13.08.04 – By Bert Randolph Sugar, Sr. Boxing Analyst at-large for CMXsports – www.cmxsports.com – Used to be, back in the good olde days, boxers were measured less by their accomplishments in the ring than by the argumentative powers of their supporters. These fistic debating societies took place in poolrooms, on street corners and at local watering holes where the relative merits of each name were handed down by their followers with all the solemnity of Moses handing down the Tablets from the Mount, with no quarter asked and no quarrel, no matter how slight, breached.
One old-timer, who had not yet been run over by an errant trolley car, once told me of such an argument at a bar near the old-old Madison Square Garden where someone in their cups volunteered their bottled-in-bond opinion that “Jack Dempsey was the greatest heavyweight champion ever.” That did it. Soon others, boosting the liquor agent every time they crooked their elbows, began to chime in, hardly waiting, like numbers at a meat market, to take their turn, but driving over each other’s last words before throwing themselves full gear into the fray. Responding with a maltreatment of their vocal chords they could be heard shouting out a chorus of names like “Jeffries, Johnson, Tunney and a coupla of what’s-his-names. And then there was the little old man down at the end of the bar who, with manners hardly overcharged with courtesy, began screaming: “Yer teche¦it was the one and only, the Great Jawn L.” In short, it was a fistic brouhaha, producing one of the ugliest scenes since the French Revolution.
That was the manner in which boxing fans first tried to determine who was the so-called best, with fans offering up their favorite fighters and comparing them to others in the belief that everything was relative–except maybe Eve telling Adam about all the men she could have married.
Soon those in the writing dodge picked up on this time-honored pastime and began writing their Rubyiats of the scotch-and-soda by interviewing every old fighter they could find, asking them who was their “best.”
Thus a Wilbur Wood of the New York Sun interviewed former light heavyweight champion Philadelphia Jack O’Brien about how then champion Maxie Rosenbloom would have done against some of the great light heavyweights of yore. Philadelphia Jack, who could talk though six scotches on any subject introduced, rendered this opinion: “I have been watching Rosenbloom carefully for years and I can’t detect any weaknesses in him. I would give him a chance with any man who ever boxed and that goes for the great heavyweights. I would expect Maxie’s speed to carry him to victory over McCoy, Fitzsimmons, Ketchel and the rest.”
Another writer, this one a graduate of the school of ghost writing, interviewed former heavyweight champion Gene Tunney, and had Tunney, under his own by-line, say: “Who was greater–Jack Dempsey or Joe Louis? The answer whether or not Louis was the greatest ever gets down to what one thinks about Dempsey. For if Dempsey was not, surely Louis was.”
However, writers writing and bar belly-uppers bellyaching about who was the “best” changed sometimes during the mid-˜40s. For that was the time when a young fighter out of Harlem by way of Detroit began lighting up the boxing skies. His name was Sugar Ray Robinson and soon was unbeaten, untied and unscored upon in his first 123 fights–with the exception of a loss to Jake LaMotta, which he reversed four times. A flawless fighter, he possessed a left hand that was purity in motion, footwork that was superior to any that had been seen in boxing up to that time, hand speed and leverage that were unmatchable and a presence that could fill a stage. To his other entitlements, he was accorded the honor of being called, “The Greatest Fighter, Pound-for-Pound, in boxing history.”
And so the title “Best Pound-for-Pound” entered boxing’s lexicon, sort of a common denominator indicating that, like Orwell’s animals, all fighters were created equal–at least in weight–but some were more equal than others.
Today, in a boxing world that has 17 divisions and as many as four “world” champions in each courtesy of the “Alphabet Soups,” only one title means anything: “Best Pound-for-Pound Fighter in Boxing.”
Small wonder then that several fighters are campaigning for the “title,” with Bernard Hopkins, Floyd Mayweather Jr., and Antonio Tarver amongst others all presenting their brief to anyone and everyone who’ll listen. Or that, after rendering Leonard Dorin one with the canvas with one pluperfect shot to the solar plexus, Arturo Gatti called out Mayweather, saying: “He’s pound-for-pound the best. I want to be known as pound-for-pound the best. I don’t want to be known just for this warrior stuff.”
In today’s more than crowded boxing stage where everyone but Yours Truly owns a belt of some kind or other, the mythic title “Best Pound for Pound” is our version of the sport’s “Most Valuable Player,” one which allows the wearer of that title to rightfully look down upon the rest of the boxing world and proclaim himself to be nothing less than “the best.”
And there’s no argument about that.
Bert Randolph Sugar, CMXsports Sr. Analyst At-Large, called “The Guru of Boxing,” has a new book “Bert Sugar On Boxing,” (or “The Best of Bert Sugar, The Worst of Bert Sugar, What the Hell’s the Difference?”), published by The Lyon Press and currently available at Border’s, Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com