Mexico is a country with a rich fighting tradition and has produced many great stars of the sport.
One of the most celebrated is Julio César Chávez, a multiple world champion in three weight divisions once listed by The Ring magazine as the world’s best boxer and pound-for-pound boss from 1990 to 1993. He had an almost unbelievable 115 fights and won 107 of them.
Another Mexican legend is current fighter and future Hall of Famer, Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez. The four-weight world champion and current unified super-middleweight king who has beaten all but two of his 50 opponents and is next out against Edgar Berlanga in September.
When asked by Boxing Junkie who was the best Mexican to ever do it, former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson didn’t pick an obvious name from the likes of Olivares, Zarate, Morales, Barrera or Marquez but instead chose lesser-known fighter Salvador “Sal” Sanchez.
“Salvador Sanchez. I think Sanchez was just hard to beat. This is what made him really special, if you’re a halfway fighter, a decent fighter, you might last the distance, but the greater you are, the more he kicks your a**, he fights right above the level of the game that you’re fighting at. You go at him, he’s going to f**ck you up.
He’s just above everybody else. Just a monster.”
Sanchez was a big puncher and the WBC and The Ring featherweight champion from 1980 to 1982. He had an impressive 46 fights and won 44 of them and many believe that had he not died prematurely in a car crash aged 23 he would have gone on to become the best-ever featherweight.
In 2003, The Ring rated Sánchez as 88th on their list of 100 greatest punchers of all time while the Associated Press also considered him as the third-best featherweight of the 20th century.
