Guys who aren't regarded great..But you think should be ???

Get a lot of heat sometimes about Ottke....But I never said he was great..Just that his record suggests he is....

I have a bit of a bugbear about Eusebio Pedroza..........Champion for seven years.........beat an old Olivares, Laporte and drew with taylor whilst beating no-marks........He is a bonafide great.............He wasn't even the best feather of his day!!

So why isn't Hector camacho.................Champion at three weights...finished the career of a still useful Leonard.........

Pazienza ........Went on to win two world titles after losing to Macho..........
Rosario...........Went on to win two world titles after losing to Camacho...

Ramirez, Mancini, Haugen, Davis jr, Limon, solis, Boza edwards.......Fought all the best fighters of his day........and his longevity was greater than Eusebio too.......

Never beaten at 130 or 135 and I'd certainly pick the Limon-Camacho to beat Chavez as would many others........

But that's my opinion..................Camacho gets a bad rap for me

A still useful Leonard?

I think the bugbear with camacho is the reverse gear mode he found post Rosario. It depends where you set your bar i guess. He had plenty of good wins as you say. To me though greats don't get gunshy. He was a great talent but like other great talents of his era, curry and norris, falls short of being a great.

Not sure great does not over sell his abilities somewhat but think Billy Soose sometimes gets lost in the mix when it comes to the old timers and has enough on his record to probably deserve better. Could certainly be beaten by the true elite such as Bivins and Burley but there is no great shame in that but still had enough about him to grab himself wins over the likes of Zale, Overlin and Mauriello which suggests a level of ability.

Also worth remembering with Soose is he injured his hand early in his career and had to radically overhaul his style from puncher to boxer to compensate for his injury. To do this and still compete in the company he did speaks well of his talents. As I say would go short of calling him great but is a guy who rarely gets a mention when we discuss the greats of the 40’s and he probably deserves a little more than that.

milkyboy wrote:A still useful Leonard?

I think the bugbear with camacho is the reverse gear mode he found post Rosario. It depends where you set your bar i guess. He had plenty of good wins as you say. To me though greats don't get gunshy. He was a great talent but like other great talents of his era, curry and norris, falls short of being a great.

Why is Eusebio great though Milky ??? and Camacho isn't.......

and he still beat Rosario...though I will concede it affected the rest of his career........

Longevity everything ?? not for me

Billy soose.............Have to look him up..

Think Hector would have been regarded as great but for some switch that flicked off in his mind towards the end of the Rosario fight. He turned from a counter-puncher of nerve into a safety-first runner and as milky says, I can't think of many true greats who could properly be described as gunshy. Think Pedroza has the odd asterisk by his name as well, mind.

Can't think of any great boser who isn't generally acclaimed as such - can think of rather a lot from the opposite category.

Oh and that "still useful Leonard"....come now!

It was at 154 though Captain.........Suiting Leonard..........

You can't think of any great boxer that isn't acclaimed as such....and yet you have an asterisk by Pedroza.......

look I can see where you're coming and you have a good case from but wasn't Whittaker gunshy......

No more than Floyd is, Truss.

Pedroza IS acclaimed as great by most; I have reservations about that status, preferring to regard him as "extremely accomplished at what he did", which isn't quite the same thing. A bit like Olivares, for example, where I also don't go along with the general consensus.

The Camacho-Leonard fight was made at middleweight, from memory, and Leonard cut a pathetic figure. It was as though Picasso had forgotten how to paint and was reduced to producing stick figures in crayon.

Does paint the problem of matching names vs longevity..........Has to be said Camacho had the better names.......but opposite opinions are welcome...

As for Whittaker I'll also disagree...... I saw him stink so many times like Nunn that I'd much prefer to watch Floyd's career highlights..Though Nazario and Kalambay were exceptions..

Nunn-Starling..Nunn

Nunn-Starling was appalling, I agree, but apart from Curry in their second fight, I struggle to think of a single boxer who looked good against Moochie.

I do put Mayweather ahead of Pea, but by no more than five spots. Floyd has the longevity, plus the greater range of weights in which he has excelled; Whitaker had the better contemporaries against which he was able to display his skills.

Nunn might be the closest to a fighter not generally accepted as great who could deserve that title. On balance, he does fall short, but his best performances were such that one knows that he was capable of greatness. Perhaps a little like Curry, but the cliff that Nunn fell off wasn't quite as steep as Don's.

Think rowley's showing off. Billy soose? That's two of us with some research to do truss.

I think you're a little harsh on pedrosa. He beat lockridge as well.. and more convincingly than Gomez or Chavez managed.. and pat ford more easily than Sanchez. No doubt Sanchez starts firm favourite if that unification were to happen, and its probably fair to say that pedrosa wasn't proven top dog during his reign. Camacho probably does have the better win column.

Pedrosa, made the best of a more limited skill set than camacho. However, he didn't leg it the first time someone gave him a going over, and change his entire future fight plans off the back if it. I can see the argument, as per captain, that pedrosa might be shy of great more than i can see camacho as great.

Nunn curry Norris, all a similar bracket I'd suggest captain. Looked like greats for large parts of their careers.

Got his biography for Christmas last year Milky, have been waiting an age to shoe horn him into a thread. Now I have been called on it will have to shelve plans to put Young Stribling's name forward milky.

Biggs beat Tillis more convincingly than Tyson milkster....Never really gone down that road......

Would you say Limon, Rosario, Pazienza and Ramirez were better overall than Eusebio's best four opponents ??.........

Consensus is with you though......

Curry's reign Mccrory, starling twice and Jones.......nine defences for me is equivalent..

Only difference is 4 years of longevity.........

Chuck in a 154 wbc as well.........

Billy soose is overrated too for sure...and I've never heard of him....

Didn't sell windy his pink dress did he ??

Norris is a strange one. Against lesser fighters and even upper second tier fighters, he could look awesome. He perhaps suffers from the fact that his big-name victims, Leonard, Curry, Taylor, Mugabi, were either shadows of their former selves or totally shot. No shame in being starched by Jackson, perhaps, but he ought not have been flattened by Brown, for all his brilliance in the return. I guess there was a slight vulnerability about him, highlighted by that horrible scare he had against Waters, that made Norris consistently watchable but at the same time, denies him a place among the true greats of the sport.

Brown's jab was stronger than I ever thought...Norris was a mess in that fight...Lost his legs in the first.....

Norris was one of the most disliked boxers..........terribly arrrogant......He ignored Brown after he beat him in the return didn't want to know....His brother though seemed a decent guy.

Good points about him fighting ..over the age quality......Funny thing is though apart from leonard I think he beats all of them anyway....

Top quality fighter with a lousy chin..Beat a still-good-Leonard:8) 

Pedroza's best three victims would easily be Olivares, Lockridge and Laporte, one of whom was ripe for the knacker's yard, so I think it's fair to give Camacho a slight edge there. Personally, I wouldn't have a problem with sticking Camacho and Pedroza on about the same level, which would be a degree or so below the genuine immortals of the game.

Fair points on the x beat y truss...Styles and fights etc.. just an indicator that his victims werent all pushovers.

Fair assessment of oedrosa and camacho captain. Agree Norris was always worth watching... the jackson ko is one of julian's finest, and it has some competition. The second round of that water's fight is one of the great rounds of boxing.

My argument is that If Pedroza is great than his standard should be the entry limit for everybody....

Not diminishing a top class career which he had.......Lockridge is a fine win.......Taylor draw and the Laporte farce of a fight..... less so.....

Rowley wrote:Got his biography for Christmas last year Milky, have been waiting an age to shoe horn him into a thread. Now I have been called on it will have to shelve plans to put Young Stribling's name forward milky.

Keep hold of that bio… genuine collectors item. I actually am aware of young stribling, so do drop him in sometime soon, and I can pretend to have a grounding in the sports history.

I don't know a hell of a lot about Esteban de Jesús except the Duran fights. That win alone could project some fighters to greatness. I never see his name in the lists. I have wondered about this.


Did Jeff miss a trick by not naming half the murderers row?.


There must be a few fly weight British fighters from the glory days in the frame?

Strongback wrote:I don't know a hell of a lot about Esteban de Jesús except the Duran fights. That win alone could project some fighters to greatness.  I never see his name in the lists.

Then we end up sticking Turpin................Schmelling and forrest types in..

It's that whole timing thing strongly. De Jesus may well be considered a great had Duran not existed.  As might Ken buchanan.

His duran win was none title, not sure how prepared Duran was.. I've heard he wasn't but always an excuse for a defeat and a wins a win.

Wladimir Klitschko would give any heavyweight of any era serious trouble and probably beats most guys regarded as ATGs at the weight. He gets some amount of stick for a guy who does nothing wrong.

To be fair to De Jesus, he showed that his win over Duran was no fluke by giving him hell in their second fight. Definitely the toughest of Roberto's Lightweight title defences. Got outclassed in the third one, though, and drug addictions (which eventually led to his conviction for murder and death) prevented him from reaching his true potential. Very good for me, rather than great.

Can't really think of too many others. I mentioned the other day that Kalambay probably gets forgotten a little too easily, but that freak knockout against Nunn harms him.

I guess Wes Ramey could be another, though. Belonged to a golden era for the Lightweights but hardly ever gets a mention because they all declined to risk their title against him. Laurence Fielding called him "one of the great scientific boxers of the thirties, a Tunney or Corbett of the Lightweight division", and he flourished in an era where a lack of knockout power (and he had basically none of that) tended to hinder fighters more than it does now.

Canzoneri, a pound for pound great, took him on in a non-title fight in 1933 and was beaten so soundly that he flat out refused a championship fight against him, despite an offer of $25,000 being tabled. Huge amount for a Lightweight, especially in those lean Depression years.

Ambers, likewise, was happy to swerve him until he lost his title to Lew Jenkins - who Ramey had already beaten twice.

Should definitely get more recognition than he does. Also maybe Masao Ohba, who was the tragic Sal Sanchez kind of figure for the Flyweight division.

Would you have Kalambay higher than Nunn chris ?

Can't argue with the rest..out of my league..

Can't really Truss, seeing as Nunn sparked him in one! Worth noting that Nunn did manage to add a title at 168, too. But Kalambay is at least in the same kind of region on overall career achievement, for me. Handled Barkley better than Nunn managed, and the job he did on McCallum (I) definitely outstrips what Toney managed against Mike, and arguably Roy as well, particularly if you allow for the context. Late eighties to early nineties was jam-packed with quality at 160 (Nunn, young guns like Toney, Roy and McClellan coming through, the Brits such as Eubank, Benn and Graham, McCallum and Jackson coming up from 154, solid gatekeepers like Barkley etc) but amongst all that lot Kalambay does seem to be a bit of a forgotten man.

I guess his awkward, low-punch output kind of style didn't help. Kalambay-Hopkins may well have been the most turgid Middleweight title fight in history if it'd happened!

Going back to Milky.........Benn handled barkley better than Nunn........

Just interested Mate...........Because you throw Sumbu up and Nunn who is obviously higher isn't great either...

Will say Kalambay was awful against Nunn.......Looked like Ricky..........completely clueless aginst a southpaw..

The ko punch started in Arkansas..

Quality operator though

Truss, I can assure you, that I understand the concept of styles making fights! Your position was that pedrosa had fought largely dross. I just highlighted a couple of wins... and other greats who those guys he beat had  troubled as a benchmark. I wasn't claiming pedrosa beats Sanchez, Gomez or Chavez. I was highlighting that ford and lockridge in particular were good opponents.

I know you do........