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By Lyle Fitzsimmons - It’s a pretty slow stretch for boxing these days.
With a series of high-end fights just passed and at least a few more good ones on the way, this year’s month of August is largely left for we opinion-pushers to roust old enemies, take aim at recurring targets or tilt at the nearest available windmills.
Or, if none of those things are readily inspirational… there’s always the Internet.
With neither the proximity to take in any weekend action on site, nor the cable access to glean anything from television, I was instead left this weekend to scour the online landscape for something to trigger a creative flow that might cover 1,000 or so words.
As luck would have it, my muse was Facebook.
While running the gauntlet of political commentaries, life-affirming quotations and people taking pictures of their breakfasts (really?!?), I came across a go-to acquaintance whose occasional boxing-related posts have been sometimes known to wind us up in a good-natured cyber firefight.
This time, while I still hold my nose at his notion that Bernard Hopkins and James Toney ought to rank higher than Roy Jones Jr. on a list of top middleweights since Marvin Hagler – Jones did whip prime versions of both, after all – the presentation did get me thinking about lists of my own.
But rather than limiting myself to a particular division, I’ll tweak his construct slightly and simply go with the best fighters I think I’ve seen – either in person or on live TV – across all weight divisions since I first became a magazine-buying, letter-writing wannabe 30 years ago in 1982.
Here, in no order besides stream of consciousness, are my “10 for 30.”
Ray Leonard – Admittedly, his most consistent days – defeats of Wilfred Benitez, Roberto Duran and Thomas Hearns – were behind him by 1982, but the jaw-dropping nature of his return to beat a high-end Hagler (and yes, he won the fight…) remains vivid enough to warrant inclusion 25 years later. [Click Here To Read More]
With a series of high-end fights just passed and at least a few more good ones on the way, this year’s month of August is largely left for we opinion-pushers to roust old enemies, take aim at recurring targets or tilt at the nearest available windmills.
Or, if none of those things are readily inspirational… there’s always the Internet.
With neither the proximity to take in any weekend action on site, nor the cable access to glean anything from television, I was instead left this weekend to scour the online landscape for something to trigger a creative flow that might cover 1,000 or so words.
As luck would have it, my muse was Facebook.
While running the gauntlet of political commentaries, life-affirming quotations and people taking pictures of their breakfasts (really?!?), I came across a go-to acquaintance whose occasional boxing-related posts have been sometimes known to wind us up in a good-natured cyber firefight.
This time, while I still hold my nose at his notion that Bernard Hopkins and James Toney ought to rank higher than Roy Jones Jr. on a list of top middleweights since Marvin Hagler – Jones did whip prime versions of both, after all – the presentation did get me thinking about lists of my own.
But rather than limiting myself to a particular division, I’ll tweak his construct slightly and simply go with the best fighters I think I’ve seen – either in person or on live TV – across all weight divisions since I first became a magazine-buying, letter-writing wannabe 30 years ago in 1982.
Here, in no order besides stream of consciousness, are my “10 for 30.”
Ray Leonard – Admittedly, his most consistent days – defeats of Wilfred Benitez, Roberto Duran and Thomas Hearns – were behind him by 1982, but the jaw-dropping nature of his return to beat a high-end Hagler (and yes, he won the fight…) remains vivid enough to warrant inclusion 25 years later. [Click Here To Read More]
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