BoxRec

Thought this would be fun. This a list of my Top 100 Fighters of All-Time. Instead of ranking them 1-100, I put each of the 100 fighters in one of 10 levels, with each level having 10 fighters. Level 1 is the best, followed by Level 2, and so on to Level 10, who just made it.

Obviously there were some close calls, but it went fairly smoothly until I got to Level 9 and 10, and saw how many great fighters I was going to have to leave out. There are more than 50 fighters who I think you could make a credible argument to make the top 100. There are so many that are relatively close.

I knew that no matter how I ranked them, people will have disagreements. No two people would have it exactly the same.

However, I do ask that for every fighter that you think should move up a level, name someone else that I have above him that needs to be moved down to the level that I have the fighter that you think should get moved up. So for example, you could say Dick Tiger needs to be moved from Level 5 to Level 4 and Stanley Ketchel should be moved down from Level 4 to Level 5.
Same if you think someone is too high, say who needs to be moved up.

For every fighter that isn't in the Top 100 at all that you think should be, also mention a fighter who is in that should not be.
Of course, feel free to dispute another person's comments.

I hope we can have fresh debates between fighters that we don't discuss a lot, rather than the same old ones we have had before.

Anyway, here are the Top 100 in alphabetical order by Level:

Level 1 - Ali,Armstrong,Charles, Greb, Langford, Ray Leonard, Louis, Monzon, Moore, and Robinson

Level 2 - Duran, Gans, Jofre, Benny Leonard, Pacquiao, Pep, Ross, Saddler, Walker, and Wilde.

Level 3 - Arguello, Canzoneri, Chavez, Fitzsimmons, Hagler, Hearns, Sanchez, Spinks, Tunney, and Whitaker

Level 4 - Ambers, Foster, Frazier, Foreman, Griffith, Holmes, Holyfield, Jack Johnson, Ketchel, and Napoles

Level 5 - Benitez, Kid Chocolate, Dempsey, Harold Johnson, Lennox Lewis, Loughran, Marciano, Mayweather, Olivares, and Tiger

Level 6 - Barrera, De La Hoya, Gomez, Jeffries, Liston, McFarland, Morales, Mosley, Saldivar, and Tyson.

Level 7 - Attell, Panama Al Brown, Burley, Harada, Conn, Gavilan, Jones Jr.,McGovern, McLarnin, and Zarate

Level 8 - Benvenuti, Calzaghe, Cerdan, Flowers, Hopkins, LaMotta, John Henry Lewis, Carlos Ortiz, Rosenbloom, and Ike Williams

Level 9 - Fullmer, Tommy Gibbons, Locche, Loi, Marquez, Marshall, McCallum,Pryor, Rodriguez, and Holman Williams

Level 10-Basilio, Berg, Delaney, "Nonpariel" Dempsey, Dixon, LaBarba, Manuel Ortiz, Perez, Ryan, and Barbadoes Joe Walcott.

It's a solid list and tiers is really the only way to do it.

I'd move Ali, Leonard, Louis and Monzon to tier 2 and replace them with Duran, Benny Leonard, Pep & Gavilan. Though I don't think any of them are particularly out of place.

I'd move Wilde down to level 5 and bump Canzoneri up to level 2.

Pac to level 3 & Whitaker to level 2.

Griffith and Hearns to level 2 & Jofre & Gans to level 3.

Mayweather to level 3 & Chavez to level 5.

Delahoya to level 10 & LaBarba to level 6.

Too much shuffling for all of them but the only glaring errors I see is that Hopkins is way too low, Tyson and Oscar are way too high. Holman Williams is far too low, whatever level Burley is on Williams should be right with him. I'd have them both higher than your placement.

Good effort though, nice mixture of older and modern fighters. Off the top of my head, Jersey Joe is one guy I'd definitely have that I don't think I see.

Roberto Duran, Willie Pep and Joe Gans in level 1

Carlos Monzon, Archie Moore, Bob Fitzsimmons, Jack Johnson, Rocky Marciano and Tony Canzoneri in level 2

Thomas Hearns and Michael Spinks are too high. They should be at least in level 5.

Emile Griffith, Jack Dempsey, Ike Williams and Stanley Ketchel, to me are a borderline top 20, they should be in level 3. So should Sugar Ray Leonard D

Harold Johnson is way too high. So is Lennox Lewis. So is Oscar De La Hoya. So is Shane Mosley...As a matter of fact, they should not be in the top 100.

Dick Tiger, Panama Al Brown, Pascual Perez, Terry McGovern, Jimmy McLarnin, Barbados Joe Walcott, Carmen Basilio and Kid Chocolate should be in level 3 or 4.

Kid Gavilan is waaay too low. He should be in the top 50 in level 3 or 4.

You missed the greats Eusebio Pedroza, Koxai Galaxy and Jersey Joe Walcott

You also forgot the greats Joltin' Joe Brown and Beau Jack

Virtually every fighter from levels 6 thru 10 was better than Sonny Liston.

excellent list. I would probably put Duran in level I and Leonard in Level II. I disagree with some and think Monzon and Louis should stay in level I. Move Wilde down to Level III and move up Whitaker, Arguello or Hagler. Would move Fitzsimmons, Sanchez and Spinks down a level and replace them with Griffith, Holmes and Holyfield. I would put Pascual Perez in about level 4-6 and drop Liston to about level 9-10. Beyond those already listed, I might suggest Professor Nelson somewhere in the 100 list

Nelson would make my list too and Tiger Jack Fox.

Hard job

I'd swap Ray and Roberto (in the nicest possible way)

I'd swap Arguello-Griffith
Gavilan-Foreman
Marshall-Jones Jr
Berg-Calzaghe
Tommy Gibbons-Benitez

I'd add
Jack Britton
Johnny Dundee
Kid Lewis
Azumah Nelson
Jimmy Bivins

I'd lose
Pryor
Mosley
DLH
Tyson
Liston

If Joe Frazier can be at level 4 for his win over alltime great Muhammad Ali, shouldn't Randy Turpin crack the top 100 for his win over Sugar Ray Robinson, the man probably considered to be the greatest fighter of alltime by more people than any other fighter.

Randy Turpin was not as good as Smokin' Joe

If you compare Frazier's best wins to Turpin's, I don't see where he could be too far ahead. But I'm not really trying to make that argument, just the one that Frazier is level 4 but Turpin can't even make level 10.

Can't say I have heard of every fighter on the list maybe about 20 or so I haven't heard of but I'm sure that 1 person who should definately be in there is Ricardo Lopez

Cocoa Kid
Kid Azteca
George McFadden

Thanks for the comments. I wanted to address some of them.
First I wanted to describe how basically how I rated. I look at the notable wins and losses of each fighter; similar to how an accountant would have a balance sheet. The better the opponent that a fighter beats, the more credit he gets. The worse the opponent is that he lost to, the more he gets docked. To a lesser extent, I factor in the competitiveness of the fights. I take a close a look at the stages of their careers of the fighters and their opponents as well.

Many of the fighters that people thought I should put in the Top 100 and didn't, did not miss by much. I have no problem with Pedroza, Galaxy, Nelson, Britton, Ted Kid Lewis, Bivins making it.

I don't think I can justify Jersey Joe Walcott and Randy Turpin.
With Walcott, you have a guy who is just 53-18-1. There are too many fighters who fought tougher competition than him who didn't make it and who had a better record. His career is a little difficult to evaluate because he is the exception to the rule of a fighter being better in his mid-late 20s than his 30s. He was a late bloomer. However, look at his career even if you take out his bad start. Yes he beat Charles, by all accounts got robbed by Louis, gave Marciano a tough fight and beat Charles twice. However, Louis was well past his best when Waloctt fought him. And Walcott got knocked out in the rematch. And he lost to Charles twice. And the 4th fight could have gone to Charles. And he looked horrible in the 2nd Marciano fight. And he lost to Rex Layne. I would put Bowe, Patterson, and Norton in before him. You could even reasonably argue that Schmeling and Baer and Sharkey were better.

Randy Turpin did have the huge win over Robinson. However, the rest of career was not nearly as impressive Joe Frazier. Fraiers also had wins over Quarry, Ellis, Bonavena, Bugner, that trump Turpins other wins. Turpin also has bigger negatives that Frazier. Turpins was a very good fighter, but top 100 is a bit of a stretch.

As for Ray Leonard being in the First Level; he is a rock solid top 10 fighter. He had four wins over fighters in the top 50. No one in Level 2, has more than one. In fact, the number of top 50 fighters that the entire level 2 beat was only four. Leonard;s negatives are better than anyone in Level 2 as well.

Louis and Monzon were borderline picks to make Level 1. However, I though Louis had so many decent wins and so few negatives that he deserves to be there. As for Monzon, his pre-title fight career was not that impressive, but from Benveunti on is was, so he just made it.
I know that many people would think Pep should make it, but he really doesn't have that many major wins and was 1-3 vs Saddler. He was very consistent and almost made it.

As for who I put in the top 100 that people didn't think should be in: Johnson, Lennox Lewis, Moslely, De La Hoya, Pryor and Liston. I thought they all have several nice wins and a few major ones in some cases. None have too many negatives. A little surprised that people had problems with most of these guys. Would like to hear why.

I thought it would be the guys in Level 10 that people would want out. Surprisingly, not one of them has been mentioned as not being worthy.

I do think I rated Jimmy Wilde too high. I have never really be able to get a handle of how good he was . I constantly see him rated as the #1 flyweight, and have seen him in the top 10 for all fighters. I never see the reasoning except for the reference that he beat all of good bigger fighters, which I can't figure out who.c

If anyone can make a good case for or against Wilde I would like to hear it.

Pancho Villa should be in there, he'd be in my top 50. As for Wilde, he just didn't fight many guys that I'm familiar with. Perhaps it's just my ignorance to the period, but his resume is severely lacking for where he is placed on lists.

I rank the great Jimmy Wilde at position #11 now that I have the great Ezzard Charles at #7. The reason why because he dominated his weight class for a long time, won the majority of his fights by KO, over 100 of them and only weighted about 100 lbs. There were times that he had to fight bantamweights because there was no competition at flyweight. He even stopped bantamweights. Guys that weight over him by at least 15 pounds.

Ambling Alp II wrote:Thanks for the comments. I wanted to address some of them.
First I wanted to describe how basically how I rated. I look at the notable wins and losses of each fighter; similar to how an accountant would have a balance sheet. The better the opponent that a fighter beats, the more credit he gets. The worse the opponent is that he lost to, the more he gets docked. To a lesser extent, I factor in the competitiveness of the fights. I take a close a look at the stages of their careers of the fighters and their opponents as well.

Many of the fighters that people thought I should put in the Top 100 and didn't, did not miss by much. I have no problem with Pedroza, Galaxy, Nelson, Britton, Ted Kid Lewis, Bivins making it.

I don't think I can justify Jersey Joe Walcott and Randy Turpin.
With Walcott, you have a guy who is just 53-18-1. There are too many fighters who fought tougher competition than him who didn't make it and who had a better record. His career is a little difficult to evaluate because he is the exception to the rule of a fighter being better in his mid-late 20s than his 30s. He was a late bloomer. However, look at his career even if you take out his bad start. Yes he beat Charles, by all accounts got robbed by Louis, gave Marciano a tough fight and beat Charles twice. However, Louis was well past his best when Waloctt fought him. And Walcott got knocked out in the rematch. And he lost to Charles twice. And the 4th fight could have gone to Charles. And he looked horrible in the 2nd Marciano fight. And he lost to Rex Layne. I would put Bowe, Patterson, and Norton in before him. You could even reasonably argue that Schmeling and Baer and Sharkey were better.

Randy Turpin did have the huge win over Robinson. However, the rest of career was not nearly as impressive Joe Frazier. Fraiers also had wins over Quarry, Ellis, Bonavena, Bugner, that trump Turpins other wins. Turpin also has bigger negatives that Frazier. Turpins was a very good fighter, but top 100 is a bit of a stretch.

As for Ray Leonard being in the First Level; he is a rock solid top 10 fighter. He had four wins over fighters in the top 50. No one in Level 2, has more than one. In fact, the number of top 50 fighters that the entire level 2 beat was only four. Leonard;s negatives are better than anyone in Level 2 as well.

Louis and Monzon were borderline picks to make Level 1. However, I though Louis had so many decent wins and so few negatives that he deserves to be there. As for Monzon, his pre-title fight career was not that impressive, but from Benveunti on is was, so he just made it.
I know that many people would think Pep should make it, but he really doesn't have that many major wins and was 1-3 vs Saddler. He was very consistent and almost made it.As for who I put in the top 100 that people didn't think should be in: Johnson, Lennox Lewis, Moslely, De La Hoya, Pryor and Liston. I thought they all have several nice wins and a few major ones in some cases. None have too many negatives. A little surprised that people had problems with most of these guys. Would like to hear why.

I thought it would be the guys in Level 10 that people would want out. Surprisingly, not one of them has been mentioned as not being worthy.

I do think I rated Jimmy Wilde too high. I have never really be able to get a handle of how good he was . I constantly see him rated as the #1 flyweight, and have seen him in the top 10 for all fighters. I never see the reasoning except for the reference that he beat all of good bigger fighters, which I can't figure out who.c

If anyone can make a good case for or against Wilde I would like to hear it.

The great Willie Pep beat Manuel Ortiz, Paddy DeMarco, and cleaned up the featherweight class. His win over the great Sandy Saddler should put him in the top 10, plus his 230 wins in only 241 fights, and undefeated streaks of 63 and 72 bouts were very IMPRESSIVE. The only knock that I have on him would be that he did not excelled above his natural weight class. He beat some lightweights like Willie Joyce, but lost to Sammy Angott. And the Angott loss, was his only defeat in the 1940s until he met Saddler. Other than that, to me, he is a top 5 all time great pound per pound.

I don't think how many wins a fighter has is important in rating him. Most of us realize that a good fighter can always find easy victims to beat. One major win is more important than 100 wins over tomato cans. Not saying that all of Pep's wins were over tomato cans. However, when you are comparing the All-Time best against each other, you have to have many wins over very good and/or fighters.

With Pep, he did have a couple of great wins. However, not really that many when you are comparing to who is in Level 1. Except for Joe Louis, they all beat more fighters in the top 50 as well as the 100 than Pep did. I think Louis gets a slight edge over Pep because he beat several fighters not that far outside of the top 100.

As for Wilde, the competition is even more suspect. Much more. There is no one in the Top 100 that he beat. No one that he beat that I would even consider putting in the Top 100 or Top 200 for that matter. There is no one that anyone mentioned that he beat that should be in the Top 100.

I'm sure he was a great fighter. However, how great is very hard to determine. You just never seem to hear anything at all about any of his competition. When that happens, it's usually because the competition was not that good. Even if some were bantamweights, it's not that impressive if the bantamweights were not that good. I just don't know if some other small fighters could not have done the same thing as Wilde did.
I suspect that there have been a few other small fighters in boxing history of them could have done what Wilde did had they been in his era.

Flyweights will always be so overlooked because they are the smaller men. I do not look at who do you beat and so on. I always look at the time you were on top, how many years you was that good. For example, your boy Sugar Ray Leonard beat better fighters than Jimmy Wilde. But you just cannot go by that. Wilde is an all time flyweight. Leonard is an all time welterweight. Of course you are going to have better quality of opposition of guys from different weight classes trying to fight you. Wilde did not had that option. There were no strawweights then. Only 8 divisions. He only weighted over 100 pounds. But it was what he did with those 100 pounds. He had a longer career than Leonard. Had more KOs than Sugar Ray had fights, was more champion than Leonard, making all his title defenses wins by KO, and indeed, beat bigger men, no matter the circumstances. He was the best fighter of his time, pound per pound. We got to give him credit for that. He held the title longer than Leonard did. By the time he got beat, it was his 3rd loss over 100 fights!!! Someone got to be some type of good when he was around. I do not believe that bs that there were not good fighters when he was there. I do not believe that.

It is like we are criticizing him because of his weight or something. He does not have the fault to be that small.

Now with the great Willie Pep, he beat the best of the best of his weight class. A time that the featherweight division was at its very peak: Sal Bartolo, Sandy Saddler, Jock Leslie, Teddy "Red Top" Davis, Chalky Wright, Joey Archibald, Manuel Ortiz, Paddy DeMarco, Willie Joyce, Humberto Sierra, Lulu Constantino, Phil Terranova and Eddie Giosa. Those fighters got over 300 wins between them. Good quality fighters. Excellent fighters. None of them, with the exception of Saddler makes the top 50, not even the top 100. Should we penalize Pep because he did not beat a top 100 guy? That is ridiculous!!! You got go and fight what is in front of you at the same time you are around. Pep was the BOSS of his division. He did it for a long period of time.

First of all, once again, the amount of wins or ko's a fighter has is almost meaningless. There are many fighters who weren't that good who racked up a lot wins by fighting a lot of inferior competition. So I don't care if a fighter won 100, 200, or more fights. I care about who he beat. If Leonard or some of these others in Level 1 were interested in beating 100 tomato cans they could have.

I agree Wilde is a tough case. It's not like there were a lot of great flyweights for him to beat. However, I just don't think we can assume that he was one of the top 10 just because he had a great win/loss record. He did beat to bantamweight Joe Lynch, but lost to Pete Herman. Just don't think that there is enough to go on.

As for Pep, well he did defeat Saddler, and Ortiz. Those were great fighters, no doubt about it. Some of the other fighters that he beat were very good as well. However, you have to look at who the other guys beat. The other borderline guys Joe Louis and Carlos Monzon for example. Louis beat Schmeling, Walcott, Baer, and Bivins. He beat a lot of solid fighters like Pep did as well; guys like Buddy Baer, Arturo Godoy, Lou Nova, Bob Pastor, and Tommy Farr.

Monzon beat Bevenuti, Griffith, Valdes. He was 6-0 in those fights. That is more impressive than going 1-3 vs Saddler and 1-0 vs Ortiz.

What more could Pep have done? He could have gone better than 1-3 vs Saddler. He also could took the challenge of fighting more of the great lightweights of the era. He could have taken on Jack, Montgomery,or Williams. He did take on Angott and lost. Yes, they were bigger than him. However, a win over any of them would have helped his case a long way.

The flyweight division simply isn't particularly strong from a historical standpoint; Wilde doesn't deserve to be rated so highly. And neither does Ali, Louis or any fighter that only achieved greatness in one division. The truly great fighters were genuinely great fighters in two, sometimes three divisions. That's what separates your Robinson's, your Armstrong's, your Greb's, your Charles' from the rest of the pack.

Here are some of the changes I would make:

Wilde to level 4
Whitaker to level 2
Duran and Benny to level 1
Monzon to level 3
DLH to level 9
McLarning to level 2 - severely underrated fighter.
Carlos Ortiz to level 5 - I think many people also severely underrates Carlos Ortiz. How many contenders did he beat? How many HOF's did he beat? His record should show victories vs Locche and Loi, everyone knows he was robbed once vs Loi. Ortiz two levels below DLH is a crime in my book.
Lewis to level 7

I have a few more, I'll comeback.

Great effort Ambling Alp II and solid post.

Well Alp, you just go by wins, which IS called quality of opposition. I go by division dominance and performance. There is no way I could put someone like the great Sugar Ray Leonard on top of the great Jimmy Wilde. It is like we are penalizing him because of size. Wilde only weighed 100 pounds. But his performanceces during his day were something. He won or went undefeated in 101 bouts. That to me is impressive. He beat everybody in front of him, the very best of his class. Was also British and European flyweight champion. So that tells me he beat lots of good fighters. Won 130 fights which tells me he had durability and longevity, more than Leonard. Also beat bigger guys like Joey Lynch in 15 rounds. Lynch was a two time bantam world champion. And Wilde's record vs world champions was 7-3, 5kos. One loss was with Tancy Lee, which he avenged the following year, and the other losses were at the end of his career: Pete "Kid" Herman which took 17 rounds and the great Pancho Villa. Wilde won 45 in a row in one stretch.

Is beating great fighters is the criteria, then the great Jimmy McLarnin should be in level 1. He beat 11 hofs: Barney Ross, Tony Canzoneri, Pancho Villa, Benny Leonard, Billy Petrolle, Fidel La Barba, Young Corbett III, Lou Ambers, Sammy Mandell, Bud Taylor and, Louis "Kid" Kaplan. That is more wins of good qualiry fighters than Sugar Ray ever dreamed of. Four of those guys are EASILY in the top 100.

The great Willie Pep's wins and accomplishments were so extraordinary that showed why he is a top 5 great boxers ever. The cleaning up of his division plus his avenge of Sandy Saddler puts him there.

Thanks Elmer, you always bring the goods. Wilde isn't in Leonard's area code.

SaadOffTheDeck wrote:

Thanks Elmer, you always bring the goods. Wilde isn't in Leonard's area code.

Well, if you go by quality of opposition, then you pick Sugar Ray. If you go by longevity, unbeaten streaks, world championship dominance and division dominance, then you pick the Mighty Atom