SONNY LISTON VS ANTHONY JOSHUA

[Cojimar 1946]

Regarding the Golota fights as I've noted Golota had established superiority prior to the low blows starting. You can't use low blows to explain away Golota's dominance prior to the end of the 4th round. Golota clearly won rounds 1, and 3 and was winning round 4 prior to the first low blow.

[oogiebe]

Regarding the Golota fights as I've noted Golota had established superiority prior to the low blows starting. You can't use low blows to explain away Golota's dominance prior to the end of the 4th round. Golota clearly won rounds 1, and 3 and was winning round 4 prior to the first low blow.

[Cojimar 1946]

Breazeale looks pretty quick and powerful but not the best defense

[Kalan]

Regarding the Golota fights as I've noted Golota had established superiority prior to the low blows starting. You can't use low blows to explain away Golota's dominance prior to the end of the 4th round. Golota clearly won rounds 1, and 3 and was winning round 4 prior to the first low blow.

Cosign..... Golota was an inept oaf who Lewis FLATTENED---but he was better technically than the hittable Bowe.

[Kalan]

Breazeale looks pretty quick and powerful but not the best defense

Breazeale gooded good at times in this fight... He attacked better and more imaginatively... But he still has a long way to go to ramp up his overall boxing skills... And he doesn't have a world of time to get there.

[Ambling Alp II]

Regarding the Golota fights as I've noted Golota had established superiority prior to the low blows starting. You can't use low blows to explain away Golota's dominance prior to the end of the 4th round. Golota clearly won rounds 1, and 3 and was winning round 4 prior to the first low blow.

Can we count the intentional headbutt that caused Bowe to have a cut?
Can we also get back to the fact that Bowe won the fight, which is the most important thing?

[Ambling Alp II]

Dokes was past his prime when he faced Ruddock. He was also out of shape and never scored a significant win again in his career. I certainly am doubtful he was the 3rd best heavyweight in the world at this stage. Ruddock would have been far better served to faced younger prime fighters.

Ring Magazine had Dokes as the number three heavyweight behind only Holyfield and Tyson. It doesn't matter what he did after the Ruddock fight. This was a big fight that was on network TV. Ruddock sccred a devastating KO which got everybody's attention. It was a much bigger deal than any of the current contenders ever had.

[Kalan]

Who cares WHERE Ring Magazine ranked Dokes??? Since when are their rankings accurate?.... Dokes was done... He was a coked out crackhead.. He wasn't eating or sleeping right or training right.. He was high all the time.

Dokes himself wrote about his cocaine addiction and he was wiped out when he fought Ruddock... It was a miracle he lasted until the 4th round... The way Ruddock cranked up his left hook -- anyone with a big straight right, blasts him out.

[Cojimar 1946]

Well, in that case it seems Ring Magazine was wrong. I see no compelling evidence suggesting he was top 5, he may not have even been top 10.
It had been over a year since he fought Holyfield and in any case I'm not sure how much credit we can give him for a fight he lost. He may have done better than expected but Holyfield seems to often fight down to his level of competition. Alex Stewart gave him a good fight but that doesn't mean he was a top 10 heavyweight any more than Dokes was.
Dokes was also much closer to his early 80s weight against Holyfield (225 vs 240). I imagine the extra weight slowed him down and negatively impacted his performance.

[Ambling Alp II]

Well you never seem to understand anything, so I am not surprised you don't see the compelling evidence. Literally all of the compelling evidence suggests Dokes was a top 5 heavyweight going into the Ruddock fight.

You keep saying that it had a been a year since he had fought Holyfield. And I keep saying that a year is not long at all in boxing. Lots of big time heavyweights only fight a couple of times a year.
Are we really supposed to discount fights that happened just a year a go.? If we did, then do we base the worth of any fighter? Just on the fights within the last 12 months? Most of these guys only had a couple of fights in the last 12 months.

Ruddock's loss to Rodrigues was more than 12 months before he fought Ruddock. By your logic, we have to throw out the loss to Rodrigues because it had happened too long ago. (The judgingg was so dubious, maybe we should anyway.) Yet you brought it up several times.

The best heavyweight was probably Holyfield. Dokes gave him a great fight. He was very competitive. The fights voted the heavyweight fight of the 1980s. It is pretty reasonable to have Dokes at #3 going into the Ruddock fight. No serious fan would have Dokes outside of the top 10 going into the fight.

As for Dokes weight going up from 225 to 240. You are always saying that be big is such an advantage. With that logic Dokes should have been better at 240 than 225. You can't have it both ways. You can't say that weight is such a huge advantage and then say it's better for Dokes to be 225 than 240.

Alex Stewart was a fringe contender. If he was fighting now with a record of 24-0 with 24 knockouts, you everyone would be going gaga. He would be the number one contender based on his pretty record against no names which is what is routinely done now.
Stewart gave a good effort but was not nearly as competitive with Holyfield as Dokes was.
Razor Ruddock was a tested fighter going into the Lewis fight. Far from perfect, but probably one of the top 5 or 6 heavyweights in the world.
Lewis blew him out. This is a huge win for Lewis.

You need to start using logical reasoning and also start being consistent.

[Kalan]

Literally all of the compelling evidence suggests Dokes was a top 5 heavyweight going into the Ruddock fight .....

You keep saying that it had a been a year since he had fought Holyfield. And I keep saying that a year is not long at all in boxing. Lots of big time heavyweights only fight a couple of times a year. Are we really supposed to discount fights that happened just a year a go.? ......

Ruddock's loss to Rodrigues was more than 12 months before he fought Ruddock. By your logic, we have to throw out the loss to Rodrigues The best heavyweight was probably Holyfield. Dokes gave him a great fight .....

As for Dokes weight going up from 225 to 240. You are always saying that be big is such an advantage .....

Alex Stewart was a fringe contender. If he was fighting now with a record of 24-0 with 24 knockouts, you everyone would be going gaga. He would be the number one contender based on his pretty record against no names which is what is routinely done now .....

You need to start using logical reasoning and also start being consistent.

1..., Said the man who is neither consistent or logical...

2..., Nobody is discounting a KO loss to a Cruiserweight.... Dokes got battered and stopped by one and that's not good.. Dokes was an overweight crackhead... A year later he was knocked out by a slow and wide open swinger (Ruddock) who Lewis swiftly obliterated... Dokes was carrying 30 pounds of excess weight for Ruddock besides being a drug addict.

3..., Rodrigues was a 2nd rater who elderly George Foreman picked as an easy opponent... He never fought Ruddock.

4...., No sane person says FATTER is better... when a lean Heavyweight puts on FAT its a huge DISADVANTAGE.. Having a huge bone frame is only ONE big advantage among MANY advantages you could have... Adding 15 pounds of fat to an already weight taxed bone frame has a negative impact on one's performance... Liston only had 25 pounds on Patterson, weighing 214 to 189... But that was a MASSIVE size advantage because Liston was brick solid...

By YOUR analysis Buster Mathis was one of the "big guys" who proved "little guys" are better Heavyweights... Mathis was 280 for one fight and 220 for another... For the lighter fight Buster still had FAT on him... Buster Douglas was 16 pounds fatter for Holyfield than he was for Tyson... Did the fat do him a load of good???

5..., If Alex Stewart were fighting today he wouldn't be heard from in the top ranks... Oscar Rivas or Malik Scott would box his brains out... Of course he did a HELL of a lot better vs Elderly George Foreman than Rodrigues who was a sitting duck.

[Cojimar 1946]

Ruddock is a good win for Lewis in the sense that he was almost certainly a top 10 heavyweight. Fighters are generally rated based on who they beat in their own eras. While ratings are pretty subjective I think we can be reasonably confident that Ruddock was somewhere in the top 10. However, I don't really see any compelling evidence that Ruddock was better than guys like Mason and Bruno who are not usually cited among Lewis's best wins over proof of his prowess. It's true that Ruddock did better against Tyson than most but by the same token he did worse against Lewis than many others. If we can praise him for doing as well as he did against Tyson it's also fair to fault him for getting bombed out by Lewis when others like Mason and Tucker did much better.

[Cojimar 1946]

Also, there are a lot of people that talk about good eras and bad eras but a crucial thing they overlook is that there is a lot of overlap between eras which makes it possible to compare eras head to head. Younger fighters are often able to fight fighters of the previous era before the skills of their predecessors start to decline.

For example, back in the early 2000s people would often complain about the state of the division and point to the success of guys like John Ruiz as evidence of how crappy the division was and how much the division had declined since the golden days of Tyson, Holyfield, and Lewis. But there is enough overlap between the two eras to see that the gap is not as great as people might think.

[Kalan]

Also, there are a lot of people that talk about good eras and bad eras but a crucial thing they overlook is that there is a lot of overlap between eras which makes it possible to compare eras head to head. Younger fighters are often able to fight fighters of the previous era before the skills of their predecessors start to decline.

For example, back in the early 2000s people would often complain about the state of the division and point to the success of guys like John Ruiz as evidence of how crappy the division was and how much the division had declined since the golden days of Tyson, Holyfield, and Lewis. But there is enough overlap between the two eras to see that the gap is not as great as people might think.

True... Ruiz beat a slightly aging Holyfield, but that is still not a plus for Holyfield... Holyfield got hit with right hands his whole career, so you can't say it's an accident that Ruiz beat him... Roy Jones didn't get hit with sucker shots and beat the turds out of Ruiz... The first Middleweight Champ in 106 years to win a Heavyweight Title...

Tyson got outboxed, outpunched, and beaten to trash by a 42 to 1 underdog who was already knocked out several times... It's true Tyson wasn't particularly sharp, but if that happened to Joshua or Wilder old timers (and Americans) would start condemning the era as total trash... I remember when Lewis was knocked out and people started saying there were no Heavyweights... "The Heavyweight Division SUCKS!!" .... You hear that EVERY generation... It always sucks.

[Cojimar 1946]

Thus far of Joshua's opponents I would say Breazale, Klitschko, and Parker were all top 10 heavies with Takam possibly top 10.
At the same stage of his career Lewis had beaten 4 guys I would classify as top 10-(Mason, Ruddock, Tucker, and Bruno).

[Kalan]

Thus far of Joshua's opponents I would say Breazale, Klitschko, and Parker were all top 10 heavies with Takam possibly top 10.
At the same stage of his career Lewis had beaten 4 guys I would classify as top 10-(Mason, Ruddock, Tucker, and Bruno).

Takam was top 10 by about everybody's ratings... He's STILL a top Heavyweight... Charles Martin was an undefeated Heavyweight Champion... And however undeserving of a Champion he was, when Martin got rich he got lazy...

Martin is no different than Buster Douglas---who never fought a decent fight after getting rich... Martin trained hard for Joshua and laid the biggest egg in History... But he had a few million dollars in his pocket so that was all she wrote.

[Ambling Alp II]

Thus far of Joshua's opponents I would say Breazale, Klitschko, and Parker were all top 10 heavies with Takam possibly top 10.
At the same stage of his career Lewis had beaten 4 guys I would classify as top 10-(Mason, Ruddock, Tucker, and Bruno).

Well lets look at this:
Breazale -He had only 17 fights. None were against anyone in the top 10. No reason to rank him in the top 10.
Klitschko - Had not had a fight in the previous 12 months before fighting Joshua. Therefore, going by your own 12-month rule (see Michael Dokes) Klitschko can't be ranked since we have nothing to go on.
Takam -Why would he have been considered a top 10 heavyweight? No wins over anyone with a pretty record. Failed every time so far.

With leaves us with Parker. That's it so far for Joshua.

[oogiebe]

Thus far of Joshua's opponents I would say Breazale, Klitschko, and Parker were all top 10 heavies with Takam possibly top 10.
At the same stage of his career Lewis had beaten 4 guys I would classify as top 10-(Mason, Ruddock, Tucker, and Bruno).

Well lets look at this:
Breazale -He had only 17 fights. None were against anyone in the top 10. No reason to rank him in the top 10.
Klitschko - Had not had a fight in the previous 12 months before fighting Joshua. Therefore, going by your own 12-month rule (see Michael Dokes) Klitschko can't be ranked since we have nothing to go on.
Takam -Why would he have been considered a top 10 heavyweight? No wins over anyone with a pretty record. Failed every time so far.

With leaves us with Parker. That's it so far for Joshua.

[Cojimar 1946]

Who would you say was top 10 for the years in question? I think we can use process of elimination to determine who should be considered top 10. Within a short period of time Joshua faced Dilian Whyte, Dominic Breazale, and Carlos Takam. I think there is some subjectivity in ratings but by process of elimination at least one of them would almost certainly have to be top 10 just going by their records and who they were fighting though you could argue that exact place. Breazale seems like probably the best candidate because Joshua is the only one to beat him thus far and he has been impressively beating people with good records.

Klitschko appeared to be in much better shape than Dokes and was close to his optimal fighting weight. I don't think Dokes was able to effectively carry 240 pounds. A lot of the weight seemed to be excess fat.

[Kalan]

Thus far of Joshua's opponents I would say Breazale, Klitschko, and Parker were all top 10 heavies with Takam possibly top 10.
At the same stage of his career Lewis had beaten 4 guys I would classify as top 10-(Mason, Ruddock, Tucker, and Bruno).

Well lets look at this:
Breazale -He had only 17 fights. None were against anyone in the top 10. No reason to rank him in the top 10.
Klitschko - Had not had a fight in the previous 12 months before fighting Joshua. Therefore, going by your own 12-month rule (see Michael Dokes) Klitschko can't be ranked since we have nothing to go on.
Takam -Why would he have been considered a top 10 heavyweight? No wins over anyone with a pretty record. Failed every time so far.

With leaves us with Parker. That's it so far for Joshua.

That's sheer hatred and makes NO sense... Joshua has the MOST IMPRESSIVE resume in HEAVYWEIGHT BOXING.

Joshua had fewer fights than Breazeale when they fought... Breazeale was ranked off his KO victory over 22-1-1 Amir Mansour... Ali/Clay only had 19 fights when he fought Liston... Clay was the top ranked contender off a disputed decision win over Light Heavyweight Doug Jones and a win over Henry Cooper who had a very spotty record.

Carlos Takam was ranked off strong showings with undefeated Joseph Parker, which many people thought he won – and a draw with undefeated Mike Perez, which everybody knew he won.

Wladimir Klitschko was an ATG Heavyweight Champion who reigned for over 10 years... It was the most important and anticipated Heavyweight Championship Fight in many years... Off the strength of his great reputation Klitschko was highly ranked and deservedly so... He turned back the clock and put up an ATG Heavyweight Title Fight.

Joseph Parker was a 24-0 undefeated Heavyweight Champion so he’s another important win.

Charles Martin was a 23-0-1 undefeated Heavyweight Champion so he’s another important win.

Dillian Whyte, who is currently 23-1, was another important win for Joshua.

Klitschko, Breazeale, Whyte, Martin, Takam, and Parker.... SIX (6) impressive wins which are building Joshua's resume.

[Ambling Alp II]

Who would you say was top 10 for the years in question? I think we can use process of elimination to determine who should be considered top 10. Within a short period of time Joshua faced Dilian Whyte, Dominic Breazale, and Carlos Takam. I think there is some subjectivity in ratings but by process of elimination at least one of them would almost certainly have to be top 10 just going by their records and who they were fighting though you could argue that exact place. Breazale seems like probably the best candidate because Joshua is the only one to beat him thus far and he has been impressively beating people with good records.

Klitschko appeared to be in much better shape than Dokes and was close to his optimal fighting weight. I don't think Dokes was able to effectively carry 240 pounds. A lot of the weight seemed to be excess fat.

Who should be in the top in the last few years? The problem is that nobdoy really knows. Why becasue we have so little evidence to go on. There are a ton of guys who have pretty records but have not fought tough comeopttion.

Why are there so many guys with 1 loss or are undefeated? Becasue they don't fight each neary enough. Everytime there there is a fight, somone records gets marked up. However, nowadays anyone halfway decent stays away from anyone else halfway decent. As a result, we are left guessing.

Most people think that Joshua, Wilder and Fury have been the best recently. Maybe Parker isn't too far behind. Maybe Klitschko as well. However even that is just an educated guess.

After that, it's even more of a crapshoot. Should Breazale, Whyte, and Takam be rated? Maybe, maybe not. What about Pulev, Ortiz, Stiverne, Ruiz, Miller, Povetkin, and Glazkov? Are they better than them?
They are all undefeated or have one loss. I am sure there are several other guys like this that I have not mentioned.

None of these guys are very well tested. We simply don't have simply to go on.
Anybody who knows anything about boxing knows that win/loss records can be very deceiving. A guy who is 22-0 or whatever might be great, might OK, might actually not that good at all.. Anyone halfway decent can always find an easy opponent to beat to pad their record.

For most of boxing history, it was not like this. The top tier fighters used to fight each much more. So we had a better idea how good fighters were. This is a fact, not my opinion.

The pretenders got weeded out.
And it helped fighters get better by fighting tougher competition. That is true is just about any sport.

As for Klitschko, well I was kidding you about not being consistent. Obviously your idea that you can't count fights over a year previously was only used on your part to not count Ruddock's win over Dokes. You don't really believe it yourself. If you did believe it, you can't count any of Klitschko's fights in his entire career going into the Joshua fight.

[Cojimar 1946]

well, let's do an analysis of how many top guys they fought
1.Lewis-(Mason, Ruddock, Tucker, Bruno, McCall, Mercer, Akinwande, Golota, Holyfield, Grant, Tua, Rahman, and Klitschko) a total of 13, pretty damn impressive
2.Holyfield-(Dokes, Douglas, Holmes, Bowe, Moorer, Mercer, Tyson, Lewis, Ruiz, Rahman, Toney, Ibragimov, Valuev) a total of 13, also very impressive
3.Tyson-(Berbick, Smith, Tucker, Thomas, Holmes, Tubbs, Spinks, Bruno, Williams, Douglas, Ruddock, Holyfield, Lewis) a total of 13
4.McCall-(Douglas, Tucker, Lewis, Holmes, Bruno)
5.Bowe-(Tubbs, Holyfield, Golota)
6.Sanders-(Rahman, W. Klitschko, V. Klitschko)
7.Ruddock-(Weaver, Tyson, Lewis)
8.Akinwande-(Lewis, McCall)
9.Bruno-(Smith, Witherspoon, Tyson, Lewis, McCall)
10.Moorer-(Holyfield, Tua, posssibly Foreman)
11.Mercer-(Holmes, Holyfield, Lewis, Witherspoon, Klitschko)
12.Gary Mason (Lewis)

As you can see there is a big dropoff after the top 3

[Ambling Alp II]

And you selectively omitted key fights.

You left out rematches.
There were also severa fights where someone beat a pretender (fancy record against weak competition) that would be counted now.

So for example Riddick Bowe fought Holyfield 3 times and you are only counting it as one. Also beat Golota twice. He also beat Gonzalez, Donald, Seldon, and Hide who were all undefeated at the time that Bowe fought them. Coetzer was 39-2. If this happned today, people would be going on about the tough competition that he beat.
So you actually can give Bowe 11. (That isn't including fights on his way up against fighters like Thomas, Biggs and Cooper, fights that no prospect would consider taking today.

Ruddock beat Phil Jackson who was 25-0 at the time. If that happened now it would be considered a major win. And course you keep being absurd and skipped the win over Dokes. That puts Ruddock at 7.

Mercer also beat Damiani and Morrison. So he would be up 7.

Moore fought Holyfield twice. Also beat Bean, Botha who undefeated at the time. Oh and the great Axel Schulz. Bumps him up to 6.

Bruno fought Tyson twice. Puts him up to 6.

No idea why you would be including Akinwande and Mason except to make the list look worse.

Tua was a top contender for years and you left him off. Fought Rahman twice, Moorer, Lewis, Byrd, Ibeabuchi, . Also had wins over guys with pretty records such as Ruiz, Wilson, Maskaev, and Nichols. That puts him at 10.

What you don't seem to grasp is that there are many fights between two guys where we find out one guy is for real and the other was a pretender.
You seldom have that now. Everyone now bides their time for a WBS title shot and is scared of fighting anyone else who conceivably could be good. Which is why we have so many guys with great records and we seldom have interest fights to look forward to.

[Cojimar 1946]

My intention was to only list wins over guys who were ranked in the top 10. There are plenty of guys with impressive records that these guys faced but who were not highly ranked. Morrison, Donald, etc were not among the divisions elite. There are plenty of fighters today with good records who likewise are not highly ranked.

[Cojimar 1946]

Botha and Bean were never considered to be among the divsions elite despite having nice records. There are plenty of fighters with impressive records more recently who were never considered among the elite. Just recently you have Victor Bisbal (21-1),Magomed Abdusalov (18-1) Malik Scott (36-1-1) Eric Molina (23-2) Artur Szpilka (20-1) Mariusz Wach (31-1), etc. I don't consider Povetkin's win over Wach a win over an elite opponent despite Wach's nice record.