Greatest achievement edwin rosario8/17/2023 ![]() Stopped only twice at the poundage, by injury, he had courage and pressure to match that chin and he had a left-hook as fine as any in that stacked division outside of perhaps Canzoneri himself. This was all the more frustrating because two months before Canzoneri lifted the lightweight title, Petrolle had beaten him. His bob and weave, normally so difficult to time, repeatedly saw him bob up onto the Canzoneri left he dropped a fifteen round decision. Petrolle, maybe – maybe – could have matched or run him close at his own spectacular best but he had a disastrous battle with the poundage in the week before the fight. Canzoneri’s left was never better and for many, this was the absolute peak of his incredible career. ![]() The champion is Tony Canzoneri, a hideous vapor of feints and counter-intuition. Luck, too, was against him, in his career.ġ932: after more than 100 contests, Petrolle finally gets his shot at the lightweight title. He took scalps like Jimmy McLarnin, Battling Battalino and Jimmy Goodrich above the limit that interests us here, spreading his excellence over three weight divisions and perhaps not getting his due upon any of these lists for that fact. #40 – Billy Petrolle (89-21-10 Newspaper Decisions 34-4-6)īilly Petrolle did wonders at the limit of 140lbs and against small welterweights. Keep that in mind as we run down the fortieth to thirty-first greatest lightweights in history. They defeated more ranked contenders, achieved greater longevity in the division and also happened to be among the very, very best fighters at the poundage in their own eras. This is why we run across rankings that are counter-intuitive.ģ6 and 35 just did more at lightweight than 37 and 38. But the rules of this process say that actual achievement within the given division is far and away the most important factor and that fame and overall greatness achieved out-with the division count for less. At 38 and 37, I name two of the greatest fighters in history, while at 36 and 35 I name two fighters who were never named true champion and who own but a modicum of the fame commanded by the two men they rank directly above. There is a fine example in this, the second installment in this series, at numbers 38 through 35. ![]() Often, these rules throw up numbering that is counter-intuitive. The process of ordering the Fifty Greatest Lightweights of all time, too, is a process described by rules. Whether it’s the laws of physics describing the impact of a left hook upon a granite jaw or the Sweet Science’s editor applying the rules of grammar to the work we writers “bless” him with, they describe what we see, do and feel. ![]()
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