Greatest Featherweight All-time

[shanbopop]

Who is the greatest featherweight ever? :)

[shanbopop]

Saddler an Pep are a couple i can think of...

[Johnny Carwash]

Saddler an Pep are a couple i can think of...

I saw your thread title and immediately those two came to mind.

[silkov]

Pep? You mean Tony Pep the 6 foot feather from Canada? You're insane :x

Willie Pep!... don't say you haven't heard of him mate please!!!.... .
Personally my pick has to go to Hurricaine Henry Armstrong!... probably the greatest fighter pound for pound ever in my humble opinion!... 8)

[ThirdPartyView]

Salvador Sanchez, Esebio Pedroza & Abe Attell are three more picks.

[MightyWarrior]

Sanchez.

[Rocky Balboa]

Choosing who the best Featherweight ever, boy that is hard! The candidates would certainly be: Sanchez, Pep, Sadler and Armstrong.

All were tremendous, and remeber, Sanchez' career was cut-short. Who knows what he would have gone on to achieve had he stayed alive!

Its too hard to name just one, and it will be interesting to see what others feel on the subject!

[crooked nose]

Gotta go with Sanchez. With questions like these, I try not to just pick a fighter I witnessed. I want to try to give the old timers a fair shake. But in this case, I go with Sanchez. He displayed more ring generalship, more control, accuracy, stamina and better execution of a fight plan. Saddler and Pep got into slugging, dirty wars. But I wouldn't dispute anyone who picked Saddler, Pep or Armstrong. One question: What was Armstrong's best fighting weight? I'd be inclined to say light rather than feather.

[TheRiverCityHippy]

willie pep lost only one contest in his first 137!
and when he won the title he was the youngest champion since 1901.
people often associate pep with saddler and willie did come off worse in his series with the uber tough sandy sadler but by that time willie was aging and had already been told the year before their first contest that he would never fight again due to breaking two vertebrae in his back in a serious plane crash,
(a crash in which five people sadly lost their lives).
his record of 230 wins in 240 contests is very impressive.
but i think the featherweight division is probably the hardest to evaluate because of all the strength in depth of the champs.

other notable champs in the feathers........... george dixon, terrible terry mcgovern, young corbett II, tony canzoneri, battling battalino, kid chocolate, davey moore, sugar ramos, vincente salvidar, eder jofre, ruben olivares, alexis arguello, danny lopez, eusebio pedroza, barry mcguigan etc, etc, etc..............

[tonyevs]

Saddler an Pep are a couple i can think of...

And Sanchez and Azuhah.

[dan1030]

Azumah Nelson would have given any of the top guys an excellent fight. Why is he rarely mentioned when this topic comes up?

Nelson's definitely an all-timer, but the loss to Sanchez has to put him behind Salvador. On the other hand, I think that was his only loss at featherweight (the others all coming in attempts to step up in weight, and against great fighters), so you're right that he deserves to be on the short list of all-time gret feathers.

Armstrong is one of my all-time favorites, but spent so little time as a featherweights that I don't usually include him...the argument can be made, though.

[J]

i do go along with that but the fight with Sanchez was taken at short notice by Aazumah and as still a close one. Kinda muddies the issue slightly but I still go with Sanchez.

[dan1030]

Hmmm...I didn't realize it was a short-notice fight. That does muddy things a bit, and it was close at the time of the stoppage...but I'll stick with Sanchez too.

[alrightjim]

Headhunter wrote:

other notable champs in the feathers........... george dixon, terrible terry mcgovern, young corbett II, tony canzoneri, battling battalino, kid chocolate, davey moore, sugar ramos, vincente salvidar, eder jofre, ruben olivares, alexis arguello, danny lopez, eusebio pedroza, barry mcguigan etc, etc, etc..............[/quote]

Hi Headhunter. George Dixon and McGovern CANNOT be considered as best of all time. They were actually bantamweights and, even worse, the bantamweight limit at that time was 112 pounds, so they were actually flyweights! Young Corbett faired poorly after his bouts with McGovern, mainly because he was a legitimate sized featherweight and soon couldn't make the old-time weight. Against a modern feather all his advantages of size and leverage disappear. He is ordinary. canzoneri was just a little kid when he fought feather, had not nearly perfected his ring skills. Battalino and Freddie Miller didn't fight to win if they were ordered not to. Kid Chocolate often inexplicably struggled against no-names. Moore was killed by Ramos. Ramos could be too easily hit and hurt. Saldivar could slug like crazy, needed to shore up his defense. I personally consider Jofre the second greatest pound-for-pound fighter ever. But he was a bantamweight. He didn't box feather until he was old and Harada twice outmuscled him. Arguello, very good choice. Lopez, you're kidding, right? He got offended if you missed him, not if you hit him. Pedroza? Mean and dirty and skilled. Like him a lot. McGuigan? Talk to Stevie Cruz about McGuigan. McGuigan wasn't the best feather of his day, let alone all time.

It's Armstrong or Sanchez and I like Armstrong by a decision in that one.

[silkov]

Short notice and in his 12th or 13th fight. IMO Nelson turned out better than Sanchez would have. Sanchez started very young as a pro and IMO may have peaked

Interesting theory that perhaps Sanchez had peaked but I disagree... firstly judging by his performance against Nelson when he was weight drained (Sanchez said to his trainer after the 5th round that he felt very weak) Sanchez was not fading and would imo have improved at the higher weight of 130 or 135... he certainly had the physique to put on 9 extra pounds at least... and would probably have been a stronger fighter for it... one of the amazing things about Sanchez is that through most of his title reign he was having trouble making 126... before his untimely death there was much talk of Sanchez moving straight up to Lightweight and challenging Alexis Arguello.
I think Sanchez would have had a very lengthy time at the top like other greats such as Arguello, Duran and even Chavez.... Sanchez started young but had great skills and had not taken any beatings... also he took care of himself unlike say Wilfred Benitez so I don't see any reason to suppose that we had already seen the best of Salvador.

[tonyevs]

Short notice and in his 12th or 13th fight. IMO Nelson turned out better than Sanchez would have. Sanchez started very young as a pro and IMO may have peaked

Interesting theory that perhaps Sanchez had peaked but I disagree... firstly judging by his performance against Nelson when he was weight drained (Sanchez said to his trainer after the 5th round that he felt very weak) Sanchez was not fading and would imo have improved at the higher weight of 130 or 135... he certainly had the physique to put on 9 extra pounds at least... and would probably have been a stronger fighter for it... one of the amazing things about Sanchez is that through most of his title reign he was having trouble making 126... before his untimely death there was much talk of Sanchez moving straight up to Lightweight and challenging Alexis Arguello.
I think Sanchez would have had a very lengthy time at the top like other greats such as Arguello, Duran and even Chavez.... Sanchez started young but had great skills and had not taken any beatings... also he took care of himself unlike say Wilfred Benitez so I don't see any reason to suppose that we had already seen the best of Salvador.

Totally agree, Sanchez was about to move up, and I am sure he would have dominated the heavier weights and prove maybe greater at the heavier weight, Nelson was always a heavy feather.

[tonyevs]

Quite right, we will never know.
But knowing the Mexicans we can only guess.
Salvador is normally put down at 5"7 , so would have carried xtra weight easily, maybe even as high as welter.

[MightyWarrior]

My pick was mainly down to thinking that on his night, Sanchez might have been the best featherweight we've seen.
I'm a bit biased though, as I grew up watching the great Mexican.
I couldn't argue with anyone who picks Pep, Armstrong, Saddler and co - these guys were obviously greats from another (tougher? ) era, and who knows who'd have won on the night.

Yes, Nelson was a near novice when he gave Sanchez hell that night. Late notice too. I doubt Sal took his challenge very seriously either - no-one had heard of Azumah, outside of Ghana, before that fight. He was a revelation.

Not sure Sanchez really trained too hard for it. He tended to fight down to the level of his opponents - witness his awesome destruction of Gomez, followed by his dull showing against Cowdell, barely escaping with a split win over the brave Brit.
He must've expected an easy night against Nelson.

Azumah was certainly one of the greats too. Hard to judge as by the 80's fighters tended to move up through the weights.
Like it's said above, Sanchez was planning on a move to 135, to take on Arguello in a superfight.

[Ezzard]

Who do we think of now in 2015 as being the best feathers?

[forestbox]

My top 5 Imo

Willie pep
Sandy sandler
Kid chocolate
Salvador Sanchez
Naseem hamed

[elmersalsa]

My top 5 Imo

Willie pep
Sandy sandler
Kid chocolate
Salvador Sanchez
Naseem hamed

I can dig your first 4 of that list.