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Variously described as the "doyen" of pugilistic history, and "guru" of boxing, Bert Randolph Sugar has been a ringside fixture for some 60-plus years. As the former editor of The Ring magazine and Boxing Illustrated, his contribution to boxing writing and journalism is so highly regarded that in 2005 he was admitted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
With Boxing's Greatest Fighters he has taken on one of the oldest, most divisive pastimes of armchair pundits and bar-room connoisseurs. Who is the greatest of all time? Of course, the flyweight Pascual Perez could never have defeated Larry Holmes, but by reducing, or elevating, all his-tory's fighters to equal height and weight, and imagining uniform ring conditions, Sugar has levelled the field and opened himself up to an inevitable mix of frustrated spleen-venting, head-shaking disbelief and knowing consent.
In fact, this is his second attempt at such a diversion, or the third if one counts a revised edition from 1988, the first being published in 1984. It is clearly fertile territory and the continued emergence of some remarkable fighters arguably justifies any updated addition.
So it is intriguing, then, that so few fighters peaking after the mid-Eighties make the cut. Only Pernell Whitaker, Roy Jones Jnr, Bernard Hopkins, Ricardo Lopez and Mike Tyson scrape through, and Tyson has, inexplicably, dropped from 27 in 1988 to 100 here. If, as Sugar contends in his introduction, the aim is to "judge each fighter at their peak", and one is to ignore a fighter's almost inevitable decline, then a post-1990 Tyson is irrelevant. Why the dramatic demotion? Likewise, but in reverse, Ruben Olivares, who last fought in 1988: a no-show in 1984, but an impressive 36 in here.
However, these are eccentricities, and confirm the beauty of such an exercise. Lists such as this are of little consequence other than to provoke debate and opinion.
His inclination towards early fighters (no Oscar de la Hoya or Marco Antonio Barrera) and the absence of any fitting photography will frustrate some, but Sugar's turn of phrase, (Sandy Saddler "possess[ed] the same construction as a baseball bat with a thyroid deficiency") and his cavernous knowledge of the sport make this an entertaining and engaging read.
Rightly, Sugar Ray Robinson reigns. But Bert, Carlos Monzon, only 55?
(C) 2007 The Independent - London. via ProQuest Information and Learning Company; All Rights Reserved
