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The Best 140lb Fighters of All Time
This weekend will see George Kambosos and Richardson Hitchins will face off at the Madison Square Garden Theater for the IBF 140lb title.
Defending champion Hitchins, 19-0 (7), will be making the second defence of the title he won against Liam Paro in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in December last year. Kambosos, meanwhile, last fought in March when he took a unanimous decision over Jake Wylie in Sydney, Australia.
But this weekend is a fight in which Kambosos, 22-3 (10), is seeking to win the IBF title he failed to take last May from Vasyl Lomachenko when he lost by technical knockout in eleven rounds.
That both Kambosos and Hitchins are fighting at 140lbs puts them in the lineage of many fine champions of a weight division that goes by the tags of ‘super-lightweight’ or ‘light-welterweight’.
The light-welterweight division was first established in 1926 with the boxer Pinky Mitchell as its first champion. It was not an auspicious start – Mitchell lost the title in his first defence, then won only three of his subsequent thirty-five bouts.
From 1930, the popularity and legitimacy of the light-welterweight division waned until it became obsolete, finally being revived in 1968.
Since then, the division has seen many great champions.
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Julio César Chávez, 107-6-2 (85)
The Mexican Julio César Chávez may not only be the greatest Mexican boxer of all time. He may also be the light-welterweight’s greatest champion.
Chávez, whose son fights Jake Paul in a few weeks on DAZN, had 115 bouts in a career that lasted from 1980 to 2005. He won 107 of them.
Perhaps Chávez’s greatest bout was against the US fighter Meldrick Taylor. Taylor, 24-0-1 (14), was the heir apparent to Sugar Ray Leonard and when the pair met in 1990, it was in a unification for the IBF and WBC titles.
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By that time, Chávez had already won titles at super-featherweight and lightweight and held a record of 68-0 (56).
It was Taylor who was winning at the end but, trading with Chávez, the Philadelphia fighter began to wear down. Seconds before the end of the fight, a Chávez right hand put Taylor down in his corner.
Blinking, Taylor stumbled to his feet and, with fewer than ten seconds left, referee Richard Steele waved off the fight. Had Taylor been allowed out to complete the fight, he would have won on a split decision. It was Ring’s ‘Fight of the Year’ and ‘Fight of the Decade’.
Chávez’s unbeaten run continued. Twenty-eight fights later, in 1993, with a record of 87-0, he got the first blemish on his record – a draw against Pernell Whittaker. By that time, Chávez had defended his light-welterweight titles twelve times.
Kostya Tszyu, 31-2 (25)
The Australian-based fighter had, during the early 2000s, the most-feared right hand in boxing.
After failing to make much of an impression during the 1988 Summer Olympics, Tszyu turned professional in 1992 after winning a bronze in the 1989 World Championships, followed by gold in the same competition two years later. He also won gold medals at the 1989 and 1991 European championships.
It took fewer than three years for Tszyu to earn his first world championship by stopping Jake Rodriguez in six rounds in 1995 for the IBF belt. He then went on a tear through the division, beating Roger Mayweather, Hugo Pineda, Corey Johnson, Jan Piet Bergman, and Leonardo Mas.
After being stopped by Vince Phillips, Tszyu rebounded with winning the vacant WBC title by stopping Diosbelys Hurtado in five rounds. Nine defences followed, including a stoppage of a faded Chávez in 2000. But it was in his tenth defence, against Ricky Hatton, that Tszyu came unstuck, being stopped in eleven.
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Ricky Hatton, 45-3 (32)
Manchester’s ‘Hitman’ reinvigorated British boxing in a way not seen since the glory days of the original generation Benn and Eubank.
Often fighting with the cauldron of the MEN Arena, Hatton’s early career ended up being the subject of criticism as he kept on fighting sub-par opponent after sub-par opponent. By the time a fight was made between him and Kostya Tszyu, many felt that Hatton would come unstuck.
He did not.
On one glorious night in Manchester just over twenty-five years ago, Hatton wore Tszyu down over eleven rounds and sent him into retirement.
Afterwards, Hatton began to struggle. He knocked out the Colombian Carlos Maussa in a fight no one wanted to see, then headed to the US.
It was there that it became apparent that Hatton struggled once he went above 140lbs. He looked lucky to win against Luis Collazo in Boston and followed that fight with an uninspired outing back at 140lbs against Juan Urango. A knockout of faded Jose Luis Castillo cemented Hatton’s reign in the division, but the jump to welterweight once again saw him lose to Floyd Mayweather Jr in ten.
Hatton returned once more to light-welterweight where he outscored Juan Lazcano, then stopped Paulie Malignaggi in what were his last good nights. Manny Pacquiao then knocked him out in two rounds, after which followed retirement before a comeback fight against Vyacheslav Senchenko finally ended his career.
