By David Martinez, Boxing Historian
Selecting the best heavyweight champions of all time is a task I have been asked to do many times in my many years as a boxing historian. There seems to be no set formula for rating them, but I have researched this topic from top to bottom and have come up with my own top 10 list of the best heavyweight champions “pound for pound” going back as far as February 8, 1882, when John L. Sullivan knocked out Irish Paddy Ryan in nine rounds in Mississippi, and forward to our current array of WBA, WBC, WBO, IBF champions.
In rating the best heavyweights, I took a lot of things into consideration. Comparing them from their different eras has to be the most difficult evaluation. Figuring how the fighters of the past would do today is the logical basis to compare these champions, but I’m putting that same question in reverse. How would the champions of the present have done in a past era, let’s say back to the turn of the century, with all training factors and tangibles equal?
Here is my rating of the greatest “pound for pound” heavyweight champions of all time, if they were all in the peak of their careers, all at the same time (years held heavyweight title in parentheses):
#1 JACK JOHNSON
(1908-1915) Nickname: The Galveston Giant
Master defensive fighter and well ahead of his time. Because Johnson was the “first” black champion, it was unfortunate that he did not fight everyone in his prime. Won the title when he was 32 years old; Ali was 22 and Louis was 23.
He was the central figure in the most dramatic event in boxing history; his 1910 bout with Jim Jeffries caused more national repercussions than any other in the history of the sport. Because of his problems with the law, he had to fight out of the country often. Lost his championship to Jess Willard on a controversial knockout. According to the late Nat Fleischer, Ring Magazine founder and foremost boxing historian ever, simply the best heavyweight he had ever seen.
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