Ranking fighters across different eras is always a rather tricky business, but it can also be a lot of fun, and hopefully that is the case with this ongoing rankings experiment where we attempt to rank the best boxers from each weight class across different decades. Today’s division of emphasis is the junior middleweight division, also known as the super welterweight division.
In Part 1 of the new “Top 10 by Decade” series, we first explored the heavyweight division with a new scoring experiment designed to try and objectively identify the Top 10 heavyweights from each decade. Then we examined the cruiserweights, the light heavyweights, the super middleweight, and today we continue working our way south. Here in Part 6, our attention is this time directed towards the junior middleweight division.
For the junior middleweight division, Ring Magazine began doing divisional rankings in 1974, and they continued doing so until 1986. The publication stopped the practice of ranking junior middleweights in 1987 and 1988, before resuming the activity in 1989. In previous installments, we always began with the first complete full decade, but beginning with this edition, we will include partial decades in the analysis. (Note, ultimately things will double back to cover the 1920s, as well as the key missing partial decade from the previous installments, which is the 1980s cruiserweight division).
The junior middleweight division lacks the rich history and tradition that correlates with the original eight weight classes. But there have still been some very talented boxers to have competed in the weight class. Some of the more highly regarded talents to have officially competed in the division include Tommy Hearns, Oscar De La Hoya, Felix Trinidad, Sugar Ray Leonard, Shane Mosley, Winky Wright, Terry Norris, Canelo Alvarez, Miguel Cotto, and Floyd Mayweather Jr.
The main idea here in these ranking experiments is to try and eliminate personal bias and individual preferences, while also excluding all head-to-head considerations, both real and hypothetical. It is more a measurement of tracking the boxers who had the most prolonged success in a given weight class during very specific time intervals. This edition of Rummy’s Corner is the sixth episode in a series of “Top 10 by Decade” videos that will be released over the course of the coming weeks. Please watch and enjoy this, the sixth installment in this new series of videos – the junior middleweight division!