Top 10 title reigns in boxing history

Which are the best of the best?

Put them in order.

 

Is there something you had in mind in terms of length, or comp, or is it up to our digression?

 

Entirely up to your own digression.

 

To quote John Wilkes Booth, "I'll take a shot."

1. Benny Leonard
2. Joe Louis
3. Archie Moore
4. Monzon
5. Duran (135)
6. Spinks (175)
7. Hagler
8. Pep
9. Ike Williams
10. Carlos Ortiz

Runners-up: Jofre, Arguello (130)

 

Very nice list!

 

I would add Gomez's super bantam reign and Saldivar's featherweight reign.

 

Just throwing this out there- but if Wlad had beaten Fury/Joshua, would any of you studly gentlemen consider his run from 2005-2018?

 

Probably no. Had Wlad beaten Fury, it wouldn't have strengthened his reign much, if at all, since at the fight time Fury was overlooked by everyone.

 

Yeah I can see how that would happen. I disagree with it. But that's how it works. People should/could factor in Fury's subsequent "Body of Work"- which is 1-0-1 with Wilder and who knows what happens this Summer.

 

Wlad does have a great reign, though... IDK that any of his victims were HOFers, but he was a dominant champ for many years and beat a number of undefeated opponents. I don't remember anyone that he could be accused of ducking, either.

I'd say his reign should be in at least the top 20, if not top 15 all-time reigns.

 

Am I the lone shooter in this thread?

 

It's funny- nobody considering the thread willl not be tained by outside influences - eg what happened before or after the reign in question.

"Wlad does not have a top 10 reign............HE LOST TO PURRITTY"........for example.

If he beats Fury and Joshua- and they were "winnable fights" - then he is in the top 10 for me.

As it is, Louis and Marciano's reigns, despite Wlad would have wiped his ass with both men {OH IT'S ON NOW} and their competition- are better" reigns"

One has the record, 25 defences. The other has the unbeaten record, 49-0 and , I think, is the only Champ to win the Undisputed title with a post 12th round KO. The only other guy I can think of is Weaver vs Tate. Just something that occurs to me as rare- late round come-from-behind KO's to win the title.

I think the "Modern" fighters have good reigns but not GREAT reigns

Joe Calzaghe
Hopkins
Naz
Jirov

These were all good but not great reigns.

I don't rate Jack Dempseys reign. He fought some good guys but he avoided all the good black fighters.

Some reigns- like Frankie Lyle- were phony reigns. Dude had 1 fight in 12 years.

I like:-

Hagler and Monzon at Middle.

Ricardo Lopez at Straw- let's face it there was nobody to beat him.

Pep at Featherweight had a great run but I can't see how many of them were defences. He sure had a tonne of fights at feather while holding a title and winning them all. Whether they were title defences, I am not sure.

Duran at Lightweight. 1 defeat. Avenged. Bit of a shadow over how he won the title. Unified the title. Didn't lose again and vacated to beat Leonard.

 

I think Hopkins would still be in at least the top 20. He did quietly dominate an undistinguished division for many years, but he capped it off by unifying the titles and dominating a HOFer/P4P leader in Tito.

 

The thing is it is at best the 3rd best reign in 160lb history. In a top 10 I can't justify having THREE from the same division, so as you say he gets pushed to the top 20.

 

Wilf Gomez at 122lbs.

 

So so far I might try, by division

*Joe Louis

*Holyfield

*Bob Foster or Roy Jones.

*Joe Calzaghe

*Marvin Hagler

*No idea at 154.

*Ray Robinson- basically he was the man there. The lack of defences was all politics and BS.

*JC Chavez

*Duran

*Alfredo Escalera.

Obviuously, if you take Escalera, there were better 130lbrs than him in History, but did they have 10 defences? There were better 168lbrs than Calzaghe but did they stick it out at the same weight and rack up defences?

 

Archie Moore without question has the best title reign in LHW history

 

Arguello comes pretty close (8 defenses, I believe) and he stopped Escalera twice along the way. I think Escalera's reign also comes with a bit of an asterisk next to it, since one of his defenses (vs. Tyrone Everett) was generally regarded as a robbery.

 

My crack at the best title reigns per weight would be:

HW: Joe Louis
CW: Oleksandr Usyk
LHW: Archie Moore
SMW: Joe Calzaghe
MW: Carlos Monzon
JMW: Mike McCallum
WW: Henry Armstrong
JMW: Antonio Cervantes
LW: Benny Leonard
SFW: Alexis Arguello
FW: Salvador Sanchez
SBW: Wilfredo Gomez
BW: Fighting Harada
SFly: Gilberto Roman
Fly: Miguel Canto
LFly: Jung-Koo Chang
Min: Ricardo Lopez

 

Here we are, my quick shot.

#10. Vicente Saldivar
#09. Miguel Canto
#08. Wilfredo Gomez
#07. Marvin Hagler
#06. Carlos Monzon
#05. Joe Gans
#04. Henry Armstrong
#03. Benny Leonard
#02. Archie Moore
#01. Joe Louis

 

As I say, I don't know.

I am influenced by the notion that Foster was so dominant at 175 that he was moving up to try his hand vs 70's HWs.

Moores dalliance with "Clay" was a nest-liner.

 

I really wanted to put AA in there but I just felt it was too obvious. Maybe doing 10 defences with less talent is a better reign.

 

Then Flash Elorde should take it IMO

 

Yeah again for me a "Better Reign" has to be a relationship between the fewest problems, the best opposition and the talent of the fighter in question.

Somebody like Sven Ottke arguably has a better "Reign" at 168 than Froch simply because he never was as big, as strong, as dangerous as Froch was. Yet he found a way to run around the ring defusing dangerous opponents.

Just as an example.

 

It might not make a top 10, but Tyson's 3-year reign certainly deserves mention.

He cleaned up a mess.

 

My issue with ranking Armstrong among the great reigns (despite setting a record for his division) is that outside of the Garcia and Roderick fights, he didn't defend his title against top WWs. A number of his defenses came against fighters ranked at a lower weight, and many opponents were simply unranked altogether. He basically turned WW into his own personal catchweight for a time.

 

Plus Armstrong was talented enough to be deprived of any justification for avoiding top fighters. I can understand Johnny Tapia "avoiding" Mark Johnson. I can't understand Floyd not making the Margarito or Tszyu fights but fighting Gatti because it "Made him a HBO Star" or fighting Henry Bruseles.

 

Floyd actually did wanna fight Tszyu.

 

Maybe he did.

But he didn't.

And he did fight Gatti and when people wanted to know why, it was because it would "introduce the three weight champion and Olympic medallist to the World"



Zoo's reign at 140 is better, even if Floyd wanted to fight Zoo, even if he was better than Zoo, which he was, it matters not.

Zoo fought them all at 140.

Floyd did not.

Floyd's better. Floyd's a better ATG, better 140lbr, etc. But Zoo had the better reign.

That's how I judge it, at least.

 

There's a lot I like about this list.

Joe Louis has by far and away the greatest title reign in history in my view. The more I think about it the more I feel he deserves the top spot at heavyweight, even above Ali (it's very close though). In terms of title reigns, 11 years, 25 consecutive successful defenses (22 by KO) and retiring unbeaten tells its own story in numbers but his consistency and the fact that he beat everyone there was to beat for more than a decade is amazing. Nobody has ever been that dominant and that good for that long. And to do it at heavyweight where most fighters throughout history have found it difficult to string lots of wins together is even more impressive. Wlad has nice numbers too but he was never the undisputed number 1. Louis was that from the Schmeling rematch through to his first retirement 10 years later. Unique.

Number 2 should probably remain vacant to really reflect how much greater Louis's title reign was than anyone else's. But Archie Moore seems a very fair choice for the next spot on the list. Wouldn't argue strongly against that.

Monzon and Hagler have to be on there and next to each other seems appropriate. Monzon has the advantage of retiring as unbeaten champ. Hagler was undisputed champ throughout his reign though (it was only the final fight with Leonard that wasn't for all the belts) whereas Monzon dumped the WBC title instead of facing his no. 1 contender in 1974, Rodrigo Valdez. But he beat him twice two years after that so can't be too hard on him.

I'm glad Wilfredo Gomez is on there too. His super bantamweight reign was great by any standard and its right to consider it among the best in history. It's especially impressive considering it wasn't one of the original eight.