Monday, April 29, 1996

100 Greatest Boxers of All Time

by Burt Randolph Sugar

A self-descriptive title; this book gives short, often not all that informative bios of 100 fighters throughout the ages. It was written in 1984, when Mike Tyson was just a wee lad scoring his first KOs, so it's a little out-dated. Sugar writes well, with humor and his own loose style, though he gets repetitive at times.

Only a casual fan, I don't know enough about boxing to disagree vehemently with his selections, but I do think he should have given the early black fighters an edge, since no one gave them a chance to prove how great they really were. Also, there are a few questionable calls: for example, Mysterious Billy Smith, that out-of-shape dirty fighter with a 28-19 record, ranked one ahead of Wilfredo Gomez, 40-1 with 40 KOs? Hard to know what the thinking is there.

three stars

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