The Greatest Is Very Obvious When It Comes to Top Fighters

On this first day of 2000, before a bell has rung or a punch has been thrown, here’s one last look at the good old 1900s.

We couldn’t start 2000 without our list of the top 10 fighters of the last hundred years.

They are, with years of their careers in parenthesis:

1. Muhammad Ali (1960-81)--Forget the best fighter pound for pound. Here was the best fighter in the biggest division. As Cassius Clay, he was the fastest heavyweight. As Ali, he fought the most memorable battles of the century, was a three-time champion, became a world figure and helped change public opinion about a devastating war.

2. Sugar Ray Robinson (1940-65)--He was the best pound-for-pound fighter. The welterweight and later middleweight champion in an era when the titles were undisputed, Robinson fought 202 times (175-19-6with 109 knockouts, plus two no contests) over a quarter century, beating the best of his era with the best combination of speed and power ever seen in the ring.

3. Joe Louis (1934-51)--The only man who could rival Ali among the heavyweights, Louis held the title for a dozen years, making a record 25 title defenses. His knockout victory over German Max Schmeling in 1938 was as big an athletic victory for the America of that time as was the U.S. Olympic hockey team’s win over the Soviet Union 42 years later.

4. Henry Armstrong (1931-45)--The only man who could rival Robinson for the pound-for-pound title. Armstrong held three titles--featherweight, lightweight and welterweight--simultaneously and would have added the middleweight crown had he not been penalized for head butts against Ceferino Garcia in a 1940 title fight that wound up a draw.

5. Jack Johnson (1897-1928)--Johnson was 68-10-10 with 40 knockouts (and had 16 no decisions and one no contest) despite battling not only opponents in the ring, but the prejudice directed at him as the first black heavyweight. He fought through it all to set the stage for Louis, Jackie Robinson and all the other black athletes who followed.

6. Willie Pep (1940-66)--The record of this two-time featherweight champion (230-11-1, 65 knockouts) says it all. Pep was a master boxer who was probably the greatest defensive fighter ever. He once won a round in which not a single blow was landed by either fighter, the judges rewarding Pep for his ring mastery.

7. Jack Dempsey (1914-27)--The man who gave boxing a prominent spot during the Golden Age of sports, the 1920s, Dempsey was a product of Colorado’s mining towns who earned his nickname, the Manassa Mauler, and the heavyweight title by battering his opponents into submission. Of his 60 wins, 50 came by knockout.

8. Sugar Ray Leonard (1977-97)--If the 1980s were the golden age for the middleweights and welterweights, the man who emerged on top deserves to be listed among the best. Leonard, who won six titles, was unbeaten against Marvin Hagler and Thomas Hearns and won two of three from Roberto Duran.

9. Archie Moore (1936-63)--A true survivor, he is the longevity champion, fighting in four decades before finally retiring at 49. The light-heavyweight champion for more than nine years, Moore finished with a record of 196-26-8 and one no contest. His 143 knockouts are the highest total in boxing history.

10. Julio Cesar Chavez (1980-present)--Forget the Chavez of today, a shot fighter who should never again strap on a pair of gloves. Remember instead that this is a man who fought 90 times before losing for the first time and is the greatest fighter Mexico has ever produced.

L.A.’s BOXING HISTORY

Following are 10 snapshots from Los Angeles’ rich pugilistic history, one from each decade.

1900-1909

Boxing matches were limited to 10 rounds within Los Angeles’ city limits. That was a problem for those holding championship belts who didn’t want to risk them in bouts that were considered short for those days. The solution was found in Vernon, where the Jeffries Athletic Club built an arena that was free to hold bouts up to 45 rounds, the limit under state law.

1910-1919

Gentleman Jim Corbett was no gentleman when it came to Jack Johnson. Corbett, a former heavyweight champion at the time, said before Johnson’s 1910 match against Jim Jeffries, Los Angeles’ only heavyweight champion: “The black boy has a yellow streak and Jeffries will bring it out of him when he gets him in the ring.” Corbett was in Jeffries’ corner, taunting Johnson as Johnson thoroughly whipped Jeffries while yelling at Corbett that he was more than welcome to join the battle.

1920-1929

On July 20, 1924, the same day that featherweights Jackie Fields and Joe Salas were battling for a gold medal at the Olympic Games in Paris, flyweight Fidel La Barba won a gold. All three men were members of the Los Angeles Athletic Club.

1930-1939

In 1935, Joe Louis, then 20 and two years away from winning the heavyweight title, fought in Los Angeles at Wrigley Field against Lee Ramage. Louis knocked Ramage out in the second round, showing the 12,000 spectators the brilliance and savagery that would make him one of the all-time greats. Louis’ purse for the bout was $4,354.

1940-1949

This was a cruel decade for Henry Armstrong, a Los Angeles fighter whose draw against Ceferino Garcia in a bid for a fourth title to add to the three he held simultaneously came at L.A.’s Gilmore Stadium. Armstrong then lost his welterweight championship and two fights to Fritzie Zivic.

1950-1959

Art Aragon, L.A.’s most popular fighter, never won a title, but he was the champion of one-liners in this decade. Of his fight against Alvaro Gutierrez, Aragon said, “In the first round, I hit Gutierrez with my best shot, a right hand right on the chin . . . and I went down.”

1960-1969

He was still known as Cassius Clay, he was only 20 and he was entering the ring in the Los Angeles Sports Arena on Nov. 15, 1962, against the biggest name he had yet faced in Archie Moore. Clay had been fighting professionally for only two years, the 45-year-old Moore for 27. Moore said he had a “lip buttoner” to silence Clay. “I wish people would get together and work out a pension or something for him,” Clay responded, “or I’m gonna have to do it once and for all.” Clay did it, knocking Moore out, as predicted, in the fourth round in front of 16,200. For Clay, the $50,000 payday was his biggest to that point.

1970-1979

It was the pivotal moment of one of L.A.’s biggest fights. “Danny’s done,” Joe Ponce, Bobby Chacon’s manager, told his fighter, looking across the ring at Danny “Little Red” Lopez. “His legs won’t take him where he wants to go.” Said Chacon, “Are you sure? Then I’ll go get him.” And he did, winning the memorable 1974 featherweight fight at the Sports Arena on a ninth-round TKO.

1980-1989

It occurred at Las Vegas’ Caesars Palace in July 1988, but Michael Nunn’s ninth-round technical knockout of Frank Tate to win the International Boxing Federation middleweight title was an L.A. event. Nunn’s rise from obscurity in a San Fernando Valley gym was the local boxing story of the decade.

1990-1999

Again, it was Las Vegas. Again, it was an L.A. moment. East L.A.’s Oscar De La Hoya against the San Fernando Valley’s Rafael Ruelas in a lightweight title fight staged in a worldwide spotlight. However, it was hardly a memorable moment. De La Hoya destroyed Ruelas in the second round to stake his claim to being the L.A. fighter of the decade.