Top 10 by Decade – Part XI: Featherweights

By Rummys Corner - 04/19/2018 - Comments

YouTube video

Trying to rank boxers across different eras is a difficult task, but it can also be a lot of fun, and hopefully that has been the case, and will continue to be the case, with this ongoing rankings experiment where we attempt to rank the best boxers from each weight class across different decades.

In Part 1 of the new “Top 10 by Decade” series, we began by exploring the heavyweight division with a formula designed to try and objectively identify the Top 10 heavyweights from each decade. Then we we worked our way south through all of the divisions through lightweight. Today in Part 11, our attention is turned to the featherweight division.

For the featherweight division, Ring Magazine began doing divisional rankings way back in 1924. So for our purposes here, we will begin our analysis with the first full decade containing a complete data set of rankings, which in this case is the 1930s.

The featherweight division is rich with history and tradition, and many immensely talented pugilists to have competed in the weight class over the years, including Willie Pep, Salvador Sanchez, Marco Antonio Barrera, Erik Morales, Sandy Saddler, Eder Jofre, Juan Manuel Marquez, Prince Naseem Hamed, Manny Pacquiao, and Alexis Arguello just to name a few.

The main idea here with 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 were perceived as having the most prolonged success in a given weight class over the timeframe of a specific decade. This edition of Rummy’s Corner is the eleventh episode in a series of “Top 10 by Decade” videos that will continue to be released over the course of the coming weeks. Please watch and enjoy this newest installment in this new series of videos – the featherweight division!