Look at some of the smallest, yet best boxers of all times from Willie ‘will o’ the wisp ‘pep to ricardo’ Finito ‘Lopez!
Pep, from Rocky Hill, Connecticut, achieved more victories than the most to say the smallest boxers. He held the featherweight title twice. From November 1942 to October 1948. Again, from February 1949 to September 1950.
Pep’s final record was an excellent 229-11-1 with 65 stops. He once told the middleweight champion Rocky Graziano: “You couldn’t hit me with a fist full of stones!”
Pep won his first 62 fights before losing a ten-round decision to former lightweight champion Sammy Angott on March 19, 1943. He defeated a unanimous 15 round decision at the age of 20 to win the Nysac World Featherweight Championship on November 20, 1942. on June 7, 1946.
Pep had a record of 134-1-1 when he lost 86-6- to Sandy Saddler on October 29, 1948.
Pep retired in 1959, first in 1965, and fought ten more times before retiring at the age of 1943. On April 26, 1965, he defeated Jackie Lennon, and this writer was present, though not yet a writer. He won 9 of 19 and lost his final battle against Calvin Woodland.
WBC, WBA, WBO minimum weight and light flyweight champion Ricardo ‘Finito’ Lopez was 51-0-1 with 38 Stop, from Mexico City, Distrited Federal, Mexico.
Lopez was 47-0 when he was held by D-TD in 7 rounds by Rosendo Alvarez, 24-0. He was hit in the 2nd round. Alvarez lost one point in the 7th round as a result of the WBC impaired head rule. It was on August 7, 1998. On November 13, in the Rematch, Lopez won a split decision to add the vacant WBA title to his WBC title.
In the next fight, Lopez won the IBF World Light Flyweight title and defeated Will Grigsby, 14-1-1, on October 2, 1999 by a split decision. After that, his last two fights won by a standstill over Anucha Phothong, 38-5-1, and Zolani Petelo, 17-2-2.
World Flyweight Champion Jimmy ‘The Mighty Atom’ Wilde, 121-1-1, won the title by stopping Dick Heasman, 4-0, in London in the second round. He was from Tylorstown, Wales, the United Kingdom.
Wilde lost his last two fights that end with a record of 132-4-1 with 98 stops.
Pascual Perez was the Olympic gold medal in 1948 in London. At 4:11 nicknamed ‘El Leon Mendocino’ of Ciudad Mendoza, Argentina.
On November 26, 1954, Perez, 23-0-1, won the World Flyweight title and defeated Yoshio Shiral, 46-6-4, in Tokyo, Japan. In the Rematch, he scored a knockout in 5 rounds.
Perez was 51-0-1, when he lost to Sadao Yaoita, 27-6, in Tokyo, Japan in January 1959. He won the Rematch in November, with a tenth round. He ends with a record of 84-7-1 with 57 downtime.
