BoxRec

Goodnight, Irene wrote:I don't know if I'd necessarily include Lennox Lewis in that category. I think he was developing before the loss to McCall, & would've improved without the defeat, making it coincidental.

His loss to Hasim Rahman? That was just a bad day at the office. As his later fights showed, the Rahman loss definately wasn't the beggining of the end, or indacating that he was a 'shot' fighter.

Yes, I agree with that. I was saying I thought he was improving, prior to the first loss (McCall), & didn't really learn anything from it, but rather, simply continued his improvement curve. He was already a complete fighter by the time he met Rahman.

jimglen wrote:6 years 'undefeated' mid 1937 - 43, 38wins, 3draws...

there you go Collins.

That's still an impressive feat and something to be proud of, Jimbo.



(Bet you didn't expect to see that.)

To me there are several factors that should be taken into account. Losing to other great fighters is not a big negative in my book, but losing to mediocre fighters in your prime is. As mentioned, when they happened in your career, how active your schedule was, the fairness of the decision (was it considered a poor decision/robbery?) . . .those are all things that should be taken into account. Unfortunately losses are much more damaging then they used to be b/c of the very careful matchmaking done by promoters . . .guys are spoon-fed stiffs for 20-30 fights and then lose to some B-C level guy and it's very damaging b/c they essentially failed to learn anything off the previous 20 stiffs. Whereas I think fighters who go in early with fairly dangerous comp (like Helenius is right now) would be forgiven for a loss as their comp will ensure they improve with each fight.

That is pretty much my way of thinking. You have to look at the circumstances of each loss and then decide how how much if any you are going to hold a particular loss against that fighter.

And for an overall evaluation of a fighter's career, you have to balance it against the quality and quantity wins.
Usually a modern fighter had less fights and usually a higher % of the fights that he does have is against weak competition. (The best fighters avoid each more now than they used to.)

Therefore, it stands to reason that usually when modern day fighter does lose, it hurts his all-time career rating more than a fighter from many years ago.

A modern fighter may go say 30-2, even 45-2 but has no big wins and his losses are bad, than he really was not that good.

However, if an old-timer had a lot of legitimate losses and does not have that many quality wins to counter that, he probably was not that good either.