The newest book by the late Thomas Gerbasi, “Boxing: The 100 Greatest Fighters,” is a coffee table book that isn’t a coffee table book.

Coffee table books are replete with photographs and/or illustrations, the visuals likely accorded more space than the text. The Gerbasi book has photographs on more than half its 223 pages; most of them taking up the entire page. And these are very good photographs. Colleen Aycock, in her glowing review of the book for the quarterly journal of the International Boxing Research Organization (IBRO) begins by giving a shout-out to the designers and art directors who sprinkled their magic dust on the originals to enhance their crispness so that even the photos that we have seen before resonate with greater intensity.

Coffee table books, however, are, by definition, oversized, and the Gerbasi book isn’t that. The dimensions, 8 ½” x 10 ¼”, are somewhat larger than an average hardback but one wouldn’t describe the book as oversized.

Bert Randolph Sugar set the template for the Gerbasi book with the similarly titled “The 100 Greatest Boxers of All Time,” the first edition of which was released in December of 1984. The list would be tweaked in subsequent editions, the last of which, to our knowledge, was published in 2006 under the less grandiose title “Boxing’s Greatest Fighters.” During the lifetime of the franchise, some boxers were added, others necessarily lopped off. Some boxers moved up, others moved down, but Sugar, by and large, stayed faithful to his original list. The alterations were made with a light touch.

There are some glaring dissimilarities between the two tomes. Sugar rank-ordered his top 100. The bookends in the original volume were Sugar Ray Robinson (#1) and Gene Fullmer (#100). Gerbasi, by contrast, listed his fighters alphabetically, having resisted the impulse to arrange them across an ordinal scale. The first entry is Laila Ali and the final entry Carlos Zarate.

Therein lies the other major difference between the two books. Gerbasi includes female fighters in his top 100. There are eight ladies in all: Laila Ali, Cecilia Braekhus, Regina Halmach, Christy Martin, Lucia Rijker, Amanda Serrano, Claressa Shields, and Katie Taylor.

The major criticism leveled at Bert Sugar’s book is that it was weighted too heavily toward the old-timers. In the first edition, the only post-1960 boxer to crack the Top 10 was Muhammad Ali who clocked in at #10, a notch below Tony Canzoneri and a notch ahead of Joe Gans. Among active boxers who were still very prominent when the manuscript went to the bindery, no one placed higher than Roberto Duran (#17).

In drawing up his list, Thomas Gerbasi gutted Bert Sugar’s book, expunging 47 boxers from the 1984 edition to make room for his selections.

Out the door went Johnny Dundee (18), Barbados Joe Walcott (20), George Dixon (25), Abe Attell (27), Jack Britton (28), Packey McFarland (32), Ted Kid Lewis (33), Marcel Cerdan (34), Kid Chocolate (35), Pascual Perez (36), Jim Driscoll (38), Kid McCoy (40), James J. Corbett (41), Maxie Rosenbloom (44), Pancho Villa (45), Jose Napoles (46), Freddie Welsh (48), Kid Gavilan (52), Pete Herman (53), Tiger Flowers (54), Billy Petrolle (55), Nonpareil Jack Dempsey (57), Beau Jack (59), Panama Al Brown (61), Peter Jackson (66), Jimmy Barry (68), Georges Carpentier (69), Tony Zale (70), Young Griffo (71), Max Baer (73), Battling Nelson (75), Joe Jeannette (76), Mysterious Billy Smith (77), Jersey Joe Walcott (79), Rocky Graziano (80), Harry Wills (82), Ad Wolgast (83), Willie Ritchie (88), James J. Jeffries (89), Johnny Kilbane (90), Mike Gibbons (92), Benny Lynch (93), Kid Lavigne (94), Lew Jenkins (96), Carlos Ortiz (97), Jack Delaney (98), and Gene Fullmer (100).

Curiously, Gerbasi’s top 100 includes two old-timers who failed to make the cut when Bert Sugar was compiling his list, namely Depression-era lightweight champion Lou Ambers and three-time world title challenger Young Stribling who, suggests author Gerbasi, likely hadn’t yet reached his peak when he passed away in 1933 in a motorcycle crash at age twenty-eight. But what stands out is that Gerbasi, to a far greater extent than Bert Sugar, is partial to modern-day fighters. Terence Crawford, Naoya Inoue, and Oleksandr Usyk – in a virtual three-way tie for first place in the current pound-for-pound scrum – are all in here.

—-

Bert Sugar and Thomas Gerbasi have left us. Sugar passed away in 2012 at age 75. Gerbasi was 57 years old when he suffered a fatal heart attack at his Staten Island home earlier this month. This reporter never met Gerbasi, but based on the outpouring of heart-felt tributes, that was my great loss.

Sugar was a prolific writer. Among the many books that he authored or co-authored, “100 Greatest Fighters of All Time” got the most buzz. This owed partly to Bert Sugar the man. One of boxing’s great characters, Sugar was described as Runyonesque so often that the word became hackneyed.

Always good for a good quote, Bert was easy to find. When he was bounced out of his job as editor/publisher of The Ring magazine after a four-year run, he set up shop at O’Brien’s Pub, a block from Madison Square Garden. He called it his office in exile, and it was here that he cobbled together “100 Greatest Fighters,” or so he said. When readers took umbrage with his rankings, he said that was the whole purpose. “It’s my objectivity against your subjectivity and vice versa,” he said.

If one had to choose between the two books, Sugar’s book would win hands down because he was such a fine writer, his acerbic wit manifested in a steady stream of wonderful metaphors. A first edition of Sugar’s “100 Greatest” in mint condition with a good cover jacket would set you back a pretty penny, but subsequent editions can be had from used book dealers for chump change.

Writing for the Boston Globe in 1984, Steve Marantz chastised Bert Sugar for ranking Marvelous Marvin Hagler so low (a preposterous #74), but Marantz also told his readers that Sugar’s book would make a fine Christmas gift offering.

We would say the same about Thomas Gerbasi’s new book. It’s a handsome book that would make an ideal gift for the boxing fan on your Christmas shopping list.

Photo: Joe Louis and Sugar Ray Robinson doff their hats to Ezzard Charles

To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE

 

Share The Sweet Science experience!