BoxRec

Decagon wrote:

Ambling Alp wrote:I will ask you once again, how can you justify Armstrong being your #1 featherweight of all time, when he never beat one fighter on your own top 20 list?

Who do you rank #1 at bantamweight and flyweight, respectively, if not Jofre and Wilde, and which top-20-of-all-time fighters did they beat at their respective weights?

I'm not sure who I would rank as the #1 flyweight and bantam weight. I have never tried to make a list with these weights either.
I don't believe that there is a a flyweight or bantamweight that beat 3 others who I would have in my top 20. If there was, I'm not going to rank them at #9 and put Jofre and Wilde at #1.

Well considering that the debate has been about Armstrong I felt there was absolutely no need to speak about other fighters...now you can try to change the subject by mentioning other top 20 fighters, fighters that pretty much everyone who likes boxing knows, the fighters who are mentioned in the books you mentioned and every other book of the type, but what I wanted to know is what do you know about the fighters that you will not find in those books...the same fighters that you seem quick to discredit regardless of the fact that you know very little about them, other than what you see on they're record in the database, but all that is going to tell you is win-loss and draw stats...it's not going to tell you about the fighters, how they fought, how they're opponents fought and someone who does not know about those fighters just simply cannot give a solid opinion of what kind of opponents they really were and therefore the person cannot give an accurate ranking!

barry wrote:Well considering that the debate has been about Armstrong I felt there was absolutely no need to speak about other fighters...now you can try to change the subject by mentioning other top 20 fighters, fighters that pretty much everyone who likes boxing knows, the fighters who are mentioned in the books you mentioned and every other book of the type, but what I wanted to know is what do you know about the fighters that you will not find in those books...the same fighters that you seem quick to discredit regardless of the fact that you know very little about them, other than what you see on they're record in the database, but all that is going to tell you is win-loss and draw stats...it's not going to tell you about the fighters, how they fought, how they're opponents fought and someone who does not know about those fighters just simply cannot give a solid opinion of what kind of opponents they really were and therefore the person cannot give an accurate ranking!

I agree!... at the end of the day its just churlish to hold those defeats against Armstrong... the fact that Armstrong beat 135 and 147 pounders when he was still little more than a featherweight says to me that he was an awesome featherweight and pretty much the best candidate for number 1 that I can see and I've seen no argument here to make me think otherwise....

>>>the fact that Armstrong beat 135 and 147 pounders when he was still little more than a featherweight says to me that he was an awesome featherweight and pretty much the best candidate for number 1<<<

That should simply be the sealer for anyone in doubt...not only did Armstrong beat many top ranked featherweights, but he beat 60+ top ten ranked lightweights and welterweights while at a smaller weight. Even if he had only beat one, or two ranked featherweights, what he accomplished puts him at the top and in head-to-head, prime against prime...no other featherweight could handle Armstrong! Armstrong punched hard at welterweight, but he was a devastating puncher at 126...right up there with Terry McGovern, Danny Lopez and Sandy Saddler in the featherweight punching power department!

Anyone who thinks that Henry Armstrong is not one of the five best featherweights of all-time just simply has not done enough research.

The main reason Armstrong moved up in weight was because he couldnt get fights at 126... even when he'd won the title.... people didnt want to fight him at that weight because of his destructiveness... his ko streak of that time speaks for itself...

I definitely agree with the #1

Willie Pep is a hot candidate for best fighter ever in my book.

pundit wrote:I definitely agree with the #1

Willie Pep is a hot candidate for best fighter ever in my book.

He's my personal #1 for fighting ability, #4 going by accomplishments.

barry wrote:>>>the fact that Armstrong beat 135 and 147 pounders when he was still little more than a featherweight says to me that he was an awesome featherweight and pretty much the best candidate for number 1<<<

That should simply be the sealer for anyone in doubt...not only did Armstrong beat many top ranked featherweights, but he beat 60+ top ten ranked lightweights and welterweights while at a smaller weight. Even if he had only beat one, or two ranked featherweights, what he accomplished puts him at the top and in head-to-head, prime against prime...no other featherweight could handle Armstrong! Armstrong punched hard at welterweight, but he was a devastating puncher at 126...right up there with Terry McGovern, Danny Lopez and Sandy Saddler in the featherweight punching power department!

Anyone who thinks that Henry Armstrong is not one of the five best featherweights of all-time just simply has not done enough research.

The stat about beating 60 rated fighters is of course very deceiving. We are only rating him as a featherweight here. His wins at lightweight against welterweights, or welter weight over middleweights don't count. Even by your own count he had 18 wins over top 10 featherweights. Several of those shoudn't count since he was at least at 130 when they occurred.

No other featherweight could handle Armstrong? Well, Arizmendi did twice and Conde and Casanova did as well. It stands to reaon that fighters who were far better than these guys would have as well.

Funny that you should mention Lopez. Sanchez dominated him twice.

barry wrote:Well considering that the debate has been about Armstrong I felt there was absolutely no need to speak about other fighters...now you can try to change the subject by mentioning other top 20 fighters, fighters that pretty much everyone who likes boxing knows, the fighters who are mentioned in the books you mentioned and every other book of the type, but what I wanted to know is what do you know about the fighters that you will not find in those books...the same fighters that you seem quick to discredit regardless of the fact that you know very little about them, other than what you see on they're record in the database, but all that is going to tell you is win-loss and draw stats...it's not going to tell you about the fighters, how they fought, how they're opponents fought and someone who does not know about those fighters just simply cannot give a solid opinion of what kind of opponents they really were and therefore the person cannot give an accurate ranking!

The debate wasn't about Armstrong, it is about rating the 50 featherweights of all time. How many times do I have to tell you that? Read the original thread. If think Armstrong should be higher, you should have been showing how he compares favorably to what the fighters rated ahead him.What each of what they did is just as important as what Armstrong did.
You act as if they don't exist.
You are the one who is constantly changing the topic and talking almost exclusively about Armstrong and very little about the other fighters.

As for the opponents of Armstrong that I don't have much respect for, as I have said many times in the past if these guys had so many losses, it simply is not a big achievement for Armstrong to have beat them.
Notice that you never mention the opponents (who have ordinary records) of other top featherweights. No once again it's all about Armstrong.

Yet again, you duck the question. How can Armstrong be #1 on your All-Time Featherweight list, without beating anyone on your own top 20 list, and have Sanchez at #9 when Sanchez unlike Armstrong was undefeated at featherweight and beat 3 fighters in your own top 20?

Decagon wrote:Honest. Part of the reason the featherweight division ranks the way it does is that it has traditionally had long-reigning champions, with only a few brief periods of intense competition. Take for instance Killbane and Attell, who you rank #5 and #6, respectively. Outside of each other, who did they beat who is in your top 25?

Besides each none. However, there is no one behind them that beat 3 fighters in my top 20. I rate them highly becasue if you take a hard look at their career records they are mosre impressive than almost anyone elses. They were very consistent. they beat a lot of good fighters, some who may not have have made this list but were pretty good. They also seldom lost to inferior fighters. Attell was the champion for almost 9 years and Kilbane 11. Armstrong wasn't even the #1 contender until 1936 (even though he lost to Conde early in the year), then won the title in 1937, and never defended it.

silkov wrote:

barry wrote:Well considering that the debate has been about Armstrong I felt there was absolutely no need to speak about other fighters...now you can try to change the subject by mentioning other top 20 fighters, fighters that pretty much everyone who likes boxing knows, the fighters who are mentioned in the books you mentioned and every other book of the type, but what I wanted to know is what do you know about the fighters that you will not find in those books...the same fighters that you seem quick to discredit regardless of the fact that you know very little about them, other than what you see on they're record in the database, but all that is going to tell you is win-loss and draw stats...it's not going to tell you about the fighters, how they fought, how they're opponents fought and someone who does not know about those fighters just simply cannot give a solid opinion of what kind of opponents they really were and therefore the person cannot give an accurate ranking!

I agree!... at the end of the day its just churlish to hold those defeats against Armstrong... the fact that Armstrong beat 135 and 147 pounders when he was still little more than a featherweight says to me that he was an awesome featherweight and pretty much the best candidate for number 1 that I can see and I've seen no argument here to make me think otherwise....

It's churlish to hold these defeats against Armstrong? Well sorry if these unpleasant facts annoy you, but Armstrong losses count. I'm talking about losses to featherweights when he was a featherweight. Sorry if the facts aren't convenient for you.
Armstrong didn't beat any great 135 and 147 pounders when he himself was a featherweight. Again, we are just rating him as a featherweight here. He wisely bulked up when he started to fighter bigger guys who were good. Look at the biggest wins in his career.
Hw weighed a lot more than 126 when he beat he Barney Ross, Lew Ambers, Lew Jenkins, Fritzie Zivic, and Sammy Angott.

Ambling Alp wrote:

silkov wrote:

barry wrote:Well considering that the debate has been about Armstrong I felt there was absolutely no need to speak about other fighters...now you can try to change the subject by mentioning other top 20 fighters, fighters that pretty much everyone who likes boxing knows, the fighters who are mentioned in the books you mentioned and every other book of the type, but what I wanted to know is what do you know about the fighters that you will not find in those books...the same fighters that you seem quick to discredit regardless of the fact that you know very little about them, other than what you see on they're record in the database, but all that is going to tell you is win-loss and draw stats...it's not going to tell you about the fighters, how they fought, how they're opponents fought and someone who does not know about those fighters just simply cannot give a solid opinion of what kind of opponents they really were and therefore the person cannot give an accurate ranking!

I agree!... at the end of the day its just churlish to hold those defeats against Armstrong... the fact that Armstrong beat 135 and 147 pounders when he was still little more than a featherweight says to me that he was an awesome featherweight and pretty much the best candidate for number 1 that I can see and I've seen no argument here to make me think otherwise....

It's churlish to hold these defeats against Armstrong? Well sorry if these unpleasant facts annoy you, but Armstrong losses count. I'm talking about losses to featherweights when he was a featherweight. Sorry if the facts aren't convenient for you.
Armstrong didn't beat any great 135 and 147 pounders when he himself was a featherweight. Again, we are just rating him as a featherweight here. He wisely bulked up when he started to fighter bigger guys who were good. Look at the biggest wins in his career.
Hw weighed a lot more than 126 when he beat he Barney Ross, Lew Ambers, Lew Jenkins, Fritzie Zivic, and Sammy Angott.

If you knew abything about Armstrong you'd know that he used to drink beer in order to 'beef up' for those fights... he was still a natural 126 pounder just like Duran was always a natural 135 pounder....

This is my last post in this thread as it has pretty much turned into a complete waste of time and I would rather try to focus my energy toward something that may be helped.

As I have said many, many times in the past...looking at a fighters record alone is worthless in trying to evaluate a fighters career and based on the sources that you mentioned using, the only source you could be using is they're records as the other sources you mentioned just simply do not go into any fighters career in any kind of depth, and being that they were what you mentioned then it's highly likely that they were your main sources and relying mainly on record stats and little thumbnail sketch-bio's in some book written forty years after the fighter fought is about the worst way that a person can go about researching a fighter, plain and simple. Like a fighters record alone, you just simply cannot learn anything from empty numbers except what the decision of a bout was, a win, loss, or draw, but you don't know whether it was a bad decision, or a close fight, or a decisive decision...you don't know any of that from records alone all records do is give you the result and that alone is about the weakest method of trying of evaluate a fighter, but for some reason a few people feel like that learn all they need to from records alone, but it's pretty obvious what a person does and doesn't know by weak claims that cannot really be backed up by anything at all.

As I stated earlier, maybe in another thread...every thing of this nature is entirely opinion, but a person can put together a very, very solid opinion based on good factual research and as such they can put forth a real good argument, but when someone just half-asses something with little actual research...it becomes very clear really fast for those that have done really good research

For example...someone doing really good research would put together newspaper fight reports for every single fight that they can find for a fighter and then add to that all the articles that one can find from various publications of the year, or years that the certain fighter fought...and off course films are great, but for older fighters there just is not a great number of films to go by and as such a person should put together as much material as possible!

As for Armstrong...up until around four years ago I had not really done a lot of research on his career. I had mainly just read the repetitive thumbnail sketches in books like the Boxing Register, Nat Fleischer’s Black Dynamite series and others of that nature and up to that point I rated Armstrong high at featherweight, around number 5, but over the past four years I have really dug into newspaper articles and reports as well as films of his fights and all the articles from magazines and other publications of the day that I can find and have put it all together into a giant scrapbook for Armstrong, which is around 400, or 500 pages of newspaper clips and reports from nearly all of his 182 career fights and now I not only rate Armstrong number one at featherweight, but I also rank him number one P4P of all-time…tied with “Sugar” Ray Robinson! Which I came to that conclusion after reading through literally 1000s and 1000s of newspaper and magazine clips and articles!
Does that make me the God of Henry Armstrong knowledge…no, not at all…far from it, but as a result of all the material that I have gone through, saved and put together for Armstrong I can say with confidence that I know more about his career than most!

Now if you want to read something in book form then the best thing you could do is get his autobiography instead of relying on those boxing books that repeat the same thing over and over, but the best thing you can do for Armstrong, or any other fighter for that matter is go to primary source material for research. You might even find it fun to go through all the various newspaper articles…I know it really hit me when I started and now I have scrapbooks for a slew of fighters, such as Armstrong, Sam Langford, Terry McGovern, “Barbados” Joe Walcott, Kid McPartland, Oscar Gardner, Peter Maher, Joe Grim, Bob Satterfield and many others. I also keep information for various other fighters, various era’s and just various other subjects on boxing in those big yellow envelopes, which I do for those that I do not at the moment want to put together a scrapbook for, but it’s a great way to keep material organized for fast reference if needed!

barry wrote:This is my last post in this thread as it has pretty much turned into a complete waste of time and I would rather try to focus my energy toward something that may be helped.

As I have said many, many times in the past...looking at a fighters record alone is worthless in trying to evaluate a fighters career and based on the sources that you mentioned using, the only source you could be using is they're records as the other sources you mentioned just simply do not go into any fighters career in any kind of depth, and being that they were what you mentioned then it's highly likely that they were your main sources and relying mainly on record stats and little thumbnail sketch-bio's in some book written forty years after the fighter fought is about the worst way that a person can go about researching a fighter, plain and simple. Like a fighters record alone, you just simply cannot learn anything from empty numbers except what the decision of a bout was, a win, loss, or draw, but you don't know whether it was a bad decision, or a close fight, or a decisive decision...you don't know any of that from records alone all records do is give you the result and that alone is about the weakest method of trying of evaluate a fighter, but for some reason a few people feel like that learn all they need to from records alone, but it's pretty obvious what a person does and doesn't know by weak claims that cannot really be backed up by anything at all.

As I stated earlier, maybe in another thread...every thing of this nature is entirely opinion, but a person can put together a very, very solid opinion based on good factual research and as such they can put forth a real good argument, but when someone just half-asses something with little actual research...it becomes very clear really fast for those that have done really good research

For example...someone doing really good research would put together newspaper fight reports for every single fight that they can find for a fighter and then add to that all the articles that one can find from various publications of the year, or years that the certain fighter fought...and off course films are great, but for older fighters there just is not a great number of films to go by and as such a person should put together as much material as possible!

As for Armstrong...up until around four years ago I had not really done a lot of research on his career. I had mainly just read the repetitive thumbnail sketches in books like the Boxing Register, Nat Fleischer’s Black Dynamite series and others of that nature and up to that point I rated Armstrong high at featherweight, around number 5, but over the past four years I have really dug into newspaper articles and reports as well as films of his fights and all the articles from magazines and other publications of the day that I can find and have put it all together into a giant scrapbook for Armstrong, which is around 400, or 500 pages of newspaper clips and reports from nearly all of his 182 career fights and now I not only rate Armstrong number one at featherweight, but I also rank him number one P4P of all-time…tied with “Sugar” Ray Robinson! Which I came to that conclusion after reading through literally 1000s and 1000s of newspaper and magazine clips and articles!
Does that make me the God of Henry Armstrong knowledge…no, not at all…far from it, but as a result of all the material that I have gone through, saved and put together for Armstrong I can say with confidence that I know more about his career than most!

Now if you want to read something in book form then the best thing you could do is get his autobiography instead of relying on those boxing books that repeat the same thing over and over, but the best thing you can do for Armstrong, or any other fighter for that matter is go to primary source material for research. You might even find it fun to go through all the various newspaper articles…I know it really hit me when I started and now I have scrapbooks for a slew of fighters, such as Armstrong, Sam Langford, Terry McGovern, “Barbados” Joe Walcott, Kid McPartland, Oscar Gardner, Peter Maher, Joe Grim, Bob Satterfield and many others. I also keep information for various other fighters, various era’s and just various other subjects on boxing in those big yellow envelopes, which I do for those that I do not at the moment want to put together a scrapbook for, but it’s a great way to keep material organized for fast reference if needed!

Whats the best place on the net to access articles on Armstrong?.... have you got much on Owen Moran?...

On the net both http://www.newspaperarchives.com and the Pro Quest newspaper archive are the two best sources to date. Pro Quest has newspaper archives for the Los Angeles Times, which Armstrong fought a lot in L.A. as well as the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Defender, which is an African-American newspaper, Washington Post, Atlanta Constitution, Boston Globe, but the Globe only goes up to around 1925 and they also have complete run of the National Police Gazette from around 1877 thru 1906.

A search for Armstrong on the Pro Quest site for the years 1929 thru 1950 brings back 5,190 total hits/different articles and a search for Armstrong for the years 1929 thru 1950 on newspaperarchive.com brings back 16,415 different hits, so that is a lot of newspaper articles, but the two best is the Los Angeles Times on Pro Quest and the Oakland Tribune on newspaperarchive.com.

Like I said, I have been able to put together clips for nearly all of Armstrong’s fights and most of that has come from those two sites, except the magazine articles, which unfortunately the only magazine type of publication available online that I know of is the 1877 thru 1906 run of the Police Gazette. It would be great to see something like Ring magazine put they’re entire archives/every issue online for a fee service, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon, so I’ll just continue to purchase issues from ebay!

As to Owen Moran:

I don't have a lot on Moran yet, other than what has been written about him in a slew of books, but I don’t put to much faith into books, and also various articles that have been in various boxing magazines through the years, but as to the best kind of sources all I have right now is a few separate articles on Moran and also a few fight reports that I have gathered in folders for some of the fighters that he fought, like George Dixon, Frankie Neil, Abe Attell, Ad Wolgast, “Harlem” Tommy Murphy, Battling Nelson, Packey McFarland, Phil Brock, Joe Mandot and Charlie White, I have separate folders for each of those guys and I’m sure that I have the reports for they’re fights against Moran in those folders, but I do need to start a folder for Moran.

He is one of the many fighters that I am greatly interested in as I think he was one of the best fighters to ever come out of England, or Europe for that matter. Several months ago a really good friend sent me copies for over 100 different issues of “Mirror of Life and Boxing World” for the years between 1912 and 1922 and they have been a great big help for me on European boxing as boxing publications from overseas are either high priced, or just unavailable to get here in the States, so anything like that I am interested in getting as there are many European fighters that I want to learn more about. I sometimes make photo-copies of various materials that I have and then trade that with other boxing researchers, which works out great as they get stuff that they don’t have and I get stuff that I don’t have, which that has been the best part about the IBRO…it’s members are just absolutely wonderful and very helpful to other boxing researchers.

Back to Moran, I recall seeing a few articles for Moran in that bundle of issues of “Mirror of Life,” but I never focused solely on Moran when I have went through them as Moran was fighting more so in the USA than Europe in that time frame, but I need to start putting material for Moran in a folder of his own, because as I said, I feel that he was one of the best to ever come out of Europe!

I'll definately look into those sites... Moran was an awesome fighter, although funnily enough he was never a champion, never even held the British title I think. Many people thought he was robbed against Attell... the well known fight manager Jimmy Johnstone said that Moran was the best British fighter he'd ever seen. If you can track down a book called 'The Hardest game' by Frank and Jimmy Butler, theres a good chapter on Moran in that.

When they asked Tyson (I know, I know!) which british fighters he admired he listed Moran and Ted Kid Lewis

Well for all his faults Tyson has a good knowledge of the fighters of the past and used to watch Jim Jacobs fight collection for hours on end...

barry wrote:This is my last post in this thread as it has pretty much turned into a complete waste of time and I would rather try to focus my energy toward something that may be helped.

As I have said many, many times in the past...looking at a fighters record alone is worthless in trying to evaluate a fighters career and based on the sources that you mentioned using, the only source you could be using is they're records as the other sources you mentioned just simply do not go into any fighters career in any kind of depth, and being that they were what you mentioned then it's highly likely that they were your main sources and relying mainly on record stats and little thumbnail sketch-bio's in some book written forty years after the fighter fought is about the worst way that a person can go about researching a fighter, plain and simple. Like a fighters record alone, you just simply cannot learn anything from empty numbers except what the decision of a bout was, a win, loss, or draw, but you don't know whether it was a bad decision, or a close fight, or a decisive decision...you don't know any of that from records alone all records do is give you the result and that alone is about the weakest method of trying of evaluate a fighter, but for some reason a few people feel like that learn all they need to from records alone, but it's pretty obvious what a person does and doesn't know by weak claims that cannot really be backed up by anything at all.

As I stated earlier, maybe in another thread...every thing of this nature is entirely opinion, but a person can put together a very, very solid opinion based on good factual research and as such they can put forth a real good argument, but when someone just half-asses something with little actual research...it becomes very clear really fast for those that have done really good research

For example...someone doing really good research would put together newspaper fight reports for every single fight that they can find for a fighter and then add to that all the articles that one can find from various publications of the year, or years that the certain fighter fought...and off course films are great, but for older fighters there just is not a great number of films to go by and as such a person should put together as much material as possible!

As for Armstrong...up until around four years ago I had not really done a lot of research on his career. I had mainly just read the repetitive thumbnail sketches in books like the Boxing Register, Nat Fleischer’s Black Dynamite series and others of that nature and up to that point I rated Armstrong high at featherweight, around number 5, but over the past four years I have really dug into newspaper articles and reports as well as films of his fights and all the articles from magazines and other publications of the day that I can find and have put it all together into a giant scrapbook for Armstrong, which is around 400, or 500 pages of newspaper clips and reports from nearly all of his 182 career fights and now I not only rate Armstrong number one at featherweight, but I also rank him number one P4P of all-time…tied with “Sugar” Ray Robinson! Which I came to that conclusion after reading through literally 1000s and 1000s of newspaper and magazine clips and articles!
Does that make me the God of Henry Armstrong knowledge…no, not at all…far from it, but as a result of all the material that I have gone through, saved and put together for Armstrong I can say with confidence that I know more about his career than most!

Now if you want to read something in book form then the best thing you could do is get his autobiography instead of relying on those boxing books that repeat the same thing over and over, but the best thing you can do for Armstrong, or any other fighter for that matter is go to primary source material for research. You might even find it fun to go through all the various newspaper articles…I know it really hit me when I started and now I have scrapbooks for a slew of fighters, such as Armstrong, Sam Langford, Terry McGovern, “Barbados” Joe Walcott, Kid McPartland, Oscar Gardner, Peter Maher, Joe Grim, Bob Satterfield and many others. I also keep information for various other fighters, various era’s and just various other subjects on boxing in those big yellow envelopes, which I do for those that I do not at the moment want to put together a scrapbook for, but it’s a great way to keep material organized for fast reference if needed!

As I have said many times in the past I am not just looking at the fighter's win/loss record. Through the books and Boxrec database I look at every result they have, every result of their opponent's and the results of their opponent's opponents. I take into consideration the stage of their careers when they fought as well.
I also use other books, and film as well.

I agree that newspaper articles covering a fight can be informative. "KO8" or "W10" in a record book certainly doesn't tell the whole story of the fight.
However there are problems with newspaper articles as well.
1.Often you are relying on the opinion of someone that you know little or nothing about.
A. They may have a bias for one fighter, against the other fighter or both.
B. They simply may not be that knowledgeable.
At least with a book you can read about a fight and have several hundreds of pages from the rest of the book to get an idea of the writer's biases and knowledge.

2. The farther you go back the less a reporter has something to compare the fight and the fighters that he is covering.
A reporter covering Jim Corbett in a fight in the 1890's may be awed by his boxing ability write in depth about it. He may not write that if he saw Tunney but of course he hadn't.
A reporter covering a Tunney fight in the 1920's might be impressed by his speed and go on and on about it. If he saw Ali he might not be so impressed,but of course he never saw Ali.

3. You simply can't reserach the newspaper articles of every fight that ever occurred. If you do it for one fighter (say Armstrong), then you will know more about that particular fighter. However, naturally you proabalby will have a bias toward Armstrong when comparing him to another fighter.

General boxing books, biographies, record books, the Boxrec Database, film all have their weaknesses. They all do some good things as well. Like wise researching newspaper articles can be informative but has it's weaknesses as well.

What is most disappointing is your attitude that boils down to I know more than you, so I don't need to answer your point.
Either counter my point or acknowledge that there is some merit to it.

I have asked several times why you have Armstrong #1 on your all time Top 20 featherweight list (even though he didn't beat anyone else on your own list) and Sanchez #9 when your own list indicates that Sanchez should be higher than Armstrong. It doesn't appear that you realized that Sanchez had beaten 3 guys on your own list.
I suspect that you didn't respond to my repeated questioning about this because you realized how illogical your list is.

I have explained why it's not necessary to know the fighting styles of fighter with mediocre records that Armstrong beat and you keep ignoring it. (Of course you don't mention doing that for the other top featherweights and their opponents that had mediocre records. No, once again it's all about Armstrong).

You shouldn't expect me to think Armstrong is better than those I listed above him if you won't even talk about those fighters.
Once again, read the original thread. It's not the Henry Armstrong Story. It's a list ranking the top 50 featherweights of all time. Since you are comparing fighters, you have to think about the other top featherweights as well.

I know that you won't find two people to have the exact same rankings.
One of the reason that I made this list is to see what opinions other people think. Sometimes they have make good points explaining why they think fighter A is better than fighter B, using information form more than one fighter. I wish you would use your knowledge to do the same.

silkov wrote:

Ambling Alp wrote:

silkov wrote: I agree!... at the end of the day its just churlish to hold those defeats against Armstrong... the fact that Armstrong beat 135 and 147 pounders when he was still little more than a featherweight says to me that he was an awesome featherweight and pretty much the best candidate for number 1 that I can see and I've seen no argument here to make me think otherwise....

It's churlish to hold these defeats against Armstrong? Well sorry if these unpleasant facts annoy you, but Armstrong losses count. I'm talking about losses to featherweights when he was a featherweight. Sorry if the facts aren't convenient for you.
Armstrong didn't beat any great 135 and 147 pounders when he himself was a featherweight. Again, we are just rating him as a featherweight here. He wisely bulked up when he started to fighter bigger guys who were good. Look at the biggest wins in his career.
Hw weighed a lot more than 126 when he beat he Barney Ross, Lew Ambers, Lew Jenkins, Fritzie Zivic, and Sammy Angott.

If you knew abything about Armstrong you'd know that he used to drink beer in order to 'beef up' for those fights... he was still a natural 126 pounder just like Duran was always a natural 135 pounder....

Silkov,
The stories about Armstrong drinking beer and eating ice cream to gain weight are cute but don't mean much.
I have explained several times why it's silly when ranking a fighter in a certain weight class to count his fights in other weight classes.
It doesn't matter if you think Armstrong was a "natural 126" or not.
If he was well over 126 pounds he's not a featherweight. Period.
The wins as a lightweight count when rating him as a lightweight, or if you are rating him on a pound for pound basis, but not at featherweight.

Ambling Alp wrote:

silkov wrote:

Ambling Alp wrote: It's churlish to hold these defeats against Armstrong? Well sorry if these unpleasant facts annoy you, but Armstrong losses count. I'm talking about losses to featherweights when he was a featherweight. Sorry if the facts aren't convenient for you.
Armstrong didn't beat any great 135 and 147 pounders when he himself was a featherweight. Again, we are just rating him as a featherweight here. He wisely bulked up when he started to fighter bigger guys who were good. Look at the biggest wins in his career.
Hw weighed a lot more than 126 when he beat he Barney Ross, Lew Ambers, Lew Jenkins, Fritzie Zivic, and Sammy Angott.

If you knew abything about Armstrong you'd know that he used to drink beer in order to 'beef up' for those fights... he was still a natural 126 pounder just like Duran was always a natural 135 pounder....

Silkov,
The stories about Armstrong drinking beer and eating ice cream to gain weight are cute but don't mean much.
I have explained several times why it's silly when ranking a fighter in a certain weight class to count his fights in other weight classes.
It doesn't matter if you think Armstrong was a "natural 126" or not.
If he was well over 126 pounds he's not a featherweight. Period.
The wins as a lightweight count when rating him as a lightweight, or if you are rating him on a pound for pound basis, but not at featherweight.

Theyre not stories mate, its from his Autobiography, which is certainly a better source of info on Armstrong than the books you keep quoting... Armstrong had no reason to lie about the beer and one of the reasons he mentions it is because it was a practise which fueled his later alcoholism... I suggest you study Armstrong a lot closer as your knowledge of him as a fighter and a man is somewhat sketchy to say the least!...

Decagon wrote:

Ambling Alp wrote:Besides each none. However, there is no one behind them that beat 3 fighters in my top 20. I rate them highly becasue if you take a hard look at their career records they are mosre impressive than almost anyone elses.

Explain how Attell losing a newspaper decision to Jem Driscol and never giving him a rematch is a part of this. Also, there is severe reason to doubt Attell's credibility, given his connection to organized crime, not only by association, but the commission of criminal acts involving sports events. How do we know that some/many of his fights weren't fixed?

Some of his fights may have been fixed. Allegedly Attell threw some fights. (I still count all of his losses as losses and against him.)
Do you know of specific fights that Attell won that weren't on the level?

>>>I suggest you study Armstrong a lot closer as your knowledge of him as a fighter and a man is somewhat sketchy to say the least!...<<<

Sketchy...its down-right non-existent...except for the couple of paragraphs that Gilbert Odd wrote in his Boxing Encyclopedia and the few paragraphs that are in the Boxing Register.


Oh and Alp...it's not about me knowing more about boxing than you, that's a given, it's about properly researching a fighter and the fighters he fought and giving a solid opinion based on solid research of primary sources instead of an opinion based on very little research and counting on secondary sources...it's the secondary sources that have gotten so much wrong about boxing history! If you keep up the research you will learn these things in time and learn to really go into a fighter’s career. Personally, if I do not know enough about a fighter then I just simply will not try to make any kind of comments. It's like the weight classes...this past year the IBRO had it's members all put together they're P4P lists for the eight traditional weight classes in boxing. Now instead of just putting together some half-ass list in a couple of divisions I just simply did not put a list together.

For example, I did not put together a list for the flyweight division as I just simply did not know enough about some of the fighters to be able to give a solid opinionated list backed by plenty of factual research. Now I knew plenty enough about fighters like Jimmy Wilde, Pancho Villa, Pascaul Perez and others of that nature, but then there were fighters like Elky Clark, Little Dado, Horaccio Accavallo, Masao Ohba and others that I have only read a articles about, certainly not enough to be able to formulate a fair, non-biased opinion of all flyweights, so I just did not participate with that division. Though everything is opinion and you have the right o chose and pick whoever you like, but you should not be surprised when someone points out certain things that are obvious, such as your view on Armstrong…it’s pretty clear that you have done little research on Armstrong’s career at featherweight and that’s alright, but don’t try to pretend to know something you pretty clearly don’t!


>>>Do you know of specific fights that Attell won that weren't on the level?<<<

His fight with knockout Brown went before the commission and was considered a fix, though I think Brown won that bout fair and square, but there have been several questionable bouts throughout Attell's career! As to the Brown bout, Attell's reasoning for doing so terrible in that contest was due to the fact that he had taken cocaine before the bout, but his performance was not one of someone on a stimulant...but nonetheless Brown just beat him!

His bout with Oliver Kirk was fishy also.

Silkov---I just got a book by James and Frank Butler that arrived in the mail today called, "The Fight Game" and it has a chapter on Moran, but I haven't had a chance to read it yet!