If we're only talking about "current predictive success" then I’d likely hold a different opinion, but that wasn’t mentioned in the OP’s first post.
It's quite apparent to me that he's concerned with its recent and current predictive success. As I've noted, he gives many clues to this through limiting his initial list to 1984, mentioning the 2016 Olympics, responding to one of your posts by restricting his discussion to 'modern' fighters, and he continues to focus on the predictive ability of the gold medal from the 1960s up until today. The question posed in the topic is also 'Does the Olympic Gold medal predict success at heavyweight', which is in the current tense and doesn't preclude the question being focused, you guessed it, the medal's current predictive powers. Using context to discern meaning is a very important academic ability and I think you need to brush up on it.
Your posts in this thread seem to suggest that you know what the OP means better than he does
I already made this point in one of my previous posts in this thread.
Perhaps the OP believes that “success” could be described as an Olympic champion progressing to becoming an heavyweight window cleaner?
I know you already made the point, so that makes it even more odd to me that you'd suggest that I'm moving the goalposts even when you acknowledge that no definition was given. I highly doubt that the OP would consider a gold medalist being a HW window cleaner, and it's ridiculous to think otherwise.
I can’t assume that Olympians that either never turned pro or are only prospects would have almost certainly become a “success” in the heavyweight pro ranks... and nor should we exclude them from our analysis either.
The OP is concerned with how the Olympic gold medal predicts professional success, so cases in which an Olympic gold medalist did not pro are not relevant, as there is nothing we can glean from them about how those medal winners did professionally. We can't assume that they would've been successful by whatever standard is used, but I also don't see evidence to believe that they would've done anamolously poor in the context of what other gold medalists around their era achieved as pros.
So in simple terms, I addressed the original subject matter, but because the facts I supplied contradicted his theory, he subsequently changed the context of his question in order to force a more favourable response.
It’s almost like the OP is saying “Damn! You proved me wrong! I’ll move the goalposts in order to get the answer I want!”.
There is nothing about the original subject matter which precludes his focus from being on the current predictive power of the gold, and the immediate focus he shows on more recent years suggests that this is in fact what he's mainly interested in. I find it odd that you put so much weight on the wording in the subject title when it is perfectly consistent with a focus on more recent years and he continually gives us context which suggests a more specific line of inquiry directed far from the 1900s and many of the cases you list.
Here is an example of moving the goalposts:
OP: "For the purpose of this thread,
success is winning a version of the WBC, WBA, IBF, or WBO championship as a professional heavyweight."
ferg: "Mercer & Povetkin weren't legitimate world champions. In fact, I would relish the opportunity for you to justify their claims to being "real" world heavyweight champions."
Mercer and Povetkin meets the OP's standards of success, as they held versions of either the WBO or WBA title. Whether holding those titles made them a real or legitimate champion is debatable, but the OP's standard of success does not mention that, hence you are ironically 'moving the goalposts' after repeatedly accusing others of doing it.
That was not the question… and we were never asked to consider the topic using specific criteria implied or otherwise!
The question was: “Does the Olympic Gold medal predict success at heavyweight?” and I listed every Olympic heavyweight champion and detailed their accomplishments in the pro ranks, because you can't answer that question without having an appreciation of all the facts.
The short question he initially poses is given context by a great deal of follow-up in which the OP clearly focuses on 'modern' fighters, relatively recent Olympics, the future, and what we can glean about the likely success of gold medal winners based on the professional outcomes of those who turned pro. The cases of those who won gold but didn't turn pro don't give insight into this topic since they had no professional career, and hence they are largely irrelevant. Perhaps someone could formulate a strong argument that gold medal winners who didn't turn pro wouldn't have been successful if they had, but I don't see any reasons to think that they would've been disporportionately unsuccesfful given the general outcomes of the other gold medalists around their time.
Look… you’re obviously trying to win an argument with me… and that’s fine, but we could be talking about different things, because we’ve obviously interpreted the question in different ways.
I answered the OP’s question based on my literal interpretation of his words… I did not assume the context of his words like you have done.
I was the only person on this thread that researched every single Olympic heavyweight champion and detailed their accomplishments in the pro ranks, because that was the nature of the question.
If people want me to provide a more favourable response to their theories, they should have articulated their question in a much more precise manner.
I'm simply responding to your points and am not posting just for the sake of winning an argument.
Words are often filled with ambiguity on their own and context is needed to discern what is meant by them. The OP's initial question is consistent with several more focused lines of inquiry, and he gives many clues in this thread that he's concerned with what relatively recent or 'modern' outcomes suggest about what winning gold currently suggests about the likely chances of professional success an Olympic champion has.
Here are the facts:
From the 28 men that won an Olympic heavyweight gold medal of sorts, only five of those really made it in the pro ranks.
Only three amateur heavyweight champions (from the 16 that won a gold medal) since the 1984 Olympics subsequently claimed a legitimate version of the world heavyweight title in the pro ranks.
I've also mentioned problems with your facts. They include many cases from long ago when amateur and professional boxing was much different, and many of the fighters you list didn't turn pro, meaning we can't glean from what winning gold suggests about how a professional career would unfold for them.
Moving away from the early 1900s and to the relatively recent years, we can see that from the 1960s the Olympic champions who turned pro have had much improved outcomes for those who turned pro; to give recent examples, the current and long-time HW king won gold at SHW in 1996, the next best fighter in the division won gold at SHW in 2004, and the division's top prospect won gold at SHW in 2012. The HW gold medal winner in 2004 Odlanier Solis also became a top 10 HW who fought for a title, and while the 2000 SHW champion Audley Harrison was a letdown, he still managed a fairly respectable career in which he won an EBU title and made it into the top 25 or so at one point.
These types of outcomes are far removed from those Olympic champions in, for example, the early 1900s had when they turned pro, and given that the OP has repeatedly focused on recent cases and the medal's current predictive power, I think the more recent examples are far more relevant than those from long ago.
Now the OP has clarified what he means by success, which you are trying to redefine for him (how about those goalposts eh). Doing that he's shown that using more recent cases, which is fitting given his concern about what the medal currently predicts, being Olympic champion predicts a significantly higher chance of success than you've given.
