3 Best Canadian Boxers of All Time

Canada has graced some of the best boxers in history, and the wealth of talent from the country was never short. In fact, they produced over a hundred world champions who left their respective mark in the sport. Some of them defied the boxing betting odds stacked against them and won multiple world titles in different weight classes.

But three Canadian boxers are considered the best and have represented the country well when fighting inside the ring. These boxers have laid down the blueprint of success for the new generation of athletes in the sport and have put Canada on the global map as a place for world champions.

Sam Langford

Leading the list of the best Canadian boxers of all time is Sam Langford. He was known as the “greatest boxer that nobody knows” and the “uncrowned heavyweight champion of the world” because of the circumstances he faced during his era. Despite not winning a major title, Langford was able to win minor titles like the National Sporting Club British Middleweight title, Commonwealth Boxing Council Middleweight title, Australian Heavyweight title, and Mexico Heavyweight title.

“The Boston Bonecrusher” competed in 314 professional bouts, where he won 178, lost 30, and had 38 draws. The Canadian first fought in the lightweight division and eventually moved to the higher weight class until he competed in the heavyweights.

Langford is also part of the top five list of heavyweight fighters with the most knockouts in history, with 126 TKO/KOs in his 23-year career, which is good enough to put him in the fourth spot in this category.

George Chuvalo

Next on the list is another heavyweight boxer, George Chuvalo, who became a multiple-time Canadian heavyweight boxing champion. In 22 years of his professional career, the boxer out of Toronto, Canada, participated in 93 fights, where he racked up a record of 73 wins (including 64 TKO/KOs), 18 losses, and two draws with a high TKO/KO rate of 87%. He was challenged for the world heavyweight title fight twice during his career but came short of winning them.

Chuvalo became famous in the boxing community as one of the few boxers in history to never suffer a knockdown throughout his entire career. What makes this an even more impressive feat is that he fought three of the best heavyweight boxers: Joe Frazier, George Foreman, and Muhammad Ali, with the latter considered one of the biggest Canadian boxing matches ever.

He was enshrined in the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame in 1990 and in the Canadian Boxing Hall of Fame in 1998.

George Dixon

George Dixon completes the list of the three best Canadian boxers of all time. Although his record of 66 wins, 30 losses, and 57 draws is not mind-boggling on paper, his incredible achievements from the sport outweigh his slate on paper. Unlike Langford, who was deprived of fighting for a world title, “Little Chocolate” was the first black man to win a world boxing championship in 1890.

Famed boxer George Dixon was born July 29, 1870 in the Africville neighbourhood of Halifax. Over the course of his career he claimed paperweight, bantamweight, & featherweight titles, & is recognized as the first Black person and the first Canadian to win a World boxing title. pic.twitter.com/F47OP8C3wq

— Nova Scotia Archives (@NS_Archives) July 29, 2020

Dixon was also the first boxer in history to win multiple world titles in various divisions, as he secured the paperweight, bantamweight, and featherweight titles during his era.

He won 19 world title fights throughout his career, including 12 knockout victories. Because of his historic achievements in the sport, he was inducted into the Ring Boxing Hall of Fame in 1956 and into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1990.