A strategy that literally calls for you to be hit often in order that you might triumph isn?t an easy one to adopt at the very highest level?
Face first is how Part Four comes at you sporting brawlers aplenty. Granite of chin and huge of heart, the barroom style of pugilism invokes much love with the general public and the occasional derisory sniff from boxing people.
I love them.
But it?s inevitable that they get pulled up short of the very best and the concentration of fistic warlords here represents the high-water mark for those labelled ?brawler? rather than ?swarmer.? A strategy that literally calls for you to be hit often in order that you might triumph isn?t an easy one to adopt at the very highest level; however big, however bad, these guys get found eventually.
Oddly, most of the other places in this installment are filled by former light-heavies. One or two weave and box their way further up the 100, relying upon pure skill to make their mark upon the generally smaller heavyweight divisions of times past, but the concentration of some of the most skilful heavyweights lacking the physicality to dominate sharing space with some of the most physical heavyweights lacking the skills to dominate interests me.
I hope that it interests you too.
#70 Oscar Bonavena (48-9-1)
Oscar Bonavena went 2-7 against men on this list, underlining the reason behind my stating here that he is overrated. Bonavena was a hard fight, but aside from the narrowest imaginable decision over George Chuvalo, Bonavena lost literally every single time he stepped up in competition (his other top 100 win is over a creaking Zora Folley, who had previously all but shut him out).
Still, he still belongs on the list and his gunslinging, mauling style meant trouble for everyone from Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier to Jimmy Ellis and Floyd Patterson, all of whom defeated him but all of whom knew they had been in a fight when it was over.
Closest to granting a justification for the higher ranking Bonavena has received on such lists was Joe Frazier, who came within a hair?s breadth of being stopped by the rampaging Argentine on the three-knockdown rule in September of 1966. Frazier called him ?stiff? and ?crude? but also lauded his ?stamina and determination.? Of the second round that very nearly changed history, Frazier spoke with refreshing frankness admitting of the first knockdown that ?it wasn?t what boxing people call a flash knockdown?Bonavena hurt me?I?d walked onto Bonovena?s right hand like an innocent straying into a war-zone.?
We can believe him then, when he states that the second knockdown was ?a push more than a punch? and the emergence of footage online (albeit that the knockdowns have been available commercially for some time) supports both his claims, and his description of the ?dogfight? that emerged from those knockdowns. Bonavena, though basically outfought by a superior boxer and ever-vulnerable to the Frazier jab, scrapped Smokin? Joe all the way to the finish line.
There are several other stories of the bravery in defeat of the man they called ?Ringo,? but it is wins that make a fighter, and Bonavena has some good ones, Chuvalo and Folley first among them, supported by decent victories over fighters such as Gregorio Peralta (then 48-4-5), Karl Mildenberger and a washed-up Leotis Martin. A fully fledged heavyweight career sees this armor-plated truck scoot in just ahead of the Rolls Royce that was Michael Spinks, but for him to rank in the sixties, at least one of those competitive losses would have to have come out a win.
#69 Tommy Gibbons (57-4-1; Newspaper Decisions 38-1-4)
Tommy Gibbons will be seen as inhabiting a spot too low by far for many but those who wish to argue him into a higher spot have some stiff issues to resolve.
Firstly, it must be noted that Gibbons beat only one serious heavyweight after his famously brave 1923 loss to Jack Dempsey, the enormous but rather hapless Jim Hernan, who he crushed in three. In truth, Gibbons could have done with a stiffer test in that contest as it was his last before, inactive and past his best, he tried again for the title against the gloriously primed Gene Tunney in 1925. He was inevitably outclassed. Whilst it is true that between these two dates he outpointed world-class heavyweight opposition in Georges Carpentier and Kid Norfolk, both those fights were at the light-heavyweight limit of 175 lbs.; this is strictly a heavyweight list, a ranking based upon results in the open class.
Secondly, although it is true that when a shot at the heavyweight title became Tommy?s goal in earnest he matched and overcame some tough heavyweight opposition, prior to that his competition had been, to put it politely, middling. Names like Tony Melchior and Jack Clifford don?t buy much rope in this company; more easily recognizable names such as Willie Meehan (in the midst of a twelve-fight losing streak) and Dan Flynn (1-3 for 1921) were floundering in private career hells when Gibbons came to call. Better than the question ?should he be higher? may be the question, ?should he be included??
My answer is yes, a decision that rest in part upon his two-fight series with Billy Miske, a fighter that ranks higher than Gibbons based upon overall career arch but one who quite clearly couldn?t handle him based upon their series, despite its being tied at one apiece. During their first fight, fought in November of 1922, Gibbons brutalized Miske to the body and according to The Police Gazette took ?several teeth? from Billy?s head when he found time to go upstairs. He dominated ? popping his jab whilst slipping and sliding most of Miske?s best punches.
Disqualified in the tenth for a low blow, Gibbons pleaded innocence whilst admitting that Miske?s reputation for honesty did make him wonder if he had strayed, so violent was the unfortunate recipient?s reaction ? Gibbons removed any doubt regarding his superiority over ten rounds two months later. He followed this up with a defeat of former victim (from their light-heavyweight days), Chuck Wiggins before he took that famous tilt against Jack Dempsey.
Gibbons would remain the only man to go fifteen with ?The Man Killer.? The film of that fight reveals a supple fighter who judges distance and space with near-genius, deploying a left-hand as cultured as any that can be seen in the era.
#68 Ray Mercer (36-7-1)
Hepatitis and a neck injury rendered Ray Mercer a near irrelevance after 1997. Before that he was a fighter who spun from the sublime to the ridiculous with predictable unpredictability.
Plodding and vulnerable to mobility in one fight; destructive and granite-chinned the next. Dropping a decision to the limited Jesse Ferguson on one occasion ? stretching ATG locks like Lennox Lewis and Evander Holyfield to their limits on others.
His introduction to the bright lights came against Bert Cooper, a trial horse who apparently came to the ring ready to quit; not against Mercer. Against Mercer, Cooper lived up, almost, to his ?Smokin?? moniker, fighting fire with fire, volleys with volleys. In many ways it was a microcosm of Mercer?s career, an unexpectedly difficult fight that he himself made more so by neglecting to move his head at all and his feet in any way sensible. Bloodied in the first round, he then dropped Cooper hard but neglected to follow up on the glittering opportunity that followed. The result was one of the most brutal heavyweight contests of the decade and a confirmation of Mercer?s chin and heart as he toughed his way through a painful injury to his cheek and to a UD. He was twenty-nine years old.
A strap followed when he found a single power-punch in the ninth to get himself out of trouble versus 27-0 Francesco Damiani. Another slow start against the favored and undefeated Tommy Morison was corrected even more quickly by a fifth round knockout that ranks with the most brutal of the modern era. Larry Holmes exposed those weaknesses and took it all away from him and neither 1993 nor 1994 were particularly kind to him but in the following years two losses, of all things, resurrected his all-time standing. Mercer stretched Lennox Lewis so far in ?96 that some excessively credit him with the victory ? in fact, Mercer and his newly discovered jab just ran the giant close. He did something similar with Evander Holyfield the year previous to that, proving himself a likely handful for literally any heavyweight ever to have lived. The narrowest of wins over an ageing but still relevant Tim Witherspoon followed, the last significant action of the career of one of the great heavyweight overachievers.
#67 Larry Gains (116-22-5)
Larry Gains defeated two future Kings seven years apart, beating a green Max Schmeling by second round knockout in 1925 and then outpointing Primo Carnera over ten in 1932 enough for The Milwaukee Sentinel to stretch a point a bit naming him ?champion of the world by historic proxy.? Neither Schmeling nor Carnera would deign to rematch him for the heavyweight title when they came to it (although Schmeling was reportedly alive to the possibility before his 1932 disaster with Jack Sharkey) and it was said by at least one newspaper that he ?would have been world heavyweight champion but for the color of his skin.? It is tempting to dismiss this as more hyperbole but in truth a short Gains reign would have fitted a confused era perfectly. Schmeling, Sharkey, Carnera and Braddock were the Champions in this period and the right mix of form probably would have seen him beat any one of them. Whilst Carnera, for example, likely improved after Gains thrashed him, their fight was not particularly competitive; Gains was so much cleverer and faster than the giant that he outfought him both inside and out with slashing leads over the top of his pawing guard and sniping shots inside even as Carnera tried to bull him.
Had a title shot come his way and had he grasped that chance with both hands it is likely that any reign would have been short. Whilst Gains has talents comparable to the best fighters of his era, he did not have talents as great as to their exclusion. Nor did he have the type of wider resume, consistency, dominance or longevity that would see him any higher on this list.
#66 Oliver McCall (57-13)
They dragged Oliver McCall over to Opole, Poland in February of this year and set him out for prospect Marcin Rekowski. Interviewed for television the day before the fight, forty-eight-year-old McCall wept openly as he discussed his hopes that both men would emerge unharmed from their contest ? and his gratitude at his son having emerged from a sixth round stoppage loss to Rekowski in May 2013. Team Rekowski had beaten the son and now his people lined up the father.
Well Oliver McCall threw a spanner into those works by beating him via split decision over eight rounds. Having spent time in numerous drug rehabilitation centers and been arrested on numerous occasions for drug possession, McCall has reportedly been drug and alcohol free for several years. That great victory has bought him numerous fistic ones in its wake long after many of us expected to have heard the sad news of McCall?s demise. He took the depressing excesses of the 1980s lost generation and magnified it many times over. Rescued from a crack den for his second fight with Lennox Lewis he suffered a total breakdown in the ring for the most bizarre TKO loss of the decade. That he remains even barely relevant twenty years after his greatest night, the first fight with Lewis, is one of the most astonishing facts in contemporary boxing.
McCall receives less credit for his less devastating knockout of Lewis than Rahman does for several reasons. Firstly, he did not knock him out for the true heavyweight title, but one of the many belts that leach it. Secondly, Lewis cannot be considered to be in his true prime with Emanuel Steward, who perfected him, in the opposite corner rather than in his own. Finally, McCall?s knockout of Lewis was less generally devastating and it is reasonable to suggest that Lewis should have been allowed to continue.
Nevertheless it is a truly extraordinary victory.
His form between April of 1991 and his loss to Frank Bruno in 1995 was generally very good. McCall lost just one, to Tony Tucker in a fight I scored in favor of the Atomic Bull, only a late rally from a seemingly befuddled Tucker keeping the fight in the realms or respectability. This questionable split decision loss aside, McCall went 11-0 in this period, including victories over Bruce Seldon, Jesse Ferguson, Francesco Damiani a forty-five-year-old Larry Holmes and, of course, Lennox Lewis.
Defeated in humiliating circumstances by Lewis in that bizarre rematch, McCall still had some wonderful moments left to him, including his last minute one-punch knockout of the ultra-durable Henry Akinwande and the 2007 decision over former European champion Sinan Samil Sam. In possession of perhaps the best chin in heavyweight history, his astonishing longevity speaks of one of the most enduring hearts, too.
#65 Joey Maxim (82-29-4)
Joey Maxim is perennially underrated both as a light-heavy and as a heavyweight. His thirteen-round stoppage of Sugar Ray Robinson at 175 lbs. is really the summary of his career, a win over perhaps the greatest fighter in history written off by a succession of historians as being down to ?the heat.?
?Do they think I had air conditioning in my corner?? Maxim asked in the immediate aftermath as any credit he might have enjoyed for the win evaporated with the temperature. It was a fair question.
Look a little closer and there?s a very decent heavyweight r?sum? fighting to get out, enhanced not least by the early start Maxim got in the biggest division. A champion at light-heavyweight he is quite rightly most often associated with 175 lbs. but Maxim fought and beat 200-lb. journeyman Lee Oma, gatekeeper Bill Peterson and former contender Red Burman all in his first year as a professional. The following year he added the terrifying puncher Curtis Sheppard, although troubling losses began to creep in too, the first of five to Ezzard Charles, then just 165 lbs., and a disputed decision to 16-7-1 Altus Allen. In 1943 he was savagely annexed by Sheppard who took his revenge in just one round, in 1944 he would lose to the 166-lb. Lloyd Marshall. But always Maxim would come creeping back and with a sense, too, that he was improving until, in the summer of 1946, he was able to outpoint Jersey Joe Walcott. Walcott was on a twelve- fight streak at the time, having defeated name contenders including Lee Q. Murray and Jimmy Bivins. An injured right hand may have explained this unexpected setback to a degree. Walcott twice took his revenge over Maxim, but including those losses he went 23-3-4 at heavyweight between the summer of ?46 and his eventual title shot in the summer of 1951, a run that included wins over Bivins and a pair over contender Phil Muscato.
That title shot, against his unfailing tormenter Ezzard Charles, underlined his limitations. Neither a big nor a fast heavyweight a turgid certitude on the inside in combination with technical excellence if not transcendence on the outside would only ever carry him so far, but discipline, a great jaw (he was stopped only once) combined with the most professional of attitudes made him an over- rather than an underachiever.
#64 Trevor Berbick (49-11-1)
I have always found Trevor Berbick to be generally underrated, as fine a pure-brawler as can be seen at heavyweight. Compare and contrast him with Luis Firpo, his stylistic cousin, and witness the difference in Berbick?s far neater if still ultra-aggressive boxing. At the very least, I would say that Berbick was a worthy vessel through which to channel the arrival in earnest of one Mike Tyson, who defeated him by KO2 in 1986. Muhammad Ali was in the ring that night, and reportedly whispered to Mike that he ?get him for me,? a reference to Berbick?s 1981 defeat of the shell of that once great champion, a fight which, unfortunately for Berbick, was to be one of his better performances. Nobody really remembers it now aside from the sad sight of Muhammad Ali?s once bouncing tassels lying limp upon his boots as he shuffled around the ring, bouncing only for the eighth.
What is often forgotten is how much better Ali looked than he had against Holmes. He was punching better, he was in vastly superior condition and he ran Berbick closer than the official cards would allow. Berbick won that fight with physical strength, work-rate and determination, weapons that brought him great success against technically superior opposition.
These gifts weren?t immediately apparent, however, and Berbick took a number of years to put behind him the disturbing knockout he suffered in the first round of his 1979 fight with puncher Bernardo Mercado, a one-punch KO that hinted at a weak jaw that did not in truth exist (only Tyson would repeat the trick of stopping him). Key to his rehabilitation was his 1980 stoppage of John Tate, then 20-1, and the owner of victories over Gerrie Coetzee, Duane Bobick and Mercado. Berbick turned in a surprisingly mature pressure, sweeping at Tate rather than just driving at him, spreading his weight and shooting a jab to the bigger man?s midriff, shepherding him. Seconds before the beginning of the ninth, with the fight poised at four rounds each on my card, he stood, arms spread, roaring for the bell as Tate sat shaking his head on his stool; seconds into the ninth he was face down on the canvas being counted out, a major favorite laid low by sheer force of will and the unending aggression it birthed, even in the face of heavy punishment. It wasn?t a set of attributes that got him anywhere near Larry Holmes when he went fifteen rounds with the champion seven months later, but it was enough to bring him wins over Greg Page, Mitch Green and, best of all, an undefeated Pinklon Thomas. He chugged along in to the next millennium, losing to fighters he would have ruptured in the previous decade, but a certain inconsistency even when in his prime prevents him obtaining a higher ranking here.
#63 Donovan ?Razor? Ruddock (38-5-1)
Six-foot-three and 230 lbs. with an 82? reach, Donovan ?Razor? Ruddock suffered from both inactivity and a rare breathing disorder that threatened his career and cost him his first loss. Overcoming this hurdle, he announced his arrival on the world stage with a ten-round decision over the sliding Mike Weaver in the summer of 1986. Just 12-1-1, Ruddock showed absolutely outstanding speed despite his size and snapped off the first two rounds with a whip-crack one-two and a type of mobility that Weaver had never seen; still, Weaver remained a serious man and caught up to Ruddock in the fourth, brutalizing him with a magical left-hook.
Ruddock survived his first awful test with Weaver, however, came out and won the fifth round and never looked back. By the time of his first round stoppage of James Broad in December of 1998, he had added seven more victims, was the Canadian champion and, perhaps most importantly, had found his power. Soon, he would fall in love with it, and to his detriment.
Against ?Bonecrusher? Smith in his very next fight he enjoyed a round more torrid even than what Weaver inflicted upon him, the enormous punching Smith dropping him to the canvas folded over himself like a cold cut with a goofy smile on his face. That he got up was impressive; that he survived the awful brain-juddering swarm that Smith inflicted upon him when he did was even more impressive. That he was fighting back at the bell, dominating Smith with his patented ?smash? (a long, low left-hook with lots of torque and turn) was genuinely astounding. Ruddock thrashed him happily before knocking him unconscious in the sixth. Next for an unwelcome sleep was Michael Dokes, blasted out by a basically one-handed Ruddock in just four, six rounds faster than Evander Holyfield had managed it, the violence of the knockout disturbing. Gil Clancy called him a fighter who ?seemed to have everything.?
The ultimate test for his everything came in his two 1991 confrontations with the recently deposed Mike Tyson. The timing for these fights may have been better for Ruddock had they come when originally scheduled, before Tyson lost his title to Buster Douglas. It is argued that the two knockouts Ruddock perpetrated against Smith and Dokes turned him from box-puncher to puncher. In two savage and enjoyable fights, Ruddock came off a clear second best although such was the heart and durability he displayed in the second fight that it actually enhanced, rather than hurt his standing.
Ruddock came back strong but static, despite the machinations of Floyd Patterson who tried desperately to re-introduce Ruddock?s mobility in his role as trainer. Those days were inexplicably gone, but he still registered the devastating knockouts of a shopworn Greg Page (stopped out on his feet) and the unbeaten Phil Jackson. In the end, it leaves Ruddock with a r?sum? probably a little light for the spot he enjoys, but his thrilling second loss to Mike Tyson in conjunction with that stunning left hand leaves him just outside the top sixty.
#62 Billy Conn (64-11-1)
Yes ? the spirited loss to Joe Louis is a part of it. But certainly not all of it.
Billy Conn came north from 175 lbs. in search of the gold and from day one, he was all about business. The day was the fourteenth of August, 1939 and the victim was contender Gus Dorazio.
When Maxie Rosenbloom stepped up to heavyweight in 1929 he selected for an opponent journeyman Garfield Johnson; the fearless Mickey Walker chose 13-9-1 Paul Swiderski ? even Tommy Loughran picked a soft one, beating up the otherwise unremarkable Emilio Solomon, a fighter who had lost five of his last six. Conn?s selection had beaten the superb Bob Pastor in 1938 and would go on to beat contender Al McCoy in 1940; Conn stopped him in eight rounds in between. The UP report for this fight talks of Conn ?packing power in both hands? on the way to this stoppage ? what seems lost on the modern observer was no mystery to those that saw him. When Conn added pounds, he added power.
It was that power that really separated him from the pack when he pulled of the outstanding defeat of Pastor. Pastor was stopped only twice in his career, once by Billy Conn and once by puncher supreme Joe Louis. Conn?s genius handler Johnny Ray predicted as much in the torrid build-up to the fight whilst Conn himself refused to answer any questions concerning the outcome of the fight because it was silly to suggest that he could lose to ?a college fella.? It went, more or less, as they expected. Conn dropped Pastor in the ninth with a short left-hook; in the twelfth with a steaming right-hand to the jaw ? and in the thirteenth with a controversial body-punch named ?not a foul ? but close to it? by referee Bill Cavanaugh. Whilst at least one ringside reporter saw it low, the majority have tended to agree that it was on the beltline. Either way, it was a hugely dominant punching performance against a world-class opponent of the highest durability.
Al McCoy and Lee Savold were then outpointed in quick succession and then Gunnar Barlund and Buddy Knox were dispatched in eight rounds each. Up next was Joe Louis. During the final years of his sparkling career Conn fought exclusively at heavyweight and only Joe Louis was able to defeat him ? in the closest shave of the Brown Bomber?s career. This loss enhances Conn?s standing where so many valiant efforts do not, because he was leading ? had he somehow survived the disastrous thirteenth in which he had determined to knock out Louis, it is likely he would have been outpointed anyway, but in a ten- or twelve-round fight Conn may have triumphed. Whilst many of the smaller men on this list have a slight drag inflicted on their placement due to an impression that they may be too little for the most dangerous big men, Conn proved himself here in the fighting class of all but the very biggest of world-class heavyweights. The sense of discomfort that can greet a high placement for other fighters that made their bones in lower weight classes is not present when rating Conn. There is a sense that he belongs.
#61 James ?Buster? Douglas (38-6-1)
?He?s just a man. So am I.?
Like #75 James Braddock, the explanation that sees James ?Buster? Douglas included here is not made over an entire career but in a much narrower corridor. Cynics might argue that whereas Braddock?s crucial period was punched out over eighteen months, Douglas determined his fate over the eighteen seconds for which Don King held his breath in November of 1990 as he first beat Tyson senseless and to the Tokyo canvas upon which Buster?s immortality was enshrined and then waited patiently as he reeled, unable to rise.
It was among the most astounding sights ever seen in the entire history of sports.
In fact, Douglas had been giving out small signs that he might be something better than the deluxe journeyman most of us supposed him to be, beating Mike Williams on the undercard of Tyson-Spinks in one of the great jabbing performances of the nineties before outpointing a still dangerous Trevor Berbick and an inexperienced Oliver McCall. These are all impressive results and the twenty hard rounds he had against this latter pair is perhaps the key to his career.
For Douglas, who ?lost every fight Don King ever wanted him to lose? until he won the fight King was mostdesperate for him to lose, it was a pinnacle he could not hope to live up to and he soon slunk back to his half-made ways.
Losses, weak efforts and dull, boring fights litter his career like unwanted booty from some blind theft but all of this pales to translucence beneath the harsh light of his thundering defeat of Mike Tyson. There are men listed below him who would beat him, unquestionably, but it may be that only a handful of them had it in them to match his best.
It is a performance of no little bravery that probably demands a higher ranking; it makes me sad that I cannot give him one.
The 100 Greatest Heavyweights of All Time Part One: 100-91 The 100 Greatest Heavyweights of All Time Part Two: 90-81 The 100 Greatest Heavyweights of All Time Part Three: 80-71 The 100 Greatest Heavyweights of All Time Part Four: 70-61
