Boxing's All-Time Records

If Hank Aaron's all-time home run record can fall, are boxing's most cherished all-time records vulnerable too? It's an interesting question. Then you realize: hey, does boxing have any most cherished all-time records? Are there any historical numbers that make sense, compared to today's? Are the old stats really reliable? Does the proliferation of world titles, and therefore of title defenses, render any historic comparison of that feat kind of useless?

Let's see what we have. Boxing all-time records aren't easy to find. I hate to go to just some random page, but this one looks informative. It says the most all-time knockouts in boxing is 145, by Archie Moore. Moore sounds right. But Boxrec.com has Moore with 131 KOs. So who knows. Is most knockouts boxing's most prestigious all-time record?

Most consecutive knockouts: 45 by Lamar Clark from 1958 through 1960. I'm counting 44 straight on Boxrec, but it's impressive either way. I've also heard occasionally about Edwin Valero's record of 18 straight first round knockouts to begin a career, a milestone that Philly junior middleweight Tyrone Brunson just tied this summer and seems likely to break, the way he's tearing through fighters with losing records in New Zealand lately (does that even count?).

There was much talk a couple of years ago about Bernard Hopkins' breaking of Carlos Monzon's all-time record of 19 middleweight title defenses. But the first 12 of Hopkins defenses defended only the IBF title, at a time when other middleweight champs were simultaneously working on their own defense streaks. Does that mean anything?

I like this one: Most "title fight rounds"

1. Emile Griffith - 339

2. Abe Attel - 337

3. Hilario Zapata - 303

4. Julio Cesar Chavez 301

5. Sugar Ray Robinson - 288.

But possibly the most unassailable record in professional boxing appears to be held by Reggie Strickland, who chalked up 276 losses.

Of course, maybe the attraction of boxing is the immediacy of The Event, and the inherent chaos surrounding it. Each fight is its own thing. It happens, and then we're on to the next one. There are no season schedules or games behind or magic numbers. It's just: who's next? We don't have reams of stats sheets to analyze before and during a fight, in part because they don't matter (and when we do get them, they're usually partly incorrect). The murky history, the absence of squeaky clean recordkeeping and rotisserie-ready data, is all part of the charm.

In the news: Bernard Fernandez in the Philadelphia Daily News takes a nice look at the career of Bronco McKart, who fights in Philly this Friday night. William Dettloff in his Ring Update looks at the legacy of Erik Morales. Norm Frauenheim in the Arizona Republic and Michael Hirsley in the Chicago Tribune give their own postfight takes on Morales-Diaz. Dan Rafael wraps up recent action at ESPN.com.