For boxing people, the great heavyweights, specifically the ones they patronize most of all, help define who they are as boxing people?
The internet is awash with top ten at heavyweight. As Adam Berlin put it on Boxing.com this month, ?more people know or think they know heavyweight boxing? than any other weight and that ?finding a consensus about who the greatest heavyweight of all time is can be a maddening exercise.? He is right, but I would go further. People invest something of themselves in the greatest heavyweights. For boxing people, the great heavyweights, specifically the ones they patronize most of all, help define who they are as boxing people. Bias becomes more inherent; whether because of time or place or person, the marriage between fan and fighter is never more pronounced, never more defined. For the most part, this is a wonderful thing.
But it is also why our corner of the web groans under the combined weight of debate and abuse, why tumbling down into the warren of heavyweight debate online is the fight-fan equivalent of falling into Wonderland. Logic spirals away into the distance, twisted by the gravity of these fistic titans.
I have my own logic too. I have created my own gravity, too.
My logic, that gravity, is born of an eleven-month exploration of a three-figure total of boxers who qualified for the biggest division in their own era. These men, in the final analysis, they are only opponents for the giants who inhabit the spots above. This is a fact almost hateful to me. As an exercise, even a maddening one, it felt like it had more meaning than that at the time, but it didn?t: below lie the fish these behemoths swallowed to make themselves massive. Above lie krakens. The krakens make the fish seem a sorrowful irrelevance.
My gravity, my logic carries that weight. Here is what I would like to tell you, what is implied: these months spent in research, ensconced in headphones trying to hear the punches go in, pouring over newspaper articles written about fighters headphones could not help me hear, makes my top ten better than others you may have read ? but the truth is more troubling.
The truth is: there is no top ten.
Jim Jeffries, Jack Dempsey, Harry Wills, Evander Holyfield, they all belong upon it and are not upon it. Simultaneously, they do not belong on it, for reasons I cover in detail in Part Nine. How can both of these things be true?
A heavyweight top ten devours logic in the same way that a black-hole devours light. Beyond a black hole?s event horizon, physical laws break down. Beyond the event horizon described by the unoffending Sigel ?11? on the list of the 100 Greatest Heavyweights of All Time, logic breaks down. That is because there is more reason for all but two of the following fighters to be ranked at #11 than there are for their being ranked at #10. Mike Tyson is a physical afterbirth of true greatness, an athletic genius aborted by his self-destructive impulses and mental frailty; he does not belong. Rocky Marciano is a small cruiserweight masquerading as a heavyweight, a sitting duck for the booming punches of his modern cousins as he stumbles after them with his tyrannosaur?s reach; he does not belong. Lennox Lewis was twice blasted out by middling contenders revealing a vulnerability anathema, above all else, to Boxing.com?s readers; he does not belong.
Yet here they are, vying for the top spot behind the two twin-suns unoffended by even the gravitational pull of a theoretical singularity. Joe Louis and Muhammad Ali belong entirely, belonged even among the top ten of the One Hundred Greatest of All Time Pound-for-Pound, but even they tortured me anew in separating them. Managing it was no less difficult than placing in order these other eight fighters who do not quite belong.
That ordering is contained in this article. Like the introduction, it is over-written and I would like to invite you to read it in two visits because it is so big that perhaps only this website, our website, would bear that weight uncomplainingly, meaning it is a little longer than is necessarily healthy for human eyes to read upon a monitor.
I offer it to you with an apology, but also as a gift. I hope you like it.
Now listen.
This, is how I have it:
#10 Mike Tyson (50-6)
?Iron? Mike Tyson denoted the significance of mental strength at the sharp end of boxing. Had he the will to match his astonishing physical capabilities, it?s possible that Tyson would have been the greatest heavyweight of all time. As it stood, a lack of discipline, commitment, grit, prevented him fulfilling his astonishing potential. Tyson scrapes into the top ten here, but for a while it looked like number one was a possibility.
It was James ?Quick? Tillis of all people that showed Tyson what boxing was. ?I was out of shape because of [an] illness and also because of drinking and partying too hard,? he said of that fight. ?He gave me such a body beating I couldn?t even walk?I found out what fighting was really about that night.?
But Tyson didn?t learn lessons; four years later, at the time of his expected outclassing of James ?Buster? Douglas, Tyson was training on a steady diet of hotel-maids and ?unconventional Japanese women? while supposedly eating only soup in a drastic attempt to lose the thirty pounds he had gained since the Carl Williams slaughter. He was unfocused, slovenly, complacent. Boxing punished him.
His complacency took hold by way of dominance. He smashed out nineteen overmatched journeymen before Tillis extended him the distance, and more seasoned men followed in similarly one-sided fashion. But it was his mid-late eighties prime that really established him as special, as a series of world-class fighters were dispatched with a steaming barrel of vicious torque unseen since Dempsey, but in this instance, the bull-rushing destroyer weighed 215 lbs. and hit accordingly. A creaking Larry Holmes fell in four, Pinklon Thomas in six, Trevor Berbick in just two; most terrifying of all was his first round knockout of legitimate lineal Champion Michael Spinks.
Jabbing fast, swinging wide, he had recognized in his prey the by now familiar vacancy of expression that stretched beyond fear and into hopelessness ? ?I see that moment, I got you? ? and abandoned all pretense of humanity. He was a burning ogre of a fighter, delivering hot violence behind technical surety. Spinks was destroyed by Tyson?s malignant psychic presence almost as much as unequalled physical attack and Iron Mike had something that Holyfield never did; a night upon which he arguably could not have been beaten.
I don?t buy that argument, and Tyson crumbled soon after, emerging a convicted rapist armed with an untamed, eerie fury for a second career that could never have matched his first incarnation, but the unique brutality of his first will never be forgotten.
Other top 100 heavyweights defeated: Larry Holmes (Top Ten), Pinklon Thomas (#55), Donovan Ruddock (#63), Trevor Berbick (#64), Michael Spinks (#76),Tony Tucker (#90).
#9 Jack Johnson (55-11-8; Newspaper Decisions 15-0-3)
Jack Johnson began life at #12 on this list, and he did not move for six long months, the reason being his stubborn refusal, explored in Part Eight and Part Nine, to meet either his #1 contender, Sam Langford, or his #2 contender, Joe Jeannette. That he failed to take on his third most qualified opponent, Sam McVey, seems almost irrelevant such were the failings of Johnson?s title reign which I would regard as even worse than Dempsey?s and probably the worst ever by a long reigning undisputed heavyweight King.
Where Johnson differs from Dempsey is in the work he did before he came to the title. Dempsey?s was deeply impressive, but Johnson matched all of the men that he avoided when he held the title. He eliminated a whole generation of lethal heavyweights for Jim Jeffries and his successors then refused to rematch them when he came to the title himself. So why does this matter?
It matters because Johnson?s meetings with them were strictly pre-prime, most especially in respect of Sam Langford, his most dogged and dangerous pursuer during those seven long years during which Johnson tried to enforce his desire to be ?the last black heavyweight champion? as well as the first. Yes, for the most part, Johnson drew the color line on his own people.
Langford was a small middleweight when Johnson thrashed him in 1906 and the Champion wanted no part of the smaller man when he hit the heights of 180 lbs. Jeannette matched Johnson on many occasions, and Johnson was his clear master, but even on the occasion of their final match in 1906, a newspaper draw in which Johnson may have deserved the nod, Jeannette was described by the Police Gazette as a ?comer? who ?wasn?t getting opportunities? and not yet the finished article. Indeed, there were times when Jeannette seemed to have gained a new class during Johnson?s title years, but Johnson made sure a rematch never materialized.
In McVey, however, Johnson beat a fighter close to his best despite his youth who on the occasion of their final match-up was even made a favorite such was the impression he made upon the public. Johnson utterly thrashed him, outclassing him on the way to a twentieth round stoppage. And therein lies the rub. Johnson trashed McVey, Jeannette, Langford and other impressive men such us Sandy Ferguson, Denver Ed Martin, Jim Flynn, and when he was given the chance at a Champion, Tommy Burns in such one-sided and impressive fashion that his title run becomes easier to forgive.
In defending that title, he did avoid his most qualified challengers, but he tended to thrash the opposition, embarrassing near misses against Jack O?Brien and Jim Johnson aside. And there is one more thing. Sometimes, Johnson must have felt that he was facing off against the whole world in matching the most qualified white challengers. It is said that during his ringwalk versus Jeffries the band played ?All Coons Look Alike to Me,? and that while he brutalized the former champion in the ring, ?Gentleman? Jim Corbett screamed racial insults at him from ringside. Johnson spoke later, perhaps having added a dash of the color for which he was famous, of a single black spectator watching from the furthest reaches of the stadium, having clambered upon the highest bleacher to watch the legend unfold. He was the loneliest man in the world on such occasions, and he kicked ass anyway.
Other top 100 heavyweights defeated: Jim Jeffries (#14), Sam Langford (#15), Bob Fitzsimmons (#27), Joe Jeannette (#29), Sam McVey (#30), Tommy Burns (#35), Denver Ed Martin (#99)
#8 Sonny Liston (50-4)
Springs Toledo in his book The Gods of War reckons Sonny Liston the best heavyweight that ever boxed and ?among the most fearsome wrecking machines the heavyweight division has ever known.? I don?t go quite as far as Toledo does but I?d agree with him that Liston is among the most dangerous of heavyweights. Whether he would do better, as Toledo imagines, against the massed ranks of the greatest heavyweights in history than any of the other Champions is a matter buried deeply within the cut. It?s Ali, you see; it?s always Ali with Liston.
The two met twice in confrontations that remain the most controversial title fights in boxing history. In the first, fought in 1964 in Florida, Liston quit at the end of six rounds, dominated for the most part by the fleet-footed Ali. In the second, relegated to a Maine high school grounds such was the stink created by the first, Ali did the incredible, perhaps the impossible, knocking Liston to the canvas in the first round and when befuddled referee Jersey Joe Walcott allowed the time-keeper to do his job for him, Liston had been apparently been knocked out. Or had he?
This depends upon who you talk to. Of the major biographers, Boxing.com?s Paul Gallender is probably the most vociferous in seeking to rescue Liston from the shadow of Ali, trying with writing to reverse two stoppage defeats and resurrect him as among the greatest of heavyweights; not far behind is Nick Tosches who writes without flinching of Liston?s double dive, dives forced upon him by the Italian mob to whom Sonny was beholden. Note, however, that Gallender is open about his use of a psychic in communing with the soul of Liston in advancing his work and that Tosches claims, entirely bereft of meaningful evidence, that Archie Moore took a dive against Rocky Marciano. At the outer edges of Liston?s legend, strange frequencies vibrate.
For his own part, Sonny claimed the knockout perpetrated upon him by Ali was legitimate, and Ali has since talked up the ?anchor punch? that did the job. That the film makes a liar out of both of them after the fact, Liston throwing himself around on the canvas in something more akin to histrionics than hurt, Ali screaming at his fallen foe to rise, has not stopped a huge industry springing up around what has somehow become the most iconic knockout in history. As to the first fight, seven doctors testified to the seriousness of the shoulder injury Liston suffered, that he had apparently suffered long before he stepped into the ring.
Where this leaves us is none-the-wiser; Liston could be a legitimate two-time quitter or an unassailable warrior wearing the cuffs in the two biggest fights of his career. But as Toledo also says, ?the fighter who stepped into the ring against Cassius Clay was not the fighter who stepped into the ring against Cleveland Williams five years earlier.? Something had changed for Sonny by the time of his two contests with Ali, even if that something was as prosaic as old age.
Previous to that, he demonstrated to me a jab, a hook, a right hand, an uppercut and head-movement all among the best in the history of the division. He numbers among the strongest, the most technically assured and the most powerful in that division, and despite that first round stoppage against Ali, had one of the better chins. Bangers like Williams landed completely without result, and Marty Marshall, who twice fractured his jaw with two different punches, describes a fighter unblinking in the face of the worst pain the ring can deliver. His run from 1959 through to his lifting the title against Floyd Patterson in a destruction of a legitimate Champion unequalled until Tyson bulldozed Spinks all those years later was as terrifying as anything seen in the ring, ranked men destroyed one after the other by a fighter who seemed without peer. Whether out-punching Nino Valdes, out-boxing Zora Folley or out-hustling Eddie Machen, Liston showed marked and vast superiority. Machen, the only man to last twelve rounds with him, lost almost every round in doing so.
If this were a head-to-head list, Liston would rank even higher; a more balanced view sees him planted near the gate to the top five, massive fist cocked less some more minor fighter should try to creep through.
Other top 100 heavyweights defeated: Floyd Patterson (#18), Zora Folley (#43), Eddie Machen (#45), Nino Valdes (#87)
#7 Larry Holmes (69-6)
Larry Holmes was a 215-lb. war-machine, a Frankenstein?s monster of a fighter combining strata of both Muhammad Ali and Joe Louis to create as unique and brilliant a fighter as the heavyweight division has ever produced.
Bereft of the Louis killing punch, he nevertheless throws combination punches with a fluidity and grace of which the Bomber would have been proud. Not for he Joe?s half-hop shuffle into range though, and although neither does Holmes possess that menacing feint, he substituted a smooth and floating footwork comparable to that of Ali. Lacking the devastation of one and the electric speed of the other he could never amount to quite as much as either, but Holmes was astounding in his skill.
Often criticized for his level of competition, he was the legitimate heavyweight Champion of the world for five years into which time he crushed a commendable twelve defenses, part of a 48-0 run. These defenses were of varying quality, but they produced more top one-hundred victims than any fighters outside of the top four, in conjunction with a surprisingly meandering comeback after his retirement upon his defeat by Michael Spinks.
So it is not the quality of the opposition that keeps Holmes from the very upper reaches of this list, but rather the terrible difficulties some of these opponents inflicted upon them, and his reluctance to provide rematches. A green Mike Weaver gave him trouble in 1979; Tim Witherspoon pushed him to a majority decision (a draw on my card) in 1983; and as he began to creak, Carl Williams pushed him in a fight so difficult Holmes threatened retirement upon his victory. None of these men received rematches.
Less often considered were the fights in which he surprised, such as his first tussle with the much more established Earnie Shavers in 1978, one of the all-time great jabbing performances at any weight, a fight Holmes won 12-0. Or his astonishing, blistering war with Ken Norton, a fight Holmes won by a hair despite an injured arm. Or his rematch with Shavers, in which he climbed off the canvas after swallowing perhaps the single hardest punch ever thrown by a boxer, a right hand smash which would have stopped all but a handful of the fighters on this list.
Heart, chin, skill, speed, Holmes was also among the ultimate of ring survivors, a quirk that saw him hold a place ring-center for very nearly thirty years.
Other top 100 heavyweights defeated: Muhammad Ali (Top Two), Ken Norton (#22), Tim Witherspoon (#34), Earnie Shavers (#54), Trevor Berbick (#64), Ray Mercer (#68), Mike Weaver (#73), Gerry Cooney (#95)
#6 George Foreman (76-5-0)
George Foreman, like Liston, is ensconced within the shadow of Muhammad Ali. As Mike Casey put it writing for this website, Ali left Foreman ?stripped of his confidence for the remainder of his peak career.? Foreman, though, found a way to clamber out. While all that remained for Liston was a string of knockouts against second-class opposition and a final, ultimate, premature test for that dead-eyed stare of his, Foreman found God, had five sons and three daughters, and made an astonishing return to the ring, Mailer?s ?negrotude? no longer, but instead the affable, cuddly, outright charming ?Big George.? Hitting the comeback trail in 1987 he rapidly became the humane flipside to Tyson?s rapidly cooling bad-boy shtick. But Big George was serious ? a colossal set of arms, built out of sight of prying eyes, was the cornerstone to an offense that was turgid, even slow, but that wrought a punch capable of shaking mountains. Foreman knew this, for all that he also knew that his weaknesses were many.
The Champion was Michael Moorer, an outstanding fighter but one who perhaps had weaknesses where Foreman had strength. For while Moorer was a fighter who might ?walk out in the middle of sparring? and was ?unsure of himself? according to sometime trainer Teddy Atlas, Foreman was certitude, the scar tissue that thickened around the wounds hacked into his younger psyche by Ali protecting him. Through twelve rounds, he swallowed Moorer?s bombs and began, gradually, to time and hurt him, finally landing a punch that shook the mountain that was the heavyweight title. Foreman tricked and trapped a physically superior boxer on to a punch that few men could have survived. At forty-five years of age, nearly twenty years after he first won the heavyweight title, Foreman had won it again.
Maybe the greatest achievement by any heavyweight, it is what sees him ranked here nearer the #5 spot than the #10, but Foreman?s first career was that of a great heavy. The dual world-ending destructions of Joe Frazier, alone, make him worthy, but the legends he made against Ken Norton, who crumbled in just two, and Ron Lyle, with whom he made perhaps the greatest ever heavyweight war, are no irrelevance.
Had he not have found Moorer with that incredible and destructive punch though, I think a spot outside the ten would have beckoned.
Other top 100 heavyweights defeated: Joe Frazier (Top Ten), Ken Norton (#22), Ron Lyle (#46), Michael Moorer (#49)
#5 Joe Frazier (32-4-1)
?I couldn?t urinate,? says Joe Frazier of the aftermath to the monumental effort he delivered against Muhammad Ali in the aptly named Fight of the Century. ?I couldn?t stand up and walk. I couldn?t eat or drink.? In the build-up, too, he had suffered, from high blood-pressure among other things, describing in his autobiography ?a body under siege? but it made perverted sense to Joe that he should burn as the fight neared, as his ire heightened, as the hatred that fueled the fusing of his flesh and his mind quickened. At the bell he told Ali flatly: ?I am going to kill you.? And when the trap sprung, he set to his business with the relish of Achilles.
?The first round I?m a little tight,? Frazier once understated. ?That?s when you?ll see the other guy do his thing.? The other guy. The opponent. Some blank-faced bovines for Frazier to butcher. Ali did his thing for the first two rounds while Frazier laughed at him, openly. In the fourth he caught Ali with the first of many deadly hooks, arguably unsurpassable hooks, a hook more ingrained in him than any punch of any fighter on film, his style was that hook, when he threw it he was that hook, and when Ali felt it ?bells ring? in his head. ?You know what?s coming,? Bob Foster once said of that punch, ?but it still gets to you before you think it?s going to get to you.?
Ali found him again; Frazier fought faster. There is a shot taken from a gantry camera for that fight that is as instructive as it was terrifying; Ali moving to his left, that famous floating sidestepping motion, but he couldn?t alight on the canvas for even a second because loping in tandem with him, just as fast but even more deadly, was Frazier, cutting off the ring on Ali before he knew where he was headed, and hooks, and short right hands inside, and grind grind grind. Frazier is unique upon this list because he is arguably the finest exponent of his fighting style in history at any weight. Ali is a blistering speedster but in the end, by a narrow margin, only an imposter to Sugar Ray Robinson. Larry Holmes can be named among the consummate box-punching technicians, but is no Sugar Ray Leonard. It?s gravity, it?s body-mechanics, it?s physical law, but perhaps these did not apply to Frazier because on film even Henry Armstrong did not appear his equal; of course, we do not have much film of Henry Armstrong but he is the only heavyweight that comes off the better when compared to his genius foil, even if it was just for eighteen short months, because who could keep this up for any length of time?
This win, this greatest of heavyweight wins, toppled Frazier past his prime, the fuel that kept that 205-lb. frame moving forwards under fire in a furnace depleted. He lost his top one percent, and fought in the style that could least spare that one percent. Already, however, he had hammered out his position as a preeminent heavyweight of the stacked 1970s with victories over Oscar Bonavena (twice), Eddie Machen, Doug Jones, George Chuvalo, Buster Mathis, Manuel Ramos, Jerry Quarry and Jimmy Ellis. When Ali fell in the final round to that human-missile left-hook a legend was made; a legend that carries him past George Foreman who would go on to defeat him twice, and into the top five.
Other top 100 heavyweights defeated: Muhammad Ali (Top Two), Jimmy Ellis (#36), Jerry Quarry (#44), Eddie Machen (#45), Oscar Bonavena (#70), George Chuvalo (#82)
#4 Lennox Lewis (41-2-1)
Lennox Lewis is one of only three men who break into double figures when listing the names of beaten fighters who appear on this list. Of course, some of them were just names ? Mike Tyson for example, who was still dangerous for a single round in 2002 when Lewis finally faced him, then target practice. But for every Tyson there is a David Tua, or even better, a Vitali Klitschko, his direct successor as the best fighter on the planet left with his face falling apart in his hands by the best heavyweight offense this side of Sonny Liston.
But there is to be no shying away from his shortcomings in this write-up; Lewis was beaten twice, by knockout, by fighters not of his class. How then, to justify a top five ranking?
The ranking justifies itself because Lewis was in such worthy company. Mike Tyson was blasted out by Buster Douglas. Sonny Liston dropped a decision to the otherwise unremarkable Marty Marshall. Larry Holmes also dropped decisions to a former light-heavyweight, both of them in title fights. Joe Louis was blasted out in twelve by Max Schmeling.
Oliver McCall was the first to visit devastation upon Lewis, but hark back if you will to #7, and Larry Holmes. Holmes survived the bomb Shavers rendered in their rematch only at the referee?s discretion. He takes five drunken pace forwards as the referee appraises him and then waves Shavers in. Further back, Louis was a roiling mess versus Schmeling before he was stopped; Johnson beat Jeffries half to death before the great man was rescued. This is the pattern of boxing?s continued accretion of the civilized. Linger not too long with the part of yourself that wishes for the return of those more brutal times and instead apply this logic to Lewis-McCall.
Lewis gets up to quickly. He takes three drunken paces backwards; four forwards ? he raises his gloves; and the referee ? correctly ? waves the fight off.
The point isn?t that the fight shouldn?t have been stopped. The point is that neither Larry Holmes nor Joe Louis would have been stopped. They would have been afforded the chance to fight on. Could he have survived? We will never know. And this is why the rematch, in the modern era, has taken on so much more importance. In the right circumstances, even a technical knockout may not settle matters. Lewis settled matters with a broken McCall in dominant fashion in their rematch.
His knockout at the hands of Hasim Rahman was more clinical. Simply put, Rahman poleaxed Lewis. But again, Lewis was utterly dominant in a rematch (in one of the division?s few perfect performances) meaning he is one of only two heavyweights on this list to have defeated every man he ever faced in the professional ranks. This comes out at twenty-one fighters at one time ranked in The Ring top ten, many fewer than the two monsters lurking at the top of the list, but many more than the likes of Joe Frazier, Mike Tyson, Vitali Klitschko and George Foreman.
Add two victories (please) over a faded but still excellent Evander Holyfield and rather than arguing about whether or not he should be top five, perhaps we should be talking instead about the top three.
Other top 100 heavyweights defeated: Mike Tyson (Top Ten), Evander Holyfield (#11), Vitali Klitschko (#26), Donovan Ruddock (#63), Oliver McCall (#66), Ray Mercer (#68), Mike Weaver (#73), Hasim Rahman (#74), David Tua (#77), Tony Tucker (#90)
#3 Rocky Marciano (49-0)
Number three, instead, is Rocky Marciano.
His numbers are astonishing. He was undefeated, the proud owner of one of an ?0? tested by the best available competition; as a Champion, he only met his #1 or, on one occasion, his #2 contender; he knocked out every ranked man he ever faced; he defeated forty-nine heavyweights, including some near-great ones; he scored forty-three knockouts.
But it is numbers, too, that describe his limitations. Sixty-eight, his listed reach in inches, would provide a 14? reach advantage to current Champion Wladimir Klitschko. Five and ten, his height in feet and inches, makes him seven inches shorter than the previous undisputed Champion, Lennox Lewis. Weighing in at around 185 lbs. during his title years, it is probable he would have turned professional at light-heavyweight under modern weigh-in rules.
Another number that is concerning is the average weight of his top class foes. Among his meaningful opponents, only the overstuffed Don Cockell (205 lbs.), the remnants of Joe Louis (213 lbs.) and Lee Savold (200 lbs.) in Savold?s last fight meet the modern criteria for heavyweights. Worse, the only #1 contender that Marciano never met was Nino Valdes, a fighter in his prime and of broad dimensions who might have satisfied what has become a missing requirement in Marciano?s puzzle of majesty. As it was, the heavyweight title was contested almost exclusively at the modern cruiserweight limit during the reign of ?The Rock.?
What this adds up to is a sense that Marciano never proved himself against bigger heavyweights, and given his own size that is a concern to some. Those who love and admire him though seem to think nothing of picking him to defeat the likes of Lewis and Klitschko however, his pathology savage enough for them that he can overcome even those enormous Champions.
I understand why. At his best, Marciano fought like the exhalation of some monstrous motor-oil engine, an avatar of some indestructible metallic god, come to boxing to plunder. Unerring, aggressive, brutal, he made a boon of his short arms, slamming in punches that would be untidy if thrown by a longer-limbed fighter, but coming from him they were compact and murderous, hard to see coming, impossible to absorb for long. He learned, too, pleasing technical augmentations forced upon him by Charley Goldman, who gave him balance and head movement, taking from him the swarmer?s bane of total availability and making him, at least, a less glaring target. And he ravaged the opposition, Archie Moore, Ezzard Charles, Jersey Joe Walcott, all were out-boxing him at one time or another only to find themselves on the ground looking up with glassy, moon-hunting eyes.
?In defiance of accepted chemical analysis that humans are made of bone, blood and muscle, we must disagree where Marciano is concerned,? wrote the Pittsburgh Post Gazette in the aftermath of The Rock?s first fight with Charles. ?There must be steel and iron somewhere in his makeup.?
Steel, and a heart the size of a dump-truck compensate for that squat, iron frame. Marciano could not be out-boxed, and if I personally pick him to be out-punched by every superheavyweight that has lifted the undisputed title, I cannot deny that he displayed true greatness in his own era. It is hard for me to imagine him beating many of the men in the top ten ? and impossible for me to dream of a top ten without him.
My number three with a shrug rather than a bullet, Marciano ranks here by default because he just gave me fewer reasons to demote him than the others ? his ring record was, after all, flawless.
Other top 100 heavyweights defeated: Ezzard Charles (#17), Jersey Joe Walcott (#20), Archie Moore (#38), Rex Layne (#71), Roland LaStarza (#79)
#2 Joe Louis (66-3)
The Bomber, Joe Louis, Chappy, the greatest puncher of all time at any weight, the greatest Champion of any weight in all of boxing history, ?the greatest textbook fighter in history? according to Freddie Roach and a dazzling fistic icon rendered in stark black and white for the viewing pleasure of generation upon generation of boxing geeks. The man is not a fighter, the man is an institution. Placing him at #2 has hurt me because I am a Louis fan; an enormous admirer of Muhammad Ali I could never really call myself his fan. But I love Louis, and there is plenty about him to love.
He defeated more Ring ranked contenders than any heavyweight in history. He won a ludicrous twenty-six world heavyweight title fights. He was King for one-hundred and forty consecutive months. He defeated an unprecedented six lineal heavyweight Champions. Every single one of those heavyweight Champions was destroyed.
First up was Primo Carnera just one year after he had been separated from his title, a veteran of the ring with over eighty wins to his name. Louis was 19-0. He first completely out-boxed the much bigger ?Ambling Alp? and then he began to feint with his left and drop that booming right hand over the top. It was a performance of astonishing sophistication. ?I was drugged!? Carnera protested in the aftermath. ?These irregularities exist only in the pugilist?s imagination,? read a distancing statement from the Italian Boxing Federation. ?His handlers are in no position to rush [Louis],? reported The Afro American. Three months later Louis was in the ring with iron-chinned power-puncher Max Baer, who had been the Champion of the world until his very last fight. Louis utterly destroyed him in a non-competitive match remembered most as a power-punching salvo, overlooking, sadly, Joe?s astonishing jabbing display in the first round. Showing a technical maturity in great excess of his experience, he jabbed almost exclusively in the opening round, a punch that felt ?like a light-bulb exploding in your face? planted squarely on Baer on thirty-six separate occasions by my count. Then, the heavy artillery. ?He hit me eighteen times while I was in the process of falling,? Baer said post-fight.
After posting his first loss to Max Schmeling, Louis was matched with another former Champion for his comeback against Jack Sharkey. ?I was getting ready to shoot the left,? Sharkey described. ?I said to myself, ?here goes!? Suddenly, I?m on the floor.?
Incumbent Champion James J. Braddock was next in the Champion?s parade, and he fared better than his near peers, actually flashing Louis on the way to suffering a beating that resulted in a face unrecognizable. The killing combination against Braddock was genius. Reported over and again as a ?left to the ribs,? the rhythm of punches that made Louis a Champion actually began with a left to James J.?s left bicep, eliminating the guard for the right hand that drove Braddock?s gumshield through his top lip opening a wound that required twenty-three stitches. Collapsed in other-worldly slow-motion onto the canvas, a crimson stain ?a foot in diameter? ballooned around Braddock?s head. Louis was King.
Louis denied himself comfort on his new throne and denied newspapermen the right to call him ?Champion? until he had bested former monarch Max Schmeling. This, he did, in a single round of contained violence perhaps only excelled by my own favorite Louis performance some seventeen defenses later, against Buddy Baer. He thrashed no more heavyweight Kings in the interim; not for Louis the pattern of losing and regaining the title, he crushed any glimmer of resistance with skill and power, until, in his last defense, he knocked out a Champion that was to come after him, stopping Jersey Joe Walcott in twelve rounds in 1948. An Emperor by then perhaps, he put the royal feet up only to find the treasury had run dry courtesy of the US Government. An unwanted comeback was the result, but Louis, though still dangerous, was beyond trimming Kings now; Ezzard Charles and Rocky Marciano both beat him.
By then, Louis had established one of the truly extraordinary legacies in ring history. He ranks, for me, among the ten greatest fighters of any weight, and no point illustrates more completely his separation from the pack, from Marciano, who beat him but couldn?t hold a candle to him, from Lewis, who dwarfs him, from all of them; only two spots will do for Louis: one, or two.
Two it is.
Other top 100 heavyweights defeated: Jersey Joe Walcott (#20), Max Schmeling (#21), Max Baer (#28), Jack Sharkey (#39), Jimmy Bivins (#40), Bob Pastor (#48) Primo Carnera (#51), Billy Conn (#62), James J Braddock (#75) Arturo Godoy (#84), Tommy Farr (#86), John Henry Lewis (#96)
#1 Muhammad Ali (56-5)
Muhammad Ali holds wins over thirty percent of the fighters that make up the top ten, and fifteen percent of the fighters that make up the top one-hundred. The thought occurs, a creeping thing that throws up all kinds of difficult questions, has any fighter at any weight beaten more all-time-great top-ten fighters in their respective divisions as Ali? Harry Greb, perhaps? Maybe Joe Gans? Eras rarely overlap so succinctly, and great Champions rarely leave enough oxygen for other great Champions to bloom in their time.
Both good and bad fortune defined Ali?s unique place in the heavyweight pantheon as a destroyer of great Kings. He gatecrashed the division in 1964 all arms, legs and mouth, his body betraying his lack of physical maturity in its length, his mouth betraying his lack of literal maturity in a never-ending rush of narcissistic self-realization. He was charming, infuriating and he arrived at a time when Champion Sonny Liston had allowed alcohol and age to take hold, bringing with him to the party a pronounced stylistic advantage over a Champion more fearful of humiliation than pain. Two times Ali mastered this man, in some shadowy form or another, a testimony to his angelic brilliance or to darker forces at work. Either way, Ali?s luck changed and he was forced out to pasture by the politics of the most confused time in America?s modern history. When he came back, three years lost, the three years that may have represented his absolute prime, it was his ear into which fistic old age had begun its ceaseless whisper, he who was at a terrible stylistic disadvantage. Frazier seethed and sent Ali back to contendership, the undisputed heavyweight title Ali considered his birthright adorning the waist of a man who hated him.
Frazier coasted, his surety at having dispatched his true nemesis understandable, missing the tank in his rear-view mirror. That tank rolled right over him and George Foreman unfurled himself, Liston?s terrifying reincarnation.
If ever a fighter was motivated by his own internal world it was Ali. He created truth with words and reinforced it by repetition. The circumstances of his fight with Foreman ? it took place in Africa among ?his people,? for the heavyweight Championship of the world Frazier had taken from him, against a younger, stronger fighter in his absolute prime ? inflamed his massive and cruel heart and Foreman became the enemy of his soul. Foreman, unaffected by Ali?s voice in the certainty of his invulnerability represented a perfect foil for Ali?s psychic enhancement of his self and by the time of the first bell in Kinshasa he may have been beyond the reach of mortal blows. In stages he wore Foreman down to an exhausted nub, his physical disrespect of Foreman?s person the key to opening up the secret world Ali?s words could not reach. Raging, out of control, Foreman morphed from some unconquerable Everest to a beacon for punches under a disbelieving, ecstatic crowd?s very nose. It was not a close fight. It was a demolition.
Having bested Joe Frazier in a dull and uninspiring rematch nine months before he thrashed Foreman, Ali matched him again the following year, 1975, in the by now infamous ?Thrilla In Manila.? As Ali beat out a tattoo on Frazier?s defenseless face in those early rounds, he was horrified to see the re-emergence of a familiar sick smile on Smokin? Joe?s face. War ensued.
As critics are quick to point out, both men were by now far past their primes, overweight, technical shadows of their best selves, but in their entwined descent they had become an exceptional match again. Only one thing hadn?t changed: the iron each nursed at their core. In the course of those fourteen rounds in Manila they bored through that iron to whatever fuels the darker shadows of human endeavor; there are plenty of heavyweights we can name that would have beaten Frazier on that night, but perhaps only one that could have joined him on that deadly journey and bested him, and that is Muhammad Ali.
Frazier; Liston and Foreman. Three of the deadliest men ever to box and he mastered each. What is incredible is, if you strip Ali of these wins, he still has a r?sum? comparable to that of Joe Louis. Listed below is the full extent of Ali?s massive footprint upon the division and it is crystallized by altitude because no other big man ever walked these heights.
This is Ali?s final truth. I leave for others the argument as to whether or not he is the canonized saint of myth or the racist wife-beating philanderer of revision. I don?t care. It is obvious to me that neither one of these represents the man truly, but rather reveals our own projections onto boxing?s most infamous, glittering son, and that the conclusion of each man or woman tells us more about them than it does about him.
He?s an industry now, for better or worse, a money-machine, an embodiment of what boxing has become and what we most fear for its protagonists, a silent and shuffling shadow of what was once lightning on water.
The final act of what will be my last dance with heavyweight division for some time: I turn off the lights and watch the DVD of the guiltiest of Ali pleasures, his 1966 beating of Cleveland Williams. As his detractors gleefully point out, Williams was quite literally shot for this fight, having been fired upon by a state-trooper in 1965 and badly injured. Well when I watch, I don?t see the opponent at all. I watch him; speed, such speed, speed of hand, speed of foot, speed of thought. There are technical dead ends in boxing and this is one of them. Although it didn?t stop a generation trying, nobody fights like this; not at 210 lbs. ? not at 130 lbs.; not at any poundage. What you see is impossible.
Rumble, young man.
Rumble.
Other top 100 heavyweights defeated: Joe Frazier (Top Ten), George Foreman (Top Ten), Sonny Liston (Top Ten), Floyd Patterson (#18), Ken Norton (#22), Jimmy Young (#33), Jimmy Ellis (#36), Ernie Terrell (#37), Archie Moore (#38), Zora Folley (#43), Jerry Quarry (#44), Ron Lyle (#46), Earnie Shavers (#54), Oscar Bonavena (#70), George Chuvalo (#82)
