BoxRec

On a previous thread, someone mentioned that the middleweight division was deep in the 1980's, and I believe at least one other person agreed.

Obviously Hagler was great, but I never was impressed by the rest of the division. Anterfermo, Minter, Sibson, Hamsho, Scypion etc were ok, but certainly nothing special.

Have I underrated these guys? Was this a deep period (specifically 1980-1987) compared to other eras in the middleweight division?

Ampling if the middleweights of the 80's didn't impress you then you are obviuosly hard to please.

The best period was probably about 87-93.Those were still all '80s fighters around at that time and when you include the top ten guys from that period in with the 80-87 fighters then you get a very deep division.

Middleweight has been almost consistently strong up until the Hopkins\Holmes\Joppy years.

Since then it's been garbage.

I think the later 80s were stronger than the early 80s with guys like McCallum, Nunn, Barkley etc. Hagler really dominated until 1987.

Dec, you forgot to mention Caveman Lee being able to beat Bob Fitz as well!

Decagon wrote:Meh.

• Marvin Hagler
• Michael Nunn
• John Mugabi
• Sugar Ray Leonars
• Tommy Hearns
• Iran Barkley
• Roberto Duran
• Mike McCallum
• Sumbu Kalambay
• Alan Minter
• Frank Tate
• Nigel Benn
• Michael Watson

Those are just the fighter's I'd make favorites over Bob Fitzsimmons.

The majority of those fighters flirted with other weights, or were around at the start of the decade (Minter retired in 1981) or at the end (Nunn won his world title in 1988).
Hagler's 12 challengers were not the greatest.

PS: To say the likes of Caveman Lee and Hamsho would have beaten Ruby Rob is an insult.

So Duran, Hearns, Mugabi, and Leonard weren't anything? and thats 1/4 of his defenses. I wouldn't say that Hagler's resume is up there with Sugar Ray Robinson (Basilio, LaMotta, Fullmer, Turpin, nuff said) but it ranks up there as deep, but not the deepest.

generic screen name wrote:So Duran, Hearns, Mugabi, and Leonard weren't anything? and thats 1/4 of his defenses. I wouldn't say that Hagler's resume is up there with Sugar Ray Robinson (Basilio, LaMotta, Fullmer, Turpin, nuff said) but it ranks up there as deep, but not the deepest.

Let's look at those challengers, shall we. He fought Obel twice, Hamsho twice, Pussycat Lee, Overawed Sibson, Swallow it Scypion, washed up Vito...that's eight of his 12 defences.
Then we had Roldan, who made Hagler look awful and officially floored him.
The others were moving up, one of whom beat him, one of whom was ahead on points after 13 rounds.
See how easy it is to pick holes in any great fighter's resume!
Bob Fitzsimmons was just as good a fighter as Hagler.

I didn't mean this to be a slam against Hagler or anthing like that. He is arguably the greatest middleweight of all time. (Let's not forget he beat some good fighters in the 1970's as well).

What I was getting at is that the rest of the divison wasn't particulary strong during most of the 1980's. Duran, Hearns, Mugabi, and Leonard, weren't really middleweights for much of their career.

Many of the rest of the guys Decagon mentioned were good, but weren't really serious factors until late in the decade; Mcallum, Nunn, Benn, Watson, Kalambay.

What I'm talking about are the top guys that fought at middleweight for several years in the 1980's such as Hamsho, Roldan, Sibson, Scypion,Obelmejias etc. (Maybe Minter and Anterfermo were bad examples that I mentioned earlier).

They seemed to be decent fighters; but how do they stack up against say the 1950's or 1960's?

The 1950's had Robinson,Basilio, Fullmer, Turpin, Olson, as well as Webb, Giardello, and Tiger late in the decade and Graziano and LaMotta ealy in the decade. There was always several great fighters in any one given year.

Same with the 1960's, you had Tiger, Giardello, Downes and Pender, Carter, Benton, in the early 1960's as well as Griffith and Benevenuti, then Monzon and Brisco late in the decade.

Again in any one year, there seemed to at least a few really good fighters.

The 1980's were certainly better than the middleweight division has been in the last several years, but how doesn it stack up against other eras?

What seems to be a general rule of thumb in boxing is you have you're top three fighters in every weight class and then the rest of the field who basically take turns beating each other.

Take for example heavyweights of the seventies. You had Ali, Frazier, and Foreman. Then you had Quarry beating Shavers, Shavers beating Ellis, Ellis beating Quarry. None of these guys ever really able to establish themselves beyond a on the fringe contender.

I think you could go down the list in all of the weight classes and have about the same situation. So I don't think you could single out the middle weight division as being particularly lacking in talent. It's just that you had one guy who was that much better than everybody else.

I didn't mention anything about Norton in my post.

Allow me to post something brilliant...


http://www.retroshirtz.de/neu/images/db ... 5525_s.jpg

Decagon wrote:It was a stupid post, anyway.

Thank you for youre illuminating comment and youre enlightenment, I'm sure I will be much wiser in the future because of it.

Had James Toney been around a few yrs earlier, he would be high up in the rankings in a one off peak fight scenario. Possibly number 1.
Not Career, but just one single great night.

Hamsho was a good fighter IMO. He was a handful for anyone and Hagler's performance in the second fight was possibly his greatest ever. Hagler barely lost a round in his defences up until Duran.

I think though that Hamsho, Sibson, Scypion all had styles that suited Hagler. People used to think that pushing Hagler back was the way to beat him but looking back its obvious now that he didn't like counter punchers, and he didn't like to lead.

Most of the guys Hagler defended against in the 80's were very tough fighters but they were one dimensional. It almost seemed like Hagler was fighting the same guy all the time. There any really isnt much diference between fighting a Roldan, a Hamsho or a Caveman Lee.

Thats why Duran gave Hagler so much trouble; he was so used to fighting the same type of guy for a while that Durans ring smarts threw him off.
That being said, Robinson's toughest middleweight opponents were similiar as well. LaMotta, Basillio and Fullmer didnt offer much variation.
It seems to me that Monzon's top opponents Griffith, Napoles, Briscoe,Benvenuti and Valdez, were a more varied group stylisticly than either Robinsons or Haglers.

I can't remember who said the line, maybe Emmanuel Steward, but it was something like "Vito Antoufermo ruined a whole generation of middleweights" (Hamsho, Sibson, Roldan...) being parcially succesful in his first fight against Hagler.

Vito got a gift in the first fight against Hagler.