Going to be making this era my focus over the next few weeks. I'm aware of some great fights from this era- some which are available on film (YouTube and Daily Motion), some which aren't. Which ones would you recommend watching?
I should say the ones I've already seen: Kid Gavilan v Billy Graham 3 Kid Gavilan v Gil Turner Kid Gavilan v Carmen Basilio Carmen Basilio v Tony DeMarco 1 (extended highlights- would love to see the whole fight) Gil Turner v Johnny Saxton 1 (highlights) Carmen Basilio v Tony DeMarco 2 Carmen Basilio v Johnny Saxton 2 Carmen Basilio v Gil Turner Virgil Akins v Tony DeMarco 1 (highlights)
Sorry, for a moment I thought it read SINCE the 50s! Lol my bad. You look like you have it covered for the 50s.
What I do when looking at an era, is I look at the people who thought everybody and watch most of their fights, and then follow up on whoever interests me. So for example, De La Hoya in the 90s leads you to Ike Quartey, then you watch Qaurtey vs more top guys. Rinse and repeat. So I'd say, watch a lot of Gavilan fights, then Saxton & Bratton, and so on.
Yeah, I've got a list of fighters to watch: • Johnny Bratton • Kid Gavilan • Billy Graham • Johnny Saxton • Carmen Basilio • Tony DeMarco • Gil Turner • Chuck Davey • Virgil Akins • Don Jordan • Gaspar Ortega Just looking for as many combos involving these fighters as I can. The cool thing about the 50s is that it's the first decade in boxing where plenty of footage exists because most of the fights were televised.
Anything you can get with Gil Turner is worth a watch, though some of his fights would technically be considered MW contests. vs. Giardello, Basilio, Saxton I & II, Bobby Jones II, Fullmer III, and Akins are all available on YT I believe. Basilio-Davey was also an exciting fight.
Awesome - that's the very first fight chronologically on my watchlist. Any idea if there's a full version of Virgil Akins v Tony DeMarco 1 online? I've seen the 18 mins or so available on YouTube and it's brilliant.
