Boxing's Greatest Fighters

If you like boxing and its glorious history, this book is for you. Bert Sugar is the recognized king of boxing writers, and he knows his stuff. A must for the boxing fan.

All Top 10, Top 25, Top 100, etc. lists are designed to provoke arguments, and this one does. All of the fighters in the book deserve to be here (I guess, there are a lot from before 1920 that are waaaay before my time). The disagreements come with the rankings, why fighter A is ranked higher than fighter B. But Bert Sugar backs up his opinions with facts, which is all you can ask, agree with him or not. Great reading for any fan of the squared circle.

This latest edition of "Boxing's Greatest Fighters" is an update from the 1984 edition. I have both copies, mainly because I was curious to see how Bert Sugar re-ranked some of my favorite fighters. For example, Sugar Ray Leonard moved from #56 to #25. Overall, this is a well-written, entertaining book. It's probably not logical to rate fighters from different eras, but the concept is hard to resist for a boxing fan, especially one interested in its early history. As with many others reviewers, I don't agree with some of Sugar's rankings, but overall his list makes good sense.

Bert Sugar is a legenday sports writer, and boxing writer especially. His tremendous knowledge of the history of boxing enables him to make surprising and interesting comparisons of fighters, fights of different times and eras. He is colorful and quick, and not at all shy in providing the lowdown on various aspects of the game. There has to be subjectivity in a list of this type, and real fans of boxing will certainly have lists of their own. I do not know boxing very well, in fact tuned out of what was going on a long time ago. But I did know about boxing from the Gillette Cavalcade of Sports' in the old days and so saw many of the greatest fights and fighters. Sugar picks here a hundred of the best. His top five are Sugar Ray Robinson( A pick my guess is most would agree with. It used to be a cliche years ago that Sugar Ray pound- for- pound is the greatest) His second pick is Henry Armstrong the only three- division , and almost four in the history of boxing. It is hard to quarrel with this one either. The next two Harry Greb, and Willie Pep seem to me very disputable indeed. The fifth is Benny Leonard. I think many will be surprised to find that Muhammed Ali is not in the top five. In fact Sugar considers Jack Dempsey the greatest heavyweight of all, followed by Joe Louis. Sugar writes with flair and is a pleasure to read. One thought. Boxing is not what it used to be, and has gone way down in its place in the sports' pantheon. One reason for this as Sugar makes clear is the multiple- titles, organizing groups, the whole mess of the thing. But I suspect it is also because many people wonder about the morality of two people trying to knock each other's brains out for the amusement of a crowd. Thinking about this in the perspective of the years, and having seen a couple of punch- drunk fighters in my time I wonder if this moral objection does not have something to it.

First things first: You are NOT going to agree with 100, 75 or possibly 50% of his ranking positions. Some fighters will be far too high in your eyes, or bafflingly low. Or in the case of a Micheal Spinks or a Fighting Harada (#87 on his original list in 1984 and in my opinion THEN, too low), missing altogether from the top 100. You may puzzle over why Ruben Olivares did not make the cut in 1984 but is sitting at #36 in the 2006 edition. How can Larry Holmes be behind Holyfield and Foreman and (gasp) Tunney! And what is Beau jack doing one spot ahead of Ike Williams who "owned" Jack, much in the same way Archie Moore is rated ahead of Ezzard Charles, despite losing to the Cinncinati Cobra all three times they fought. Two things: The stories and detail of each fighter only sparks the desire to learn more about these fighters who make Bert's list. And the overall disagreement that you WILL have with Bert, makes the read fascinating. You almost have an argument and a debate with yourself! Lists will do that to you. One man's list is ONLY perfect to the man who wrote it. Everyone else will have issues with it. But I defy any boxing enthusiast who buys this book, to NOT have it by your side literally everywhere you go. Boxing History, in one small package. Priceless and maddening at the same time. Hawk