scheduled for 15 rounds, your sports science theories mean little in the real world of PAIN and MORE PAIN. Do you seriously hold a grudge against guys because they had the temerity to NOT Be In FULL HD DEFINITION ?

[McGoorty]

I think that this is HARRY GREB!

He only lost 3 of his first 233 fights. One was to future heavyweight champ GENE TUNNEY (rematch) and another 8 years previous when his arm was broken in the 2nd round. Even more amazing is that GREB fought a big part of his career blind in his right eye after being thumbed by "Kid" Norfolk in 1921. Here's a middleweight who inflicted a beating and only loss on the record of LH and future Heavyweight champion GENE TUNNEY. (the only man to defeat DEMPSEY). Here's a guy who routinely fought light heavy and heavyweight fighters!

Darcy beat up bigger men too ( Aust. HW champ's even ) and I think he could've beaten Greb at least 1 out of two bouts and even Tunney too. Other notable MW's who knocked out top HW's were Eddie McGoorty "the Oshkosh Terror" and Stanley Ketchel and everybody knows Bob Fitzsimmons and also the great Aussie MW, Dave Sands. Now along with the great Harry Greb these above fighters would dominate just about any era. They were brilliant.

[McGoorty]

Among the boxers that I know, think that the kings of the middle divisions among the legends would be Hagler, Leonard, Hearns & Duran in no particular order.

And in of today, it would be RJJ, Hopkins, DLH, Trinidad...

come on,.just how can you even rate Duran at MW, as a middleweight Duran is nowhere near the top 50 MW's, if you don't know nuthin' about boxing history, do some reading and watch the old films (all of them) before you make massive statements. Until you do, just try to be humourous or something. By the way Duran peaked at LW and is obviously one of the great LW's but at MW he was a shell of himself.

[McGoorty]

True. If you want dominance, how about Hagler? Hopkins is dominant, but thats mainly because of the lack of worthy opposition. But he would be competitive against Hopkins, until Hagler overwhelmed him in the 6th.

My problem rating Hagler is the lack of great fighters he beat, Hearns had no chin, Leonard DID outpoint him and Marvin should have KO'd Ray if he was so great. Duran was a blown up LW, an old man and Hagler couldn't stop him. Antuofermo, gotta be kidding, as far the rest go, name me one who could've beaten any top 60 MW. That;s why I don't have Hagler in the SRR, Greb, Walker, Darcy, Zale and Burleys, Marv may be good enogh to beat some of them but Haglers resume is bloated with nobodies and a FEW names. I don't blame Hagler for that, he dominated what was put in front of him. This is only my opinion.

[McGoorty]

That is the common opinion in regards to Cerdan being even better at welterweight, although I don't believe any footage of him exists from those days, so it's hard to tell for sure.

I have quite a bit of footage of him as a middleweight though, and with the exception of the few minutes that's available of the LaMotta fight (where he was fighting with basically one arm), he's very impressive in each of the other ones (Zale, Dick Turpin, and a few other European middleweights of that time).

Like you say, his resume doesn't quite match up with some of the other greats at this weight. But in my opinion, I think the great talent he showed at 160 is more than enough to convince me that he deserves a spot in my all-time top 10 at this weight, and I'm more than comfortable ranking him in that very select group (based on both talent and accomplishments).

I agree with you about Cerdan's opposition, but we really don't know how good they were, but they were pretty good fighters I would say. This era in the MW's has two major question marks, the early deaths of Marcel and Dave Sands. Sands was so good that even Robinson avoided him, he said something along the lines that he thought Sands was his most dangerous potential opponent, there were claims made that Sugar Ray ducked him. As for those claims I don't honestly know if they are true, if anyone can expand on the Robinson/Sands episode I will be glad of it. Robinson did for certain admire Sands who has the reputation as the greatest Aboriginal fighter of all time, I think so.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I highly recommend you watch Sands beating the hell out of Carl Bobo Olsen, you can see how good Dave was and you'll understand his greatness.

[GJC]

I agree with you about Cerdan's opposition, but we really don't know how good they were, but they were pretty good fighters I would say. This era in the MW's has two major question marks, the early deaths of Marcel and Dave Sands. Sands was so good that even Robinson avoided him, he said something along the lines that he thought Sands was his most dangerous potential opponent, there were claims made that Sugar Ray ducked him. As for those claims I don't honestly know if they are true, if anyone can expand on the Robinson/Sands episode I will be glad of it. Robinson did for certain admire Sands who has the reputation as the greatest Aboriginal fighter of all time, I think so.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I highly recommend you watch Sands beating the hell out of Carl Bobo Olsen, you can see how good Dave was and you'll understand his greatness.

Sands like Darcy had an awful lot more to give in the ring, not so sure that Cerdan had much more to be honest. Think he might well have beaten La Motta in the return but Robinson was looming for either of them plus he was 32/33 with a fair few miles on the clock. Great fighter Cerdan gets a little overlooked IMO