Boxing's Greatest Fighters [Paperback]

Bert Randolph Sugar (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Bert Sugar is far more than a connoisseur of the Manly Art. He is one of the foremost sports historians alive.”--The Boston Globe

From the Back Cover

Boxing's most entertaining writer picks the greatest fighters of all time.
No one is more qualified to answer the time-honored question "who was the greatest fighter?" than Bert Randolph Sugar. In Boxing's Greatest Fighters, the former editor of The Ring magazine not only tells us who the greatest fighters are, but tells us the order of their greatness.
Could Sugar Ray Robinson have beaten Muhammad Ali? Could Sugar Ray Leonard have beaten Sonny Liston? The answer, most experts agree, would be "no." But what if, as Bert Sugar has done here, one were to take all the boxers and "reduce them in the mind's eye to the same height, the same weight, the same ring conditions?" The answers come out a lot different.
And while some fans may express outrage that Rocky Marciano is not in the top 10 and Marvelous Marvin Hagler is barely in the top 50, others will nod sagely when they read why Sugar selects Henry Armstrong and Willie Pep as better than just about anybody else.
So, whether you read Boxing's Greatest Fighters cover-to-cover, or merely flip to your favorites, be prepared, at the bell, to come out arguing. For Sugar makes "The Sweet Science" one helluva sweet quarrel.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Lyons Press (January 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1592286321
• ISBN-13: 978-1592286324
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #281,593 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #76 in Books > Sports & Outdoors > Individual Sports > Boxing

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars As with the Original release, just an invaluable book, February 14, 2006

By 

Hawk - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Boxing's Greatest Fighters (Paperback)

First things first: You are NOT going to agree with 100, 75 or possibly 50% of his ranking positions. Some fighters will be far too high in your eyes, or bafflingly low.

Or in the case of a Micheal Spinks or a Fighting Harada (#87 on his original list in 1984 and in my opinion THEN, too low), missing altogether from the top 100.

You may puzzle over why Ruben Olivares did not make the cut in 1984 but is sitting at #36 in the 2006 edition. How can Larry Holmes be behind Holyfield and Foreman and (gasp) Tunney! And what is Beau jack doing one spot ahead of Ike Williams who "owned" Jack, much in the same way Archie Moore is rated ahead of Ezzard Charles, despite losing to the Cinncinati Cobra all three times they fought.

Two things: The stories and detail of each fighter only sparks the desire to learn more about these fighters who make Bert's list. And the overall disagreement that you WILL have with Bert, makes the read fascinating. You almost have an argument and a debate with yourself!

Lists will do that to you. One man's list is ONLY perfect to the man who wrote it. Everyone else will have issues with it.

But I defy any boxing enthusiast who buys this book, to NOT have it by your side literally everywhere you go.

Boxing History, in one small package.

Priceless and maddening at the same time.

Hawk

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A decent book for new or casual fans of the "sweet science", April 5, 2009

By 

feedthecat (Toronto, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Boxing's Greatest Fighters (Paperback)

Bert Randolph Sugar, he of the everpresent fedora and unlit cigar, is one of the best known "talking heads" in the boxing media. He is articulate, writes well, and is very passionate about boxing, the greatest, truest, and purest of athletic competitions. However, he is more a boxing writer than a boxing historian, as is demonstrated by the fact that he believes (and promulgates) many of the myths that have floated around for years about this or that fighter without having bothering to check any primary sources to confirm these stories (Sugar relates many of these fairy tales in this book, but states them as fact, such as Willie Pep having won a round in a fight with Jackie Graves without having landed a single punch [Pep himself, in most of his accounts of the bout, said that he did, in fact, throw and land more than a few punches in that round], that Harry Greb's last name was Berg [Greb's birth certificate says otherwise], that Jack Dempsey broke Jess Willard's jaw in their 1919 battle [an injury that none of the reporters who interviewed Willard in the hours and days after the bout seemed to notice], that Greb broke Gene Tunney's nose with a headbutt in the first round of their first of five wars [Greb and many ringside reporters attributed the break to a left hook and Tunney himself stated that it was probably the result of a Greb right and definitely not from a butt], that Sam Langford gave Jack Johnson all he could handle in their fight [Langford admitted more than once that 'Lil Arthur had whipped him)], etc, etc).

More importantly, Sugar's understanding of boxing technique is good but not impressive, which is aptly illustrated whenever he demonstrates (and butchers) a technique that he is relating and by the fact that he rarely describes in great detail the particular TECHNIQUES that made this or that fighter effective, but, instead, waxes on the boxer's STYLE of fighting. For these reasons, it's hard to take his ranking of boxing's greatest fighters too seriously, especially since, like most boxing fans when they produce fighter rankings, he places far TOO MUCH weight in determining a fighter's "greatness" on the boxer's popularity, "historical importance"/legacy, the "name" fighters whom he fought, the number of titles that he won, etc and NOT ENOUGH weight on the fighter's willingness to take on all comers and his effectiveness against all of the basic boxing "styles" (e.g. outboxers, pressure fighters, stalkers, stick and movers, etc) and against opponents who possessed a certain skill or attribute (e.g. handspeed, footwork, reach, power, punch volume/stamina, etc) to an exceptional degree (indeed, among the reasons why I do not place Sugar Ray Robinson - whom Bert Sugar and many others deem the best boxer pound-for-pound of all time - at #1 on MY all-time lb4lb list is the fact that he went to great lengths to avoid fighting good stick and movers [Robinson liked to be the matador] and legitimate powerpunchers [which should be obvious given that, despite fighting in the talent-rich 1940s & 50s, the hardest hitters that the Sugarman could boast of facing were Artie Levine and "blown-up" welterweight Rocky Graziano, who was well past his peak by the time he fought Sugar Ray - to get an idea of how many great punchers Robinson AVOIDED during this era, check out the list of opponents FOUGHT by Robinson's outstanding peer Charley Burley, whom Sugar Ray, of course, "ducked" - then again, if I were put on "queer street" by good but far from great hitters like Levine, Georgie Abrams, and Jimmy Doyle, I'd probably want to avoid thunderous punchers like Burley and Lloyd Marshall, too.)

Another problem with the book is that it is littered with typographical, grammatical, and factual errors (that is, the ones aside from the myths Mr. Sugar embraces). Furthermore, boxing fans who have read some of Sugar's other books will feel a sense of deja vu because he tends to recycle his best bon mots in most of his books. And, there is also the fact that Sugar, given the brevity of each of the boxer profiles, invariably relates the boxer's most famous fight or most well-known characteristic, which is beneficial to boxing "newbies" but boring for knowledgable fans.

All in all, BOXING'S GREATEST FIGHTERS is a decent enough book for new or "casual" boxing fans, but hardcore fans will not find it anything special (except to argue over Sugar's rankings). For the benefit of casual fans, I present the following list of great fighters whom Sugar did not include in his book: Eddie Booker, Fighting Harada, Frankie Genaro, Owen Moran, Jimmy Bivins, Fidel LaBarba, Billy Petrolle, Young Peter Jackson, Mysterious Billy Smith, Freddie Steele, Lloyd Marshall, Ken Overlin, Holman Williams, Michael Spinks, Jack Blackburn, & Lew Tendler.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining and well-written, July 16, 2006

By 

TacoGuy (United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Boxing's Greatest Fighters (Paperback)

This latest edition of "Boxing's Greatest Fighters" is an update from the 1984 edition. I have both copies, mainly because I was curious to see how Bert Sugar re-ranked some of my favorite fighters. For example, Sugar Ray Leonard moved from #56 to #25. Overall, this is a well-written, entertaining book. It's probably not logical to rate fighters from different eras, but the concept is hard to resist for a boxing fan, especially one interested in its early history. As with many others reviewers, I don't agree with some of Sugar's rankings, but overall his list makes good sense.