Lennox wrote:To not have Floyd number 1 shows total delusion. If you understand boxing and his achievements you could not possibly question it. No one has ever fought and beat better opposition in the quantity he has.
- Absent any evidence than what you currently profess other than transnational rankings, you would do well to take a full view of the heritage and critical habits of boxing if you are ever to talk beyond the authority of dubious rankings.
I will do my best to note some positive attributes of TUE 49-0 as a point of reference. Nobody has made as much money boxing has he has, so if just gross totals are the criteria, he's tops. He's always in good shape unlike many other touted greats, but plenty greats in his era were also, so no cigar, just props for discipline. He had ample natural talents, however, I dare say within his era, Pac, Wlad, and Roy were better natural overall talents, not the least of which was their offensive capacity and power, the essence of most every great. All would be substantially more than a puny 49-0 had they the exquisite development of legend Bob Arum, and then a sugar daddy like Haymon securing a permanent hometown commish, drug testing apparatus, judges, and refs to always insure an unfair fight against the one opponent in the ring, never once allowing the other fighter to ever get any momentum going against their finest queen's china.
As to Roy and Manny achievements: who were the overwhelming Fighters of the Decade in the 1990s and 2000s by consensus boxing media?
Where's Waldo and TUE 49-0 then, MIA? Roy lasted all the way into 2004 when he made a dumb mistake to rematch blowhard Tarver for his standard 5 million purse instead traveling to Germany for Dariusz for at least double, maybe triple money in an historical legacy type fight for both.
Where's Waldo and TUE 49-0 when Manny won his first title as a scrawny flyweight stick of a 19 yr old Filipino brought over to Thailand as the staked out goat for their prime, touted, 28 yr old tiger champ, Sasakul, 32-1-1. To be fair TUE was basking as the new babe in Ring p4p rankings after beating Genero Hernandez in his retirement fight, a fight he did quite well in before "mysteriously" quitting on his stool midway, not exactly legendary stuff as this scenario played out plenty during the Arum days. Whereas the Filipino staked out goat turned TIGER on the Thai tiger, battering him at will into unconsciousness. Any Ring p4p invite for Manny doing something greater than TUE ever did in his carefully pedicured career? Of course not, the larded American boxing world wasn't ready for such ferocity unless it was made in America. No matter, by 2009 the scrawny Filipino kid ran away with the international community’s respect during the largest boxing poll ever conducted, over a half million frenzied boxing aficionados voting. An international group of boxing scribes in Las Vegas tallied the international bounty for the recorded annals.
http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/17 ... ing-greats
P4P #1. Sugar Ray Robinson, #2. Manny Pacquiao, #3. Muhammad Ali
#1 Welterweight: Sugar Ray Robinson, #1 Featherweight: Manny Pacquiao, #1 Heavyweight: Muhammad Ali, #1 Lightheavyweight: Roy Jones Jr, #3 Lightweight, TUE 49-0...and where's Waldo?
Well, Hrrrmmmph, what's a stupid international boxing poll compared to Transnational you might snort. OK, lets compare to longtime Ring p4p rankings. Manny, in spite of his late entry, burned up the Ring record book with 645 weeks of being consecutively ranked, ie: 12 1/2 years, nobody even close. Where was Waldo and TUE?
Holds the record for the most weight class division titles, trumping eight in all, half of them Ring or lineal titles. This in spite of skipping over two divisions between flyweight and superbantam because he had been nearly starved to death trying to make weight.
Manny also set their record for fighting the most Ring p4p fighters in his career, the most wins, the most KOs, currently 9-4-1, nobody even close. He also made his divisional debut 3x against the #1 guy in the division, certainly not in the mold of the sissified Waldo or TUE. In other words, as the ultimate outsider in boxing, he has taken the most risks, paid the highest price for his audacity, set the biggest records that actually count for anything, and currently coholds the record for a single gate purse, PPVs, and PPV revenue and holds the record for the most money ever made by a non American fighter.
Pity there could never be a serious rivalry with TUE like Manny had with other greats in his era, Erik Morales x 3, Marco Antonio Barrera x 2, Juan Manuel Marquez x 4(JMM ducking #5 for two years running now), and Tim Bradley x 3. TUE preferred his refs to nurse on his little pinky and take all that easy stinky TV money he and his family helped themselves to.
The first three of five places easy, 1. Manny, 2. Wlad, 3. Roy, they were record setters in their fashions and head and shoulders above all others of the past 25 years. Places 4-5 are a crapshoot between a dozen or more including TUE. Maybe in the end, you could make a case for #4...or maybe not even that.
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