1. Jimmy Wilde (132-6-2, 101 KO, 13 ND)

Born: May 15, 1892

Died: Mar. 10, 1969

 

If one lined up all the members of the 100 knockout club, "The Mighty Atom" would easily be the least imposing in terms of looks and build, though Sandy Saddler would give him a run for his money.  But within that 5-2 1/2, 100-pound frame was punching power that bordered on the extraterrestrial.  He was often 10 percent lighter than his opponents and yet he still scored more knockouts than anyone had a right to expect.  Wilde did that routinely because he had to – there were not enough boxers his own size to fight.

 

Granted, Wilde’s four-defence flyweight championship reign pales in comparison to Miguel Canto’s 14, Sot Chitalada’s 10 over two reigns and Yuri Arbachakov’s nine, but what separates Wilde from everyone else is the overall record he compiled despite giving away so much poundage to virtually every man he fought.  After a loss and a draw to Dai Jones in 1911, Wilde went unbeaten in his next 85 fights (including six no-decisions) before losing to Tancy Lee by 17th round KO in 1915.  How did Wilde respond to the loss? By knocking out 28 of his next 29 opponents and winning the world flyweight title.  He avenged himself on the still red hot Tancy Lee before anointing the world flyweight title against American contender, Young Zulu Kid, in a fight where Wilde for once found himself the taller man.  A red hot war for the first few rounds, it was Wilde who emerged, as he almost always did from any firefight, triumphant in eleven.

 

Jimmy Wilde dispatched featherweight Joe Conn.  Conn was on a hot streak but couldn’t live with Wilde in spite of a weight advantage of around 20 lbs.—around 20% of Wilde’s total bodyweight.  Jimmy chopped him off in twelve.  Next was Joe Lynch who would go on to become one of the definitive bantamweights of a golden generation for that weight division. Wilde nipped him over three rounds in December of  ’18 and over fifteen in March of ’19.  More bantamweights followed including world-title claimant Pal Moore, whom he shaded over twenty with an aggressive punching display that nearly saw him knocked out late in the fight. Moore was a handful for any of the era’s superb bantamweights—that Wilde proved his master whilst outweighed by 8-11 lbs is extraordinary.  A three-round defeat to Moore and a poor performance which saw him drop a decision to Jackie Sharkey are the only losses he suffered in this extraordinary period.

 

That is greatness personified and that’s why he’s here.