Thinking about the greatness of Henry Armstrong

I was thinking about Lomachenko and how good he was. Then I thought about how he says he can make featherweight but fights at lightweight even though it’s heavy for him. He has some good wins, but so far, how many of his wins are future HOFers? Maybe Rigo. That’s all and he was way smaller and old.

Then I thought that Armstrong was basically the same size. When he held the featherweight, lightweight, and welterweight titles at the same time, all 3 people he beat for those titles are HOFers. You could argue that Barney Ross wasn’t really a welterweight, but Armstrong defended the title 8 times. So it wasn’t a luck thing.

Not only that, but he also fought for the middleweight title and got a draw. Supposedly most people thought that Armstrong won. That is insane.

Now let’s put that into perspective of Lomachenko and think about back then when there weren’t so many weight classes. It would be like him beating the top featherweight right now (it’s debatable who it is but I will say Santa Cruz), the top lightweight (lets just say Mikey Garcia for fun), and the top welterweight (Crawford Or Spence). How insane would that be? Then he eventually goes and fights at middleweight and almost wins. His opponent was good at middleweight too. He wasn’t a nobody. So let’s just compare him to Charlo. Can you imagine Lomachenko, as great as he is, being able to do that?

It just reminded me how great Armstrong was and why it’s so hard to become the GOAT because you have a few amazing talents with amazing feats to jump over.

Amazing what Armstrong did. He had a peak and maximised it. He went for it all. He had a slow heart beat which meant he started slow but once he got into gear he just carried on and did not get tired. He had a number of losses before and after his best but that was normal in those days.

If he was around now he would have done a Manny Pac and gone through the weights causing havoc and destruction.