1) FLOYD MAYWEATHER JR
Record: 50-0 (27)
Years active: 1996-2017
Right from the start, Mayweather was a perfectionist. “I would go to school and just think about making no mistakes in the gym that night,” he remembered and in 50 pro fights, spanning five weights from super-featherweight to super-welterweight, Mayweather didn’t make too many mistakes. Win No 50 was a farce, it came against cage fighter Conor McGregor, but still, what a fighter.
2) ROCKY MARCIANO
Record: 49-0 (43)
Years active: 1947-1955
Marciano only took up boxing at 23 after failing to make the grade as a baseball player and though short for a heavyweight at 5ft 10ins, Marciano fought his way to the top with his granite chin, huge fighting heart and Suzy Q right hand. He retired undefeated because according to his brother, Peter “it got to the point where he couldn’t get motivated to train like he used to train. Nobody used to train like my brother. He used to work, work, work and because there was nobody out there to motivate him to go to the gym, he said: ‘I’m packing it in.’ Floyd Patterson was coming through at the time, but he wouldn’t have lasted 30 seconds with Rocky.”
3) WANHENG MENAYOTHIN
Record: 49-0 (17)
Years active: 2007 –
With a points win over Tatsuya Fukuhara last weekend, Menayothin, also known as Chayaphon Moonsri, equalled Marciano’s 49-0 record and the WBC minimumweight champion from Thailand could well go on to rub Floyd Mayweather jr out of the record books.
4) RICARDO LOPEZ
Record: 51-0-1 (38)
Years active: 1985-2001
Lopez was a rangy box-puncher from Mexico with knock-out power in either fist who won 26 world-title fights at minimumweight and light-flyweight. ‘El Finito’ reportedly never loss an amateur fight either !
5) JOE CALZAGHE
Record: 46-0 (32)
Years active: 1993-2008
In the summer of 1990, teenage Calzaghe sobbed uncontrollably after losing in the quarter finals of the European Junior championships in Prague. He vowed he would never lose again – and he didn’t, reigning as the world’s best super-middleweight for more than a decade. His zero meant an awful lot to the Welsh southpaw.
6) JULIO CESAR CHAVEZ
Record: 177-6-2 (86)
Years active: 1980-2005
“After I told my mother that I wanted to box, I promised her that when I get my first loss I will retire from it,” said Chavez. He was unbeaten in his first 90 professional fights and by the time silky left-hander Frankie ‘The Surgeon’ Randall handed his first loss, it was obvious to Chavez’s mother that her boy could look after himself.
7) LARRY HOLMES
Record: 69-6 (44)
Years active: 1973-2002
Holmes, the ‘Easton Assassin’ with the classy jab and chip on his shoulder, would equal Marciano’s 49-0 record with victory over Michael Spinks in 1985. Comparisons with Marciano, and Muhammad Ali, made Holmes cranky and paranoid and in the build up to the Spinks fight, he snapped and said Marciano “couldn’t carry my jockstrap.” After that, every neutral rooted for Spinks – and they got the result they wanted. Spinks won on points – and he won the rematch as well.
8) CESAR RENE CUENCA
Record: 48-2-0-2
Years active: 2002-2016
Argentine southpaw Cesar Rene Cuenca reached 50 fights unbeaten – but with two no contests – and then lost his IBF light-welterweight title to Eduard Troyanovsky in November, 2015. Cuenca was unhappy with the six-round stoppage – and then lost the rematch as well.
9) BRIAN NEILSEN
Record: 64-3 (43)
Years active: 1992-2011
Nielsen was a Danish heavyweight who won his first 49 fights – including a split points win over a 47 year-old Larry Holmes – and then ran into American club fighter Dicky Ryan and was stopped in 10 rounds. His last fight was a defeat to Evander Holyfield.
10) SAMSON DUTCH BOY GYM
Record: 43 (36)
Years active: 1992-2002
The Thai southpaw won the lightly-regarded WBF super-flyweight championship in only his fourth professional fight – and kept it until he retired, making 38 defences of the belt.
READ MORE:
Hatton: Khan running out of time!
Hearn: Whyte waiting for Browne, will fight for world heavyweight title in 2018