by Fox Doucette Ask most folks who the greatest middleweights of all time were, and their top four, in some order, will include Carlos Monzon, Sugar Ray Robinson, Harry Greb, and Marvelous Marvin Hagler. Sure, some folks might throw Dick Tiger in there, and the true old-timers might give the nod to Mickey Walker, but Hagler is undoubtedly one of the greatest middleweights of … [Read more...]
What If: One Champ Per Weight, Part 4: Day of the Red Snow
by Fox Doucette October 4, 1977, CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia Sometimes old scores get settled in new ways. A week previous, on September 29, Muhammad Ali went the 15-round distance with Earnie Shavers, which in turn meant that Ali had gone 45 rounds in the space of a year, his power quite possibly left in the jungles of Manila two years prior. Sure, Ali had knocked … [Read more...]
Historical Fight Night: Diego Corrales vs. Marco Antonio Barrera, Rocky Marciano vs. Evander Holyfield
by Fox Doucette In the December 1998 “Holiday Issue” of Ring Magazine, that publication's editors ranked the greatest heavyweights of all time. To no great surprise, Muhammad Ali and Joe Louis locked down the top two spots. At third? Evander Holyfield, illustrating the danger of trying to evaluate an active fighter who still had fights in front of him (and conveniently … [Read more...]
What If: One Champ Per Weight, Part 3: The Gods Keep Track
by Fox Doucette The “sports gods” are an odd concept. Even a church-going Christian will seemingly violate the First Commandment when talking about athletic competition. Football gods, basketball gods, boxing gods...they are a representation of chance, of the arbiters of random events and their outcome, the judge and jury who decide whether Schrodinger's Cat lives or … [Read more...]
Historical Fight Night: Micky Ward vs. Aaron Pryor, Arturo Gatti vs. Alexis Arguello
by Fox Doucette The two greatest junior welterweight fights of all time occurred twenty years apart. Aaron Pryor knocked out Alexis Arguello in the fourteenth round of a fifteen-round scheduled war in 1982; 20 years later, Micky Ward scored a majority decision over Arturo Gatti in the first of their three fights---Gatti would win the latter two fairly easily, but the first … [Read more...]