I’ve been going through lots Of my old boxing magazines lately 40+ Years worth. Looking at the January ‘88 issue of KO currently and their top 12 pound for pound fighters their “Dirty Dozen” as they used to call it. 1. Mike Tyson 2. Michael Spinks 3. Thomas Hearns 4. Azumah Nelson 5. Evander Holyfield 6. Marvin Hagler 7. Lloyd Honeyghan 8. Mike McCallum 9. Edwin Rosario 10. Hector Camacho 11. Miguel Lora 12. Jung koo Kim Tyson #1. Spinks #2. You never hardly see Heavyweights even in the P4P anymore much less 1 and 2!!! Of course I lived thru this Era and purchased all these magazines myself but I’ll be honest it still startled me. This exercise of reading thru my old magazines is becoming a bit additive of late. My wife and two kids I can hear saying where’s dad at lol.. So over the last few years I’d been going thru lots of my old boxing mags. I was given the green light by my wife to do whatever I wish with the 3rd level of our 4 level home. So I have all my old (but in prestine condition still) VHS BOXING tapes literally 1000’s of VHS tapes, I know....... Mags/posters you name it down there. It’s like a boxing museum. I framed the walls with Boxing Magazine covers, KO pinups, super fight posters, actual fight posters I used to acquire from beer vendors and my local cable company, both were kind enough to provide me with after said event was over. So going down there is a bit like a time warp, I’ve got a 70 inch tv down there for current fight viewings and it’s pretty glorious. Expect more nuggets to come. Initially I was just framing and hanging old favorites but now that I’ve taken to rereading many of these cover to cover I’m sure this will not be the last post of something interesting I come across.
Only 3 names in there would make the pound for pound list now! Tyson, Holyfield and McCallum! I think Camacho was already on the slide by this stage because it`s post Rosario. Spinks was nowhere near these guys at this stage, unless he could of moved down to cruiser and fought Holy I feel a lighter Spinks could of beaten Holy at this time but I`m still not convinced by him at heavy because he never had a decent win. McCallum would of beaten Hagler at this stage if Marvin was active and Mike decided to move up.
I know!! I always loved that!! I have damn near every issue. It was always my favorite. I’m so happy I took great care when storing all this boxing memorabilia and my tapes because the room looks great!! I can remember a time when I’d buy 6-8 different boxing mags sometimes a month. There were so many back then.
Each magazine had its own "look"....K.O. , Ring, World Boxing, International Boxing, Boxing Illustrated, plus those English mags that were hard to find at the newsstands in the smaller U.S. cities.
That's interesting. Ring didn't start tracking pound for pound until 1990. The '89 year end rankings were Mike Tyson Julio Cesar Chavez Pernell Whitaker Michael Nunn Antonio Esparragoza Meldrick Taylor Azumah Nelson Raul Perez Virgil Hill Marlon Starling It would be interesting to see a side by side history of the sport, since we mostly see the whole thing through the lens of Ring Magazine now. I know there has been some controversy on this board about Ring's American bias, so that foreign born fighters aren't listed in the rankings as early as Americans or an American fight will receive fight of the year honors over an obscure fight that took place in Chile. I wonder how Ring's pound for pound rankings would compare with KO Magazine's rankings. Britain's Boxing Monthly was founded in 1989 and their Boxing News was founded in 1909. It would be interesting to see if they had ratings similar to Ring's for comparison purposes. Did anybody collect Ring En Espanol or Guantes magazines about the Latin-American boxing scene?
Absolutely they did. Do you remember Boxing Scene, it was always full of spelling errors and other inaccuracies but that what part of its charm. Inside Boxing was another that was prone to oddities with spelling and weird takes. I’ll never forget I had an issue of boxing scene right after Tyson vs Stewart. The article covering that fight that I read unbelievably said one of the best Punches of the night came from Stewart and scored a flash knockdown of Tyson that was called a slip.. I was like WHAT!!!!!! I had already watched the fight probably 25 times at that point and couldn’t believe what I was reading.. Tyson did go to the canvas at one point after clearly missing a punch but NOTHING was landed by Alex there it still blows my mind that that would be written and published and released with that intact to be put on the shelf to sale!!! Again just part of the charm of good ole Boxing Scene magazine lol..
2018 Classic forum party at your house Lol That's cool you have a boxing man cave. All my stuff except a couple of boxes of mags and some dads are in storage. I have a bunch of Beta tapes in storage. Thank goodness for YouTube. BTW it's chang not kim
Yeah I frequent YouTube but lately I’ve been making it a point to go thru many of my old tapes. YouTube has some good stuff for sure but so much still isn’t there. I’ll think of a fight and then I’ll start looking thru my totes full of tapes until I find it and then I’ll usually end up finding four or five more fights that I want to watch.. I currently have an entire tote full set aside of stuff I want to rewatch. Now it may take me a year to find time to watch all of the stuff I’ve set aside with, wife, kids, work and everything else I have to pick my spots when I can watch, but it’s a blast when I do. It’s amazing, my original SP recordings still look great, obviously they don’t look like what today’s HD broadcasts can give us but they still look great!
2018 The publishers of Ko bought the ring at the end of 1989 so that is why they started pfp rankings then.
