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The Fifty Greatest Middleweights of All Time Part Four: 20-11

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I have to take you back now.

In the top ten we will find a handful of men who box in colour. You can guess their names if you are giving to guessing – here though, in Part Four, we are looking at the middleweights of time past exclusively. The most ancient of these warriors turned professional in 1883 and the most modern retired in 1948. Sometimes, people want to complain about bias to old-timers. There is no bias. But it is true that the criteria I have selected to judge fighters by lends itself to the busier contenders and champions of eras that unfortunately displayed less care for the physical health of the boxers involved.

That being said, two of their more modern cousins rank above their ancestors on this list and the likes of Lennox Lewis and Muhammad Ali populated the upper reaches of my heavyweight list; Bob Foster, Matthew Saad Muhammad and Michael Spinks all made the top ten at light-heavyweight.

Inclusion in the upper echelons of fistic greatness for the modern counterparts of those we are about to reveal is not just possible, it is inevitable. You see, it’s not the criteria that make a fighter great.

It’s the fighter.

#20 – TIGER FLOWERS (117-15-7)

Making sense of Tiger Flowers under strict criteria is a genuinely perplexing task. Here is a fighter who treated the boxing scene of the 1920s like a roller coaster, hoping from one fight at 158lbs to the next at 170, taking on a light-heavyweight in the first instance and a heavyweight in the second. Almost as likely to be knocked out by a journeyman as he was to out-point a legend, Flowers is the antithesis of a modern career with its ordered progression and sense of identity. He was the very definition of a jobbing African-American contender, forced to compromise himself for his piece of the pie.

But middleweight was likely where he belonged, although his legacy hinges for the most part upon three of the most controversial decisions in the history of the middleweight division.

The first of these was against middleweight don Harry Greb, who had defeated Flowers in a light-heavyweight contest in 1924. Their second fight, fought in February of 1926, was for Greb’s middleweight title and it was a raucous, sloppy affair between a slipping champion and a coming contender. Flowers opened, or re-opened, a cut over Harry’s one remaining good eye early giving him an enormous advantage over the already half-blind Greb; worse, an injury to Greb’s left rendered him one-handed as well as one-eyed.

Flowers seemed to have fought in counter-rushes and it was a style that made him extremely difficult to defeat on points and in a fight populated by clinches, missed punches and a severe lack of expected championship excellence, fifteen completed rounds resulted in the passage of the title from Greb to Flowers. The majority of ringside reports seem to indicate a desperately narrow Flowers victory that many saw as unsatisfactorily close to crown a new champion. A rematch was called for, but it settled little; indeed, it is generally held to be even more controversial, with such luminaries as William Muldoon, Gene Tunney and referee Jim Crowley all of the opinion that Greb was the true winner. Thumbing, wrestling (at one point Greb appears to have fixed a choke-hold on the champion), slipping and incessant holding on the part of Flowers decorated the fight.

In general, the second meeting has been held to have been something of a robbery, but in fact it appears that it was more the case that it was difficult to score and once again, rather dissatisfactory with Greb biographer SL Compton summarising that general agreement in the day-after newspaper reports make it “clear that Flowers won a close but deserved victory.”

Greb was clearly past his best, but his ability was still such that Allentown Joe Gans and Jimmy Delaney were unable to take advantage of him in the way that the deeply devout but ruthlessly determined Flowers had. He showed great determination too in his first defence, against Mickey Walker, another all-time great at the weight. “According to many ringsiders,” wrote Maurice Mermey in The Evening Independent, “Mickey Walker had won only two rounds” but was nevertheless handed the middleweight title on a widely criticised decision which was also roundly booed by the ten-thousand in attendance.

In truth, Tiger Flowers’ wider resume at the weight is nothing very special. He spent far too much time boxing at light-heavyweight to build one. But wins over Greb and an almost certain victory over Walker, stolen from him by corrupt officiating, are more than enough to earn him a berth in the top twenty and one wonders where he might have ended up had Walker got what he deserved rather than the middleweight title when the two met. Successful defences would certainly have elevated Flowers .

#19 – JACK DILLON (94-8-15; Newspaper Decisions 93-19-17)

Jack Dillon’s middleweight career is hard to unpick from his wider resume, which is, frankly, astonishing. An excellent heavyweight and light-heavyweight, middleweight probably represents his most natural poundage but it may not be the one in which he most astonished. Nevertheless, he did extraordinary work there. He stepped up from a short apprenticeship at welterweight around 1910 struggling at first with Eddie McGoorty, whom he eventually bested by ten round newspaper decision – but only after he had been confirmed a contender with a victory over the same distance against the veteran Jimmy Gardner. Gardner had once been considered one of the more lethal middleweights of a stacked era but had begun to slip, although not so far that he could be prevented from taking a twelve round decision against Frank Klaus the year before. Nevertheless, Dillon pursued Gardner relentlessly in their first fight, over ten, and while Gardner remained brilliant enough to keep Dillon out early, he eventually succumbed, letting Dillon inside where the man they nicknamed “Bearcat” went to work, dropping the veteran for a no-count in the seventh. By the time of their second contest fought just a few months later, Gardner wasn’t even fighting to win. Rather, he contented himself with a defensive display, boxing to avoid the violence Dillon sought to inflict on each and every one of his opponents.

Nobody suffered more at his hand than the world champion George Chip. Dillon met Chip on twelve separate occasions and Chip managed only a single victory and not until after Dillon had begun to slip. Bob Moha, Eddie McGoorty, Leo Houck, Jack and Mike Sullivan, Gus Christie, Frank Mantell, Buck Crouse, Tony Caponi, Hugo Kelly – Dillon out-fought and out-thought a whole generation of middleweights before making way for Harry Greb and Mike Gibbons. He struggled, always, with Frank Klaus, who bettered him in a four fight series, and that, for me, always makes uncomfortable reading – Dillon was a fighter not dissimilar to Klaus with the caveat that he seems to have had a better defence. That Dillon may have been beaten by a fighter of a similar type, for all that it was an excellent one, is a limiting factor upon his all-time ranking, as is his inability to beat either Greb or Gibbons despite his being afforded multiple opportunities.

#18 – MICKEY WALKER (94-19-4)

Mickey Walker is one of the greatest fighters to have ever lived. Pound-for-pound, I rank him above Willie Pep, Barney Ross and Archie Moore. But his greatness lies not in his achievement at middleweight nor at any single poundage but rather his fearless swagger through so many weights; from welterweight all the way to heavyweight, his contribution to every single one of them was meaningful. His contribution at middleweight, too, was meaningful – just not as meaningful as has been painted by generations of boxing history buffs.

Two things jolt Walker up short of the top ten for me. The first is that he was so unbound by the divisional rules that defined other fighters that he never really knuckled down to a dominating middleweight run. He made his first impressions upon the division while in possession of the welterweight title, and welterweight was where his heart apparently lay. Later, when in possession of the middleweight title, he spent an inordinate amount of time battling light-heavyweights, and later, heavyweights.

So superb was Walker that this did not prevent him from cobbling together one of the longest title reigns in middleweight history; nor was he beaten but rather vacated the title. Tempering this is the fact that he only defended his title against three different men and that none of them were the very top contenders of his era, men such as Len Harvey, Dave Shade, Rene DeVos and, most of all, the man who was unquestionably his number one contender immediately after his victory for the title, Tiger Flowers.

As discussed above, Walker won the title in what was almost certainly one of the era’s most grotesque robberies; following that, for one reason and another, he failed to meet his top contenders and he didn’t defend his middleweight title nearly often enough to justify the many months he held it.

He was also thrashed to the point of embarrassment by Harry Greb.

Nevertheless, he was a lethal swarmer who dispatched a hatful of good contenders and in Ace Hudkins, against whom he showed good variety in his style, a superb one. Walker shouldn’t appear in the top ten at the weight, not when achievement at that weight is the defining factor, but it is hard to imagine a top twenty without him.

#17 TEDDY YAROSZ (106-18-3)

Teddy Yarosz, one of the very few men on this list to assemble one-hundred or more victories, does not come across as hugely impressive on film relative to his status; a superb and sudden left hand and good feet seem to be the makings of his split decision victory over belt-holder Vince Dundee in September of 1934 but perhaps isn’t quite enough to explain all those victories, including several over great fighters. Then you notice, perhaps, that he is still boxing on his toes after fifteen fast, rough rounds against a pressure fighter who brought a savage body-attack to bear against him. Then he looks a little more than impressive. He had a superb engine and it kept him working across three different decades and for the most part in the middleweight division.

Turning professional in 1929, he defeated every single fighter he met between that date and 1937, avenging both middleweight losses to Young Terry and Babe Risko. Risko actually defeated Yarosz twice, but in their first contest Yarosz fractured his kneecap in the very first round, lasting until the seventh when he fell trying to put his weight on it and was pulled by his corner. Bizarrely, he re-injured the same knee in the fourth round of a rematch eight months later and lost that fight in fifteen rounds; after an operation to repair the knee a healthy Yarosz out-pointed Risko over ten close rounds.

Then Yarosz ran into a youthful Billy Conn.

Their first fight, a bad tempered affair fought over twelve in the summer of 1937, was close but despite the fact that it was fought in Conn’s Pittsburgh back yard, an hour of protest followed the decision with “chair flying through the air” as a vocal and seeming majority howled their discontent at the decision in Conn’s favour. The rematch, fought over fifteen just months later, seemed Yarosz’s fight to lose as he dominated the first twelve rounds, bamboozling Conn completely by some sources before that engine, so reliable for so many years, seemed to abandon him and he spent the final three rounds being punched around the ring by a rampant Conn. Conn’s biographer, Andrew O’Toole wrote that “by every manner of scoring, Yarosz easily won the fight”, but the decision went to Conn.

Yarosz eventually extracted revenge on Conn up at light-heavyweight but the work he did even before these losses would have been enough to get him into the top fifty, Solly Krieger, Jimmy Smith and, most especially, Ken Overlin the highlights of his excellent resume pre-Conn. Post-Conn and post-knee operation, he had definitely slipped but was still able to add a second win over Overlin, not to mention a victory over a middleweight Archie Moore.

With no footage available of Teddy’s fights with Billy, overturning the result in even the second fight seems rather rash, but it was probably that knee injury rather than that undeserved loss or pair of losses that prevents him climbing higher here.

#16 – FRED APOSTOLI (61-10-1)

What cements Fred Apostoli to the top twenty is his January 1938 victory over Freddie Steele. Steele’s run in at middleweight was not auspicious, his status as a scalp severely reduced by a broken breastbone that would leave him a diminished fighter. Apostoli’s victory over Steel e remains significant, however, a nine round brutalisation over a man who was at that time completely unbeaten at the weight. Indeed, he had only lost two fights in a hundred, both at welterweight, both avenged, his paper record standing at 120-2-11 at bell. The relatively green Apostoli was just 27-2, but he beat Steele to the punch from the first, out-landing him from the outside with straighter, quicker punches, beating him heartily when they came together ring-centre. His victory was clouded somewhat by the accidental low blow he landed in the seventh which preceded a titanic beating in the eighth, with Apostoli landing around fifty power-punches to the mangled Steele’s head.

But Apostoli’s resume is so deep that it is far from defined by this single excellent win. Fighting in an era in which the title was hopelessly fractured behind the abdication of Mickey Walker, Apostoli had succeeded in defeating America’s number one strapholder – but in a non-title fight. Deepening this irony was the fact that he had also thrashed the champion as recognised by Europe and Ring Magazine in similar circumstances, having beaten Marcel Thil by TKO stoppage via a hideous cut that impeded the Frenchman badly. Apostoli had defeated the holders of both shards of the title but held no gold.

Babe Risko, Solly Krieger, Georgie Abrams and Young Corbett III were among the other titlists he defeated in his career, with only this last throwing up a belt. Apostoli lost this belt in his first defence versus Ceferino Garcia, one of several fights he lost that one might feel he perhaps should not have.

A higher ranking can be justified but his lack of championship credentials makes me more comfortable with this one.

#15 – JACK DEMPSEY (52-4-11)

Jack Dempsey, the Nonpareil, was the greatest pound-for-pound fighter of his day. That day stretched from the third of September 1883, the date of his pro debut, to the fourteenth of January 1891, the day of the terrible beating administered to him by Bob Fitzsimmons. Between these dates he was almost invulnerable, a mix of superb generalship and much admired skill combining with near-limitless stamina and a superb defence to see him all-but unbeaten between his debut and 1889. The two blips were a four round “loss” to the 180lb Billy Baker who was rendered the victor only by his ability to go the four round distance with the middleweight legend, as agreed by the fight contract. Dempsey’s only true defeat during this core run was to former victim George LaBlanche.

Their first meeting was regarded as the greatest middleweight battle on record by more than one newspaper reporting from the site of the fight, the New York-Connecticut border where the two made war at seven in the morning with just forty big-spending spectators in attendance, in keeping with the shadowy legality boxing enjoyed in the period. LaBlanche hunted the body and throat; Dempsey gave ground and retreated into his boxing, which soon drew blood from his aggressive foe. LaBlanche was literally spitting teeth before the fight was even old and by the twelfth Dempsey was hitting him almost at will with the most celebrated left-hand of the era. Repeatedly, heavyweight king James J Corbett is named “the grandfather of boxing” but if such a title can ever really be laid at one man’s door, that man is Dempsey. LaBlanche refused to quit but when he fell helplessly into his opponent’s arms in the thirteenth, the fight was called.

The rematch between the two was fought just over two years later and once again it was a fight to the finish – it was also one of the most peculiar fights in the history of the weight division and one that remains something of a mystery to me even today. The pace was slower and this led to an elongation of the battle. By the twentieth, Dempsey was taking control with vigorous counter-punching but he couldn’t put his man away. “By far the fresher of the two” in the thirty-second round, Dempsey put the pressure on but suddenly was face down on the canvas “blood spurting out onto the floor” of the ring. Accounts of the damaging punch vary, some going so far as claiming that LaBlanche shut his eyes and swung wildly back and forth with his right-hand, landing but out of sheer luck. Others just describe a sudden punch. The more dramatic accounts, as always, are the ones that have generally held and history has robbed LaBlanche of the victory to some degree, perhaps unfairly. A knockout, is, after all, a knockout and is treated as such for the purposes of this list.

Although a detailed look into the accountancy of the fight can’t produce a definitive statement as regards the finish, what it does do is help uncover the high regard LaBlanche, “The Marine”, was held in. This is true of many Dempsey opponents, whose anaemic paper records as they are reported today are more a matter of their incompleteness than the standing of the fighter in question. Billy McCarthy, who Dempsey disposed of in twenty-eight rounds in 1890, was viewed as strong, fearless and experienced, a real threat to the title. Nor can the extremity of the conditions Dempsey fought in be exaggerated. In 1887 he matched the savage John Reagan in a finish fight and was cut literally “to the bone” of his left leg by his opponent’s spiked shoes. Dempsey’s corner claimed that not only was the foul so bad that their man couldn’t continue but that furthermore it had been deliberate. The referee ruled against him and the fight, incredibly, continued. When the ring, pitched on the shore of Long Island, New York, began to flood they simply moved it and continued the fight. At the end of an absurd forty-five rounds of combat, Dempsey finally stopped his game foe.

The Nonpareil was made of bricks.

#14 – BOB FITZSIMMONS

Bricks or no, Jack Dempsey’s placement in the top twenty is forever anchored by Bob Fitzsimmons. “Fitz” is most famous as a heavyweight but he first came by honours at middleweight, out-fighting and out-generalling a faded and possibly unwell Dempsey completely and utterly over thirteen one-sided rounds in January of 1891. Fitzsimmons never defended his title – a four round 1893 KO of Jim Hall was billed as a middleweight title fight but Hall weighed 168lbs – but in his run to the title he accrued some significant scalps and in scintillating and dominant fashion.

Immediately prior to his title-tilt was Arthur Upham, destroyed in five one-sided rounds (not the nine reported on Boxrec), finally dispatched after being driven repeatedly to the canvas with an assortment of punches, then taken out with a right-hand so devastating that it rendered Upham cold. Fitzsimmons actually caught his newly unconscious opponent and eased him to the canvas.

Prior to that, Fitz had obliterated the admired Billy McCarthy, in nine. McCarthy used trickery and shifts to gain the inside where he liked to work but against Fitzsimmons he was all at sea. Fitzsimmons had an unparalleled control of range that made McCarthy all but ineffective and as he would with Upham, Fitz spared McCarthy the crash, not just the canvas but through the ropes and to the floor, hauling him back to safety.

The Australian fight scene that bore him offered a little more competition pre-prime in the form of Jim Hall, who took the losing end of a split series 3-2-0-1 with the Cornishman in controversial circumstances.

What strikes about Bob’s time at middleweight is its dominance. Once he hit his stride, nobody really tested him at all.

#13 – DICK TIGER (60-19-3)

I suspect that the fighter capable of attacking Dick Tiger during his savage prime and defeating him has yet to be born. I don’t think that Walker could do it, I don’t think that Dillon could do it and I don’t think that Flowers could do it; I don’t think that Bob Fitzsimmons or Jake LaMotta could do it and I don’t think anyone in the top ten could do it. In a fire-fight, he could beat any fighter of the poundage, alive or dead.

Tiger proved this with a string of wins over some of the most savage brawlers in middleweight history. Florentino Fernandez, the lethal Cuban hooker, tried his luck with a pounding pressure style in 1962. Fernandez was coming off a narrow decision loss against Gene Fullmer and had had the monstrous Fullmer in serious trouble in the late rounds. You can see Dick Tiger beat the crap out of a man with forty-three knockouts in fifty victories on YouTube. Not that this was the record timing for the defeat of Fernandez; the terrifying Ruben Carter had managed to stop him in a round. A round was perhaps what Carter managed to win when he tried to bulldoze Tiger in May of 1965. Tiger hooked him viciously and repeatedly to the canvas, was so destructive in fact that Carter suffered the rare humiliation of mounting a retreat. It is said that Carter had to move house because Sonny Liston boxed at his local gym and he found it impossible to back down from sparring sessions with the world’s most deadly heavyweight – but he went on the run when Tiger got after him.

Most of all he tormented the slate-faced Gene Fullmer. Fullmer and Tiger met three times and at no time did Fullmer best him. Tiger, in fact, had so little difficulty mastering Fullmer physically that he once threw the monumentally strong middleweight champion directly to the floor when Fullmer made the mistake of trying to test the Biafran bull for strength. Needless to say he became the latest in a long line to change tactics.

But Tiger had a certain vulnerability to boxing movers and this leaves him inconsistent; Joey Archer boxed his way to an unpopular decision over him in 1964 – Joey Giardello went 2-2 with Tiger by boxing him and as described in Part Three and Emile Griffith grabbed the title from him by mixing strategies accordingly. Overall though, Tiger is arguably overqualified for the #13 spot. He is 5-3-1 against men on this list (at middleweight), 3-2-1 in middleweight title fights and was the two-time champion of the world.

#12 – JAKE LAMOTTA (83-19-4)

Jake LaMotta, the Bronx Bull, is the first man we encounter who has, at some point, ranked among the top ten in an earlier draft on this list. We have been knee deep in true greatness for some time now, but LaMotta represents a new height; he is a gatekeeper, at the very least, for the very greatest of the great middleweights.

“Jake never stopped coming, never stopped throwing punches and never stopped talking,” offered Sugar Ray Robinson, who defeated him 5-1 in perhaps the most celebrated middleweight series in boxing history. “You hit the guy with everything and he would just act like you were crazy.”

It’s as succinct and complete a description of LaMotta as a man and a fighter as you are likely to read. The Italian-American was a monster of durability, stopped just once in a long middleweight career by Robinson, who was in absolute top gear in forcing the referee’s intervention in the thirteenth round of their masterpiece from 1951, their sixth and final fight now known as “The Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre.” This aside, LaMotta surged inexorably forwards, the ultimate middleweight tank, not devoid of skill (his jab is his best punch), but his real strength lay in the hellish pressure he brought to bear upon a generation of middleweights, most of whom folded to him in one way or another. Key among them are Robinson, Holman Williams, Robert Villemain, Marcel Cerdan and Laurent Dauthuille.

What kept him that bare smidge from the top ten are the asterisks that are scattered among those key results. Holman Williams was still dangerous when LaMotta edged him in 1946 but was unquestionably slipping and although probably sound, the decision was booed by some sections of the crowd. His determination to meet Williams and the other inhabitants of the Murderer’s Row marked him out as special but rarely went according to plan; he was soundly beaten by Lloyd Marshall and probably very fortunate to take a decision versus a green Bert Lytell.

Robert Villemain, a superb contender but certainly not a fighter under consideration for this list, split a pair with LaMotta and Jake’s winning effort seems to have been anything but with ringsiders almost unanimous in seeing Villemain as having been robbed. Villemain’s fellow Frenchman Laurent Dauthuile also went 1-1 with LaMotta, meeting first him over ten in 1949 in a thrilling fight that saw both cut and Dauthuile triumph on the cards. He came within seconds of taking the title in their 1950 rematch, ahead on points when LaMotta staged the most incredible rally in the history of the division to score a fifteenth round knockout and protect his championship.

Cerdan was the man LaMotta took the title from and he is fully credited for that thrilling victory – but it should be noted that Cerdan was injured in the course of the fight and certainly entitled to the rematch that fate interceded to prevent.

Nevertheless, LaMotta butchered numerous contenders in an action style. Had he a punch to match his chin, he would likely inhabit a spot in the top five.

#11 – FREDDIE STEELE (123-5-11)

Freddie Steele, possibly the most underrated middleweight ever to draw breath, moved up to the division in 1934 and spent the next three years and slightly less than fifty contests undefeated. Consider in the light of that fact the media cacophony that has accompanied Floyd Mayweather’s similar undefeated streak.

Not as storied as Mayweather in term of titles (he held a strap but never the lineal crown), nor is it likely that Steele defeated competition as excellent as Mayweather but he certainly did severe damage to the middleweight division from his Washington stronghold. Of his early middleweight displays (Steele had already done damage down at welterweight in his youth), his destruction of the creaking Vince Dundee is probably the most impressive. Feinting Dundee out of position, he was brutal in his aggressive rushing of the older fighter and very nearly destroyed him in the first with a flashing left hook that left Dundee sagging on the ropes; he barely beat the count and perhaps should not have bothered as Steele proceeded to batter him around the ring for three rounds until he was quite rightly rescued from his own diamond-cut determination.

Steele was a little over-exuberant once he had Dundee hurt and this caused him to miss often, rather compromising his excellent power, wonderful boxing and superb footwork (watch him repeatedly spin a bewildered Dundee off the ropes) but by 1936 he was in possession of a belt and had evolved into a much more deadly beast. Matching top fifty all-time light-heavyweight Gus Lesnevich he again he dropped his man with a pulverising left-hook in the first, but this time he did not forget his boxing as he closed and Lesnevich was brutalised, horrifically, pulled before the end of the second.

Fred Apostoli, Solly Kreiger, Ken Overline and Babe Risko were among the other top men to fall to him and while readily available film is limited, he looks, to me, as good in the ring as just about any middleweight that ever boxed.

So why no higher? After all, when he finally began to lose it was only after having his breastbone broken, past-prime, against top-drawer opposition. Well, to my eye, Steele, also not unlike Mayweather, was often a little lucky in the timing of his fights with some of the big names he dispatched. Apostoli was a raw-green 6-0 when Steele defeated him; Solly Krieger was highly ranked at the time of their meeting but had just been beaten by the three-fight losing streak Glen Lee; Babe Risko was 3-3 in his last six; even Lesnevich was a number of years from his best wins. Ken Overlin may be his best victory, but even his form was a little patchy going in.

Steele has an argument for the top ten but it doesn’t quite find purchase here. He heralds monsters.

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 323: Benn vs Eubank Family Feud and More

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Next generation rivals Conor Benn and Chris Eubank Jr. carry on the family legacy of feudal warring in the prize ring on Saturday.

This is huge in British boxing.

Eubank (34-3, 25 KOs) holds the fringe IBO middleweight title but won’t be defending it against the smaller welterweight Benn (23-0, 14 KOs) on Saturday, April 26, at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London. DAZN will stream the Matchroom Boxing card.

This is about family pride.

The parents of Eubank and Benn actually began the feud in the 1990s.

Papa Nigel Benn fought Papa Chris Eubank twice. Losing as a middleweight in November 1990 at Birmingham, England, then fighting to a draw as a super middleweight in October 1993 in Manchester. Both were world title fights.

Eubank was undefeated and won the WBO middleweight world title in 1990 against Nigel Benn by knockout. He defended it three times before moving up and winning the vacant WBO super middleweight title in September 1991. He defended the super middleweight title 14 times before suffering his first pro defeat in March 1995 against Steve Collins.

Benn won the WBO middleweight title in April 1990 against Doug DeWitt and defended it once before losing to Eubank in November 1990. He moved up in weight and took the WBC super middleweight title from Mauro Galvano in Italy by technical knockout in October 1992. He defended the title nine times until losing in March 1996. His last fight was in November 1996, a loss to Steve Collins.

Animosity between the two families continues this weekend in the boxing ring.

Conor Benn, the son of Nigel, has fought mostly as a welterweight but lately has participated in the super welterweight division. He is several inches shorter in height than Eubank but has power and speed. Kind of a British version of Gervonta “Tank” Davis.

“It’s always personal, every opponent I fight is personal. People want to say it’s strictly business, but it’s never business. If someone is trying to put their hands on me, trying to render me unconscious, it’s never business,” said Benn.

This fight was scheduled twice before and cut short twice due to failed PED tests by Benn. The weight limit agreed upon is 160 pounds.

Eubank, a natural middleweight, has exchanged taunts with Benn for years. He recently avenged a loss to Liam Smith with a knockout victory in September 2023.

“This fight isn’t about size or weight. It’s about skill. It’s about dedication. It’s about expertise and all those areas in which I excel in,” said Eubank. “I have many, many more years of experience over Conor Benn, and that will be the deciding factor of the night.”

Because this fight was postponed twice, the animosity between the two feuding fighters has increased the attention of their fans. Both fighters are anxious to flatten each other.

“He’s another opponent in my way trying to crush my dreams. trying to take food off my plate and trying to render me unconscious. That’s how I look at him,” said Benn.

Eubank smiles.

“Whether it’s boxing, whether it’s a gun fight. Defense, offense, foot movement, speed, power. I am the superior boxer in each of those departments and so many more – which is why I’m so confident,” he said.

Supporting Bout

Former world champion Liam Smith (33-4-1, 20 KOs) tangles with Ireland’s Aaron McKenna (19-0, 10 KOs) in a middleweight fight set for 12 rounds on the Benn-Eubank undercard in London.

“Beefy” Smith has long been known as one of the fighting Smith brothers and recently lost to Eubank a year and a half ago. It was only the second time in 38 bouts he had been stopped. Saul “Canelo” Alvarez did it several years ago.

McKenna is a familiar name in Southern California. The Irish fighter fought numerous times on Golden Boy Promotion cards between 2017 and 2019 before returning to the United Kingdom and his assault on continuing the middleweight division. This is a big step for the tall Irish fighter.

It’s youth versus experience.

“I’ve been calling for big fights like this for the last two or three years, and it’s a fight I’m really excited for. I plan to make the most of it and make a statement win on Saturday night,” said McKenna, one of two fighting brothers.

Monster in L.A.

Japan’s super star Naoya “Monster” Inoue arrived in Los Angeles for last day workouts before his Las Vegas showdown against Ramon Cardenas on Sunday May 4, at T-Mobile Arena. ESPN will televise and stream the Top Rank card.

It’s been four years since the super bantamweight world champion performed in the US and during that time Naoya (29-0, 26 KOs) gathered world titles in different weight divisions. The Japanese slugger has also gained fame as perhaps the best fighter on the planet. Cardenas is 26-1 with 14 KOs.

Pomona Fights

Super featherweights Mathias Radcliffe (9-0-1) and Ezequiel Flores (6-4) lead a boxing card called “DMG Night of Champions” on Saturday April 26, at the historic Fox Theater in downtown Pomona, Calif.

Michaela Bracamontes (11-2-1) and Jesus Torres Beltran (8-4-1) will be fighting for a regional WBC super featherweight title. More than eight bouts are scheduled.

Doors open at 6 p.m. For ticket information go to: www.tix.com/dmgnightofchampions

Fights to Watch

Sat. DAZN 9 a.m. Conor Benn (23-0) vs Chris Eubank Jr. (34-3); Liam Smith (33-4-1) vs Aaron McKenna (19-0).

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Floyd Mayweather has Another Phenom and his name is Curmel Moton

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Floyd Mayweather has Another Phenom and his name is Curmel Moton

In any endeavor, the defining feature of a phenom is his youth. Philadelphia Phillies outfielder Bryce Harper was a phenom. He was on the radar screen of baseball’s most powerful player agents when he was 14 years old.

Curmel Moton, who turns 19 in June, is a phenom. Of all the young boxing stars out there, wrote James Slater in July of last year, “Curmel Moton is the one to get most excited about.”

Moton was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. His father Curtis Moton, a barber by trade, was a big boxing fan and specifically a big fan of Floyd Mayweather Jr. When Curmel was six, Curtis packed up his wife (Curmel’s stepmom) and his son and moved to Las Vegas. Curtis wanted his son to get involved in boxing and there was no better place to develop one’s latent talents than in Las Vegas where many of the sport’s top practitioners came to train.

Many father-son relationships have been ruined, or at least frayed, by a father’s unrealistic expectations for his son, but when it came to boxing, the boy was a natural and he felt right at home in the gym.

The gym the Motons patronized was the Mayweather Boxing Club. Curtis took his son there in hopes of catching the eye of the proprietor. “Floyd would occasionally drop by the gym and I was there so often that he came to recognize me,” says Curmel. What he fails to add is that the trainers there had Floyd’s ear. “This kid is special,” they told him.

It costs a great deal of money for a kid to travel around the country competing in a slew of amateur boxing tournaments. Only a few have the luxury of a sponsor. For the vast majority, fund raisers such as car washes keep the wheels greased.

Floyd Mayweather stepped in with the financial backing needed for the Motons to canvas the country in tournaments. As an amateur, Curmel was — take your pick — 156-7 or 144-6 or 61-3 (the latter figure from boxrec). Regardless, at virtually every tournament at which he appeared, Curmel Moton was the cock of the walk.

Before the pandemic, Floyd Mayweather Jr had a stable of boxers he promoted under the banner of “The Money Team.” In talking about his boxers, Floyd was understated with one glaring exception – Gervonta “Tank” Davis, now one of boxing’s top earners.

When Floyd took to praising Curmel Moton with the same effusive language, folks stood up and took notice.

Curmel made his pro debut on Sept. 30, 2023, at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on the undercard of the super middleweight title fight between Canelo Alvarez and Jermell Charlo. After stopping his opponent in the opening round, he addressed a flock of reporters in the media room with Floyd standing at his side. “I felt ready,” he said, “I knew I had Floyd behind me. He believes in me. I had the utmost confidence going into the fight. And I went in there and did what I do.”

Floyd ventured the opinion that Curmel was already a better fighter than Leigh Wood, the reigning WBA world featherweight champion who would successfully defend his belt the following week.

Moton’s boxing style has been described as a blend of Floyd Mayweather and Tank Davis. “I grew up watching Floyd, so it’s natural I have some similarities to him,” says Curmel who sparred with Tank in late November of 2021 as Davis was preparing for his match with Isaac “Pitbull” Cruz. Curmell says he did okay. He was then 15 years old and still in school; he dropped out as soon as he reached the age of 16.

Curmel is now 7-0 with six KOs, four coming in the opening round. He pitched an 8-round shutout the only time he was taken the distance. It’s not yet official, but he returns to the ring on May 31 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas where Caleb Plant and Jermall Charlo are co-featured in matches conceived as tune-ups for a fall showdown. The fight card will reportedly be free for Amazon Prime Video subscribers.

Curmel’s presumptive opponent is Renny Viamonte, a 28-year-old Las Vegas-based Cuban with a 4-1-1 (2) record. It will be Curmel’s first professional fight with Kofi Jantuah the chief voice in his corner. A two-time world title challenger who began his career in his native Ghana, the 50-year-old Jantuah has worked almost exclusively with amateurs, a recent exception being Mikaela Mayer.

It would seem that the phenom needs a tougher opponent than Viamonte at this stage of his career. However, the match is intriguing in one regard. Viamonte is lanky. Listed at 5-foot-11, he will have a seven-inch height advantage.

Keeping his weight down has already been problematic for Moton. He tipped the scales at 128 ½ for his most recent fight. His May 31 bout, he says, will be contested at 135 and down the road it’s reasonable to think he will blossom into a welterweight. And with each bump up in weight, his short stature will theoretically be more of a handicap.

For fun, we asked Moton to name the top fighter on his pound-for-pound list. “[Oleksandr] Usyk is number one right now,” he said without hesitation,” great footwork, but guys like Canelo, Crawford, Inoue, and Bivol are right there.”

It’s notable that there isn’t a young gun on that list. Usyk is 38, a year older than Crawford; Inoue is the pup at age 32.

Moton anticipates that his name will appear on pound-for-pound lists within the next two or three years. True, history is replete with examples of phenoms who flamed out early, but we wouldn’t bet against it.

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Arne’s Almanac: The First Boxing Writers Assoc. of America Dinner Was Quite the Shindig

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The first annual dinner of the Boxing Writers Association of America was staged on April 25, 1926 in the grand ballroom of New York’s Hotel Astor, an edifice that rivaled the original Waldorf Astoria as the swankiest hotel in the city. Back then, the organization was known as the Boxing Writers Association of Greater New York.

The ballroom was configured to hold 1200 for the banquet which was reportedly oversubscribed. Among those listed as agreeing to attend were the governors of six states (New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Maryland) and the mayors of 10 of America’s largest cities.

In 1926, radio was in its infancy and the digital age was decades away (and inconceivable). So, every journalist who regularly covered boxing was a newspaper and/or magazine writer, editor, or cartoonist. And at this juncture in American history, there were plenty of outlets for someone who wanted to pursue a career as a sportswriter and had the requisite skills to get hired.

The following papers were represented at the inaugural boxing writers’ dinner:

New York Times

New York News

New York World

New York Sun

New York Journal

New York Post

New York Mirror

New York Telegram

New York Graphic

New York Herald Tribune

Brooklyn Eagle

Brooklyn Times

Brooklyn Standard Union

Brooklyn Citizen

Bronx Home News

This isn’t a complete list because a few of these papers, notably the New York World and the New York Journal, had strong afternoon editions that functioned as independent papers. Plus, scribes from both big national wire services (Associated Press and UPI) attended the banquet and there were undoubtedly a smattering of scribes from papers in New Jersey and Connecticut.

Back then, the event’s organizer Nat Fleischer, sports editor of the New York Telegram and the driving force behind The Ring magazine, had little choice but to limit the journalistic component of the gathering to writers in the New York metropolitan area. There wasn’t a ballroom big enough to accommodate a good-sized response if he had extended the welcome to every boxing writer in North America.

The keynote speaker at the inaugural dinner was New York’s charismatic Jazz Age mayor James J. “Jimmy” Walker, architect of the transformative Walker Law of 1920 which ushered in a new era of boxing in the Empire State with a template that would guide reformers in many other jurisdictions.

Prizefighting was then associated with hooligans. In his speech, Mayor Walker promised to rid the sport of their ilk. “Boxing, as you know, is closest to my heart,” said hizzoner. “So I tell you the police force is behind you against those who would besmirch or injure boxing. Rowdyism doesn’t belong in this town or in your game.” (In 1945, Walker would be the recipient of the Edward J. Neil Memorial Award given for meritorious service to the sport. The oldest of the BWAA awards, the previous recipients were all active or former boxers. The award, no longer issued under that title, was named for an Associated Press sportswriter and war correspondent who died from shrapnel wounds covering the Spanish Civil War.)

Another speaker was well-traveled sportswriter Wilbur Wood, then affiliated with the Brooklyn Citizen. He told the assembly that the aim of the organization was two-fold: to help defend the game against its detractors and to promote harmony among the various factions.

Of course, the 1926 dinner wouldn’t have been as well-attended without the entertainment. According to press dispatches, Broadway stars and performers from some of the city’s top nightclubs would be there to regale the attendees. Among the names bandied about were vaudeville superstars Sophie Tucker and Jimmy Durante, the latter of whom would appear with his trio, Durante, (Lou) Clayton, and (Eddie) Jackson.

There was a contraction of New York newspapers during the Great Depression. Although empirical evidence is lacking, the inaugural boxing writers dinner was likely the largest of its kind. Fifteen years later, in 1941, the event drew “more than 200” according to a news report. There was no mention of entertainment.

In 1950, for the first time, the annual dinner was opened to the public. For $25, a civilian could get a meal and mingle with some of his favorite fighters. Sugar Ray Robinson was the Edward J. Neil Award winner that year, honored for his ring exploits and for donating his purse from the Charlie Fusari fight to the Damon Runyon Cancer Fund.

There was no formal announcement when the Boxing Writers Association of Greater New York was re-christened the Boxing Writers Association of America, but by the late 1940s reporters were referencing the annual event as simply the boxing writers dinner. By then, it had become traditional to hold the annual affair in January, a practice discontinued after 1971.

The winnowing of New York’s newspaper herd plus competing banquets in other parts of the country forced Nat Fleischer’s baby to adapt. And more adaptations will be necessary in the immediate future as the future of the BWAA, as it currently exists, is threatened by new technologies. If the forthcoming BWAA dinner (April 30 at the Edison Ballroom in mid-Manhattan) were restricted to wordsmiths from the traditional print media, the gathering would be too small to cover the nut and the congregants would be drawn disproportionately from the geriatric class.

Some of those adaptations have already started. Last year, Las Vegas resident Sean Zittel, a recent UNLV graduate, had the distinction of becoming the first videographer welcomed into the BWAA. With more and more people getting their news from sound bites, rather than the written word, the videographer serves an important function.

The reporters who conducted interviews with pen and paper have gone the way of the dodo bird and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A taped interview for a “talkie” has more integrity than a story culled from a paper and pen interview because it is unfiltered. Many years ago, some reporters, after interviewing the great Joe Louis, put  words in his mouth that made him seem like a dullard, words consistent with the Sambo stereotype. In other instances, the language of some athletes was reconstructed to the point where the reader would think the athlete had a second job as an English professor.

The content created by videographers is free from that bias. More of them will inevitably join the BWAA and similar organizations in the future.

Photo: Nat Fleischer is flanked by Sugar Ray Robinson and Tony Zale at the 1947 boxing writers dinner.

A recognized authority on the history of prizefighting and the history of American sports gambling, TSS editor-in-chief Arne K. Lang is the author of five books including “Prizefighting: An American History,” released by McFarland in 2008 and re-released in a paperback edition in 2020.
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