Who was the best English fighter of all time?

[BangEM]

Marchegiano

You're off the ignore list. I took everyone off, apart from the two booty scratching nonces - Rexy and RJJ-GOAT.

[KillaMane26]

LMAO. Who did Eubank Snr beat apart from Benn?

I'd even rank Benn higher than Eubank Snr because he went on to beat bigger and better boxers.

Right now, it's:

Lennox Lewis
Josh
Fury
Benn
Eubank Sr
Froch
Warrington
Bruno
Haye

I will admit.... I kinda winged my second pick lol. Why i said probably.

[BangEM]

I will admit.... I kinda winged my second pick lol. Why i said probably.

LMAO. Just say you don't want to give Josh the credit he deserves. No other English boxer has achieved what he achieved, apart from Lennox Lewis who achieved more. Fury would've had a shout if he had defended the titles he won and had a better resume. Apart from Wlad, Fury hasn't beaten anyone.

Regardless, Benn will always be greater than Eubank Sr. Warrington is also climbing up the ladder. Froch was just slightly above average in a very weak era. And both Bruno and Haye didn't beat anyone.

[KillaMane26]

LMAO. Just say you don't want to give Josh the credit he deserves. No other English boxer has achieved what he achieved, apart from Lennox Lewis who achieved more. Fury would've had a shout if he had defended the titles he won and had a better resume. Apart from Wlad, Fury hasn't beaten anyone.

Regardless, Benn will always be greater than Eubank Sr. Warrington is also climbing up the ladder. Froch was just slightly above average in a very weak era. And both Bruno and Haye didn't beat anyone.

Tbh i just didn't think too much outside of Josh. But u had a good list. Calm down Jack

[Marchegiano]

I'm not offended, I just don't want to let you get away with projecting your own very American obsession with racial and ethnic classification onto the English, which is something that a lot of American members try to do at this site.

To answer your question about Calzaghe .. Joe's father was Italian and he was born in London, England. He became Welsh after his parents relocated to Wales when he was a nipper.

Well **** I didn't know Joe was from London and so that line got all ****ed up. It was meant to reflect James Burke. Burke was meant to serve as the extreme difficult to understand case while Joe was meant to be the easy to understand case....because I thought his Welsh ass was actually born in Wales to Welsh parents.


Okay, so let's just focus on Joe then.

Joe's born in London, but he's Welsh because he was raised in Wales.

Bob Fitzsimmons is born in Cornwall and raised in New Zealand, but he's more English than Joe?

Bob's dad was Irish. Joe's Italian. Joe's born in an English city, Bob's born in a Cornish city. Why is it outlandish to question Bob's Englishness?

Correct me if I'm wrong here but a Cornish person is English in nationality alone, they are their own ethnic group, right?

So the only thing actually connecting Bob to England is him having been born in that nation. Not to English parents, not in an English cultural center, but he was born there and so he is English while Joe, also born in England, is not, AND, I'm a racist dick for questioning this logic and pointing out if you be too hard nose you can strip every modern English HW champ of their Englishness?

Is there an official cut off date? Three years old isn't old enough to be English, ten and twelve are definitely English though, and I'm the racist here...

[Marchegiano]

Marchegiano

You're off the ignore list. I took everyone off, apart from the two booty scratching nonces - Rexy and RJJ-GOAT.

That's sweet buttercup, thicken that skin. You go girl.

[kafkod]

Well **** I didn't know Joe was from London and so that line got all ****ed up. It was meant to reflect James Burke. Burke was meant to serve as the extreme difficult to understand case while Joe was meant to be the easy to understand case....because I thought his Welsh ass was actually born in Wales to Welsh parents.


Okay, so let's just focus on Joe then.

Joe's born in London, but he's Welsh because he was raised in Wales.

Bob Fitzsimmons is born in Cornwall and raised in New Zealand, but he's more English than Joe?

Bob's dad was Irish. Joe's Italian. Joe's born in an English city, Bob's born in a Cornish city. Why is it outlandish to question Bob's Englishness?

Correct me if I'm wrong here but a Cornish person is English in nationality alone, they are their own ethnic group, right?

So the only thing actually connecting Bob to England is him having been born in that nation. Not to English parents, not in an English cultural center, but he was born there and so he is English while Joe, also born in England, is not, AND, I'm a racist dick for questioning this logic and pointing out if you be too hard nose you can strip every modern English HW champ of their Englishness?

Is there an official cut off date? Three years old isn't old enough to be English, ten and twelve are definitely English though, and I'm the racist here...

The Cornish have their own language, and many of them identify as Cornish, rather than English.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornish_nationalism

"In 936 Athelstan fixed Cornwall's eastern boundary at the Tamar. The Italian scholar Polydore Vergil in his famous Anglica Historia, published in 1535, wrote that: 'the whole Countrie of Britain ...is divided into iiii partes; whereof the one is inhabited of Englishmen, the other of Scottes, the third of Wallshemen, and the fowerthe of Cornishe people, which all differ emonge them selves, either in tongue, ...in manners, or ells in lawes and ordinaunces."

"Writing in 1616, Arthur Hopton stated: 'England is ...divided into 3 great Provinces, or Countries ...every of them speaking a several and different language, as English, Welsh and Cornish.'"



While on holiday in Scotland, I personally witnessed a Cornish fisherman punch a Scotsman in the mouth for insisting that he - the Cornishman - was English. I don't know what nationality Bob Fitzsimmons ascribed to himself, but I reckon most people who had dealings with him would have been happy to go along with whatever he said ...

[HeadBodyBodyBody]

The Welsh, Scotts and Irish are different from the children of immigrants like AJ in 2 ways:

First, they are indigenous Brits, genetically the same as the English. If an Englishman, Scotsman, Welshman and Irish man walked into a bar, nobody would know which one was which till they opened their mouths and started talking!

Second, they were born and/or raised up in countries which are not England, and naturally self-identify as belonging to those countries, rather than to England.

I have direct personal experience of how this works. I was born and raised in England, but my ancestry is primarily Scottish/Ulster Irish. My parents relocated to Scotland when I was 19 years old. I stayed behind in England, along with one of my brothers.

My brother married a lady from Africa and I have 3 dark skinned nieces who identify as English. I also have 3 sisters who grew up in Scotland - the youngest was born there - and identify as Scottish. Myself, I identify as British first, English second.

I get you, man, not trying to be aggro, just saying that Englishness is hard to pin down, a point with which you seem to concur. Certainly, there are older people who were born and sometimes even raised in colonial outposts like Kenya, and there is no doubt about their Englishness, for example.

On Calzaghe. From my point of view, I see him as Welsh... and British? sure. But English? Never. I believe Joe's mum is Welsh.. Joe is surely more Welsh than anything else? You say you identify as British first, English second. In that case, I'd suggest you are not English, not really. The Union is something we tolerate only..

On genetics and Irishness, Scottishness, etc. You surely know that these nationalities descended from the Celts, and so even if there is genetic similarity, there are big divides in culture. For instance, proper Cornish people think of themselves as independent from the rest of the UK.. EDIT: Aha, I see you address the question of Cornishness in the post above!

A quintessentially English boxer would be Our 'Enry? Happy to be shown otherwise. As I say, I would never describe Lennox as English

[-Kev-]

Probably Lennox Lewis IMO. I know his nationality is murky but he says he's English and as an Englishman I'm happy to acknowledge that.

I see him as English. He talks English, his accent sounds more British more than anything else to me, he was born in England and he says he considers himself British. So I would say he’s from there. Sure he represented Canada in the amateurs and Olympics but if someone wants to claim the country they were born in as the country they are from, then nobody can tell them they’re not from there. Because they literally are from there.

[Theuklion]

For me, Lennox Lewis & then Duke Mckenzie, British, European and multiple weight world champion, extremely technical fighter and one of our best boxers that I watched during the late 80s and early 90s