BoxRec

We all know that the 70s was probably the best era of the heavyweight division.

From Cruiserweight to Strawweight, pick the greatest era of these weight classes and why.

1940s middleweight Kings,
greatest "general" period in boxing overall, competition level high, longevity, most of the Top men remained there for years - fighting each other and fighting plenty, great MW's from all over and many of them fighting UP in weight, ANY number of the Top performers from the leading boxing nations, might well have been World Champions.

Middleweight Kings - Big & Strong enough to fight Bigmen... Lean, Fast & Skillful enough to fight like wee-men.

never to be seen again!!!

I've always thought the mid 70s to mid 80s was a great time for the featherweight division.

A lot of close calls, but here is what I am going with:

Lightheavyweight - 1920's. (Tunney,Gibbons,Carpentier,Levinsky,Siki,Delaney,Berlanbach,Stribling, Loughran etc.) 1940's was great as well. 1970's was very good.

Middleweight - 1950's (LaMotta,Robinson,Turpin,Olson,Basilio,Fullmer etc.) 1940's and 1960's were also very good.

Jr Middleweight 1980's (Hearns,Duran, Benitez,McCallum etc.)

Welterweight 1940's (Robinson,Gavilan,Armstrong,Zivic etc.) 1900-1909 was very good.

Jr Welterweight - 1980's (Pryor, Arguello,Meldrick Taylor, Haley,Mamby,Costello,McGirt) 1970's and 1930's was also pretty good.

Lightweight - 1930's (Ambers,Armstrong,Canzoneri,Ross,Petrolle) 1900-1909 was was also very good.

Jr Lightweight - 2000's (Pacquiao,Morales,Barrera,Marquez) 1980's was also pretty good.

Featherweight -1980's (Sanchez,Pedroza,Nelson,Gomez,Castillo,LaPorte,Lockridge) 1910-1919 was also very good.

Bantamweight - 1960's (Jofre,Harada,Rose,Rudkin, Olivares at the end of the decade)

Flyweight - 1940's (Peterson,Marino, Monahagen)

There haven't really been any great eras in the cruiserweight,supermiddleweight, and jr featherweight divisions yet.

There really should only be one weight class below bantamweight instead of 4. As a consequence the talent pool is divided up and there seldom is a lot of depth in one specific weight class below bantamweight.

This was divided up by decade which hurts some "era's. For example, The late 1970's and early 1980's was a great era for the lightheavyweight division. However the early 1970's was mediocre which hurt the 1970's and the later 1980's wasn't very strong either, which hurt the 1980's.

As mentioned before, there are certainly a lot of close calls.

It's interesting to see the different middleweight eras so far. The 40's & the 50's were mentioned already, but when I saw the title of this thread, I immeditately thought of the middleweights in the 60's.

Just goes to show how DEEP the middleweight division has been.

Yes the middleweight division was pretty deep back then. However, for whatever reason it has been very weak in the last couple of decades.

Maybe one reason is because the Jr Middleweight division is more respected now and some guys stay there for a longer time. To a lesser degree, maybe the creation of the the Super Middleweight division has taken a few good fighters that would have been in the middleweight divison.

It does seem to go in cycles. We certainly are due for an era of good middleweights.

I always felt the 40's were the best for Light heavyweight: Charles, Moore, Bivins, Marshall, Maxim, Lesnevich, Oakland Smith, Burley (sometime fought there), Conn, Johnson, Chase and Satterfield

Lightheavyweights: I pick the late 70s early 80s time: Galindez, Saad Muhammad, Braxton, Gregory, Coneh, Yaqui Lopez, Spinks, Marvin Johnson and the Davis brothers for example...

Middleweights: I pick the era of the late 50s and early 60s: Robinson, Basilio, Fullmer, Giardello, Tiger, Pender, Downes and Florentino Fernandez

Welterweights: I got to go with the late 70s and early 80s: Leonard, Hearns, Duran, Benitez, Cuevas, Palomino, Ranzany, Chiaverini, Bruce Curry, Monroe Brooks, Andy Price and Weston

Lightweights: I pick the era of the 1940s decade, probably the golden and greatest era of the division history: Ike Williams, Jack, Angott, Zurita, Mouzon, Bolanos, Montgomery, Jenkins, and Joyce...The era of Ortiz, Laguna, Ramos, Sugar Ramos, Teo Cruz, Elorde, Locche and Buchanan was great too.

Featherweights: I pick the era of the early 70s when Olivares, Chacon, Danny Lopez, Kotey and others were duking it out...Also the era of Sanchez and Pedroza were kind of great too.

Bantamweights: It has to be the Olivares, Chucho Castillo and Jesus Pimentel era of the late 60s and early 70s...What an era dominated by Mexican legends!!!

Flyweights: I got to pick the Jimmy Wilde era...But the era of Charchai Chionoi, Efren Torres and Masao Ohba was very good too.