With yesterday being the anniversary of one of the greatest fights of all-time in the middleweight division, seems like now is as good a time as any to look back and assess the all-time biggest and best donnybrooks at 160 pounds, but with one caveat: this list is restricted to when middleweight boxers were actually, you know, middleweights. With the advent of the day before weigh-in we can never be sure what we’re looking at when two fighters who just spent more than 24 hours re-hydrating face off. Call us old-fashioned, but we like our middleweights somewhere close to the 160 pound weight limit. So without further ado, we present the twelve all-time biggest, most exciting, and most legendary clashes in the history of the middleweight division.
12. Dec. 3, 1926: Mickey Walker W10 Tiger Flowers. Despite the match being scheduled for ten rounds, this clash of ring legends was for the world title. Walker was attempting to get all the way back to the top after suffering defeats to Pete Latzo and Joe Dundee, while Tiger was coming off an impressive 10-1 run that year, including two big wins over Harry Greb. Press accounts show that most thought Flowers clearly got the best of “The Toy Bulldog” that night, but the decision went to Walker and was not overturned despite an official investigation by the Illinois Athletic Commission.
11. Sept. 13, 1950: Jake LaMotta KO15 Laurent Dauthuille. The man they called “The Bronx Bull” had in fact dropped a ten round decision to Dauthuille the year before in Montreal, but then four months later he defeated Marcel Cerdan for the world title. Now with the championship on the line, Dauthuille, aka “The Tarzan of Buzenval,” was in command, racking up the points and amassing a huge lead in a tough, bruising battle. When the bell rang for round fifteen, Jake needed a knockout to win while Dauthuille just needed to survive. With time running out, a seemingly hurt and exhausted LaMotta abruptly unloaded a fearsome barrage of big punches to topple the Frenchman who was counted out with just thirteen seconds left on the clock.
10. May 1, 1957: Sugar Ray Robinson KO5 Gene Fullmer. Many thought the great Robinson was finished after he lost the world title to Fullmer by decision the previous January in a bruising battle that saw Ray actually knocked out of the ring by “The Utah Cyclone.” But instead of a farewell fight, it was another huge win for Sugar Ray, not to mention one of the greatest one-punch knockouts in ring history.
9. Aug. 19, 1926: Tiger Flowers W15 Harry Greb. Madison Square Garden was jammed for the third and final confrontation between “The Georgia Deacon” and “The Smoke City Wildcat.” After fifteen hard-fought rounds the decision went to Flowers, and while the pro-Greb crowd didn’t like it one bit, most at ringside agreed with the verdict.
8. Feb. 24, 1989: Roberto Duran W12 Iran Barkley. While all acknowledged that Duran was forever a pound-for-pound all-time great, few envisioned the former lightweight king, now 37-years-old, overcoming the challenge of a younger, bigger, stronger man in Barkley. After all, Barkley was coming off a devastating stoppage win over Thomas Hearns, the same fighter who had annihilated Roberto back in 1984. Besides, it was now almost 22 years since Duran’s pro career had begun, and almost six years since he had defeated a top ranked opponent. But what unfolded on that wintry night in Atlantic City only added to the legend of “Manos de Piedra” as he battled “The Blade” on mostly even terms before staging a dramatic, late round rally to score a knockdown and win his fourth world title by twelve round split decision. The thrilling battle was everyone’s choice for 1989’s Fight of the Year.
7. July 16, 1947: Rocky Graziano TKO 6 Tony Zale. Sadly, no official film was made of the blood and thunder brawl that took place in front of a huge crowd at Chicago Stadium, which set a new indoor-gate record, but the majority of lucky souls who witnessed the legendary trilogy between “The Man Of Steel” and “Rocky Bob” regarded their second slugfest, 1947’s Fight of the Year, as the most exciting and action-packed. Graziano overcame a terrible pounding in the early going, as well as a nasty cut and swellings around both eyes, to come roaring back and almost knock Zale out of the ring before the referee halted the brutal war. One of the greatest slugfests in boxing history.
6. April 6, 1987: Sugar Ray Leonard W12 Marvelous Marvin Hagler. It was the record-setting superfight that few at the time saw coming, with Leonard unexpectedly emerging from retirement to challenge the dominant and undisputed middleweight champion who had not lost a fight in eleven years. Many anticipated a crushing Hagler win, but instead the two veterans provided a highly competitive twelve round waltz and, in a huge upset, two of the three judges scored Sugar Ray the winner.
5. Sept. 23, 1957: Carmen Basilio W15 Sugar Ray Robinson. Some forty thousand fans were on hand at New York’s Yankee Stadium to see welterweight world champ Basilio challenge middleweight champ Sugar Ray, the fight also broadcast to 170 closed-circuit theatres. The historic match-up more than lived up to the anticipation with Sugar Ray and “The Onion Farmer” staging a magnificent, back-and-forth war that saw Basilio take a close decision after fifteen action-packed rounds.
4. Feb. 14, 1951: Sugar Ray Robinson TKO13 Jake LaMotta. The legendary “St. Valentine’s Massacre” was the sixth and final chapter in the great rivalry between Robinson and “The Bronx Bull,” the match attracting a big crowd to Chicago Stadium and a huge audience on home television. Fast-paced and competitive through the first eleven rounds, after that it turned into a one-sided battering. The two-fisted pounding LaMotta endured in rounds twelve and thirteen was nothing short of brutal before the referee finally stopped it and Robinson won the world middleweight title for the first time.
3. July 2, 1925: Harry Greb W15 Mickey Walker. It was fifteen furious rounds between two of the very best to ever lace ’em up, both in their primes. And while it was a battle between the middleweight and welterweight champions, Walker gave away only seven pounds, not a troubling difference considering that five months before “The Toy Bulldog” had defeated light heavyweight Mike McTigue. Some fifty thousand filled up the Polo Grounds in New York to witness what was, by all reports, a truly great fight, the match becoming more intense and fast-paced as the rounds went by. The deadly close struggle and a unanimous decision for “The Pittsburgh Windmill” was sealed in round fourteen when Greb battered Walker and almost put him down.
2. Sept. 12, 1951: Sugar Ray Robinson TKO 10 Randy Turpin. When Turpin of England had defeated Robinson for the world middleweight title in front of a hometown crowd the previous July, it was one of the biggest upsets in boxing history. Two months later, a massive throng sold-out the Polo Grounds in New York City to see if Sugar Ray could regain the championship. A dramatic battle unfolded which saw “The Prince of Harlem” start well, before Turpin began to gain the upper hand, in the process re-opening a deep gash over Robinson’s left eye. Knowing the cut was severe enough to force a stoppage, Sugar Ray attacked, knocking Turpin down and then pounding him mercilessly until the referee stopped the match with just seconds remaining in round ten.
1. April 15, 1985: Marvelous Marvin Hagler TKO3 Thomas Hearns. One of the greatest and biggest superfights in the legendary “Four Kings” series, Hagler vs Hearns became a truly huge event after Sugar Ray Leonard retired and then both men notched wins over Roberto Duran. Marvelous Marvin Hagler was the middleweight king; Thomas “Hit Man” Hearns held a version of the 154 pound title. Together they were, arguably, pound-for-pound, the two best active fighters in the world. A sell-out crowd at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, and millions on closed-circuit television, witnessed one of the most thrilling brawls in boxing history with both warriors stunned in a hellacious opening round, perhaps the greatest since Dempsey vs Firpo, before a bleeding Hagler rallied to batter The Motor City Cobra into helplessness in round three.
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