Who was the Greatest? Who cares?

[Razor2305]

There seems to be a trend on Boxing Wesites to argue about who was the Greatest Heavyweight, who would have beat who in their prime what would have happenened if they werent banned etc etc etc............

I'm all for friendly banter on the subject but people shouldn't be slurring these great Fighters names to score marks of each other.

Some of the points being made are:

1. Joe Louis fought only bums and was a coke head
2. Muhammad Ali got a lot of undeserved decisions and was overated
3. Rocky Marciano only fought old men and his early Career was fixed
4. Mike Tyson was just a Coke head Rapist and wasn't really any good after all
5. Floyd Patterson was a coward.

My guy could beat your guy, the list could go on and on.......

All people have different problems in their lives and I'd just like to rememer the above purely for their Boxing skills and great fights.

Who can forget Louis coming from behind to knock out Billy Conn and destoying Max Baer and Max Schmeling.

Ali destroying Clevland Williams and all the great fights from the 70's!

Marciano knocking out Jersey Joe Walcott and Ezzard Charles!

Tsyon's reign in the mid 80's when he destoyed everyone!

Patterson winning back the Heavyweight Title against Johansson!

It takes great courage to even step into the Ring and these were classic fights from the some of the Greatest Boxers ever and some had to show great courage to come back and win so enough of the trash talk please!!!!!!!!!!

"Who was better", "Who would have beaten who", and "who was the greatest" conversations are generally started and carried on by simpletons.

Trying to accuratly compare fighters across decades, eras, and thousands of variables is not possible, and anyone who claims it is not only knows nothing about the sport of boxing, but is not very smart either.

Even more silly, is the laughable discussions that go something like this :

"You have fighter A as the # 32 best of all time, and fighter B as the 24 best of all time. Clearly, fighter A should be # 29, and fighter B should be 31, because fighter A beat fighter C in 1898, and fighter C had a draw with #A in 1902
Then, in 1906, fighter D beat fighter A, but fighter A was robbed and should have won the fight, so you see fighter A should be # 29, fighter B should be 31, fighter C sould be Either # 30 or 33, and fighter D should be in a tie for 34 with fighter E.

In other words, the only thing more dumb then trying to compare fighters from across 40 to 100 years, is to try to compare fighters using individual fight results, and trying to rank them in order.

EXCEPT, maybe claiming that fighters from 70 years ago "Would beat" fighters of today. That is a joke, and it a claim made by those with naive romanticized, polyanna, rose colored selective recall.

The 1933 Chicago Bears were a great team for their time, but the 2007 NE Patroits would beat them 112-0. Boxing is no different

Agree with you 100%.

There's nothing wrong with a bit of friendly banter regarding who's the best in any sport, but when it comes to people who know nothing about the sport making stupid remarks regarding a persons Career and Achievements then they are indeed idiots.

[Ambling Alp]

Of course you can compare fighters from modern times to fighters from many decades ago. You just have to do some thinking.
You can compare a fighter from this decade to fighters to a fighter from the 1990's. You can compare a fighter from the 1990's to a fighter from the 1980's. If you can do that, surely you can compare the fighter from the 1980's to the fighter from this decade.

You can compare a fighter from the 1980's to the 1970's and of course then you can compare the fighter from this decade to the fighter from the 1970's and so on.

It's a little complicated, but it isn't rocket science either. It's actually easier if you use a bar graph to chart it.

As for the 1933 Bears and 2007 Patriots- Of course the Patriots were much better, but you have to remember that the NFL only started in 1920 and was still in it's infancy in 1933. Boxing wasn't. There was pro boxing with gloves in the 1880's.
When a sport first begins, it improves steadily as new stategies, tactics etc. are discovered. Then after a while almost everything has been tried and the sport's improvement is very little.

The NFL was much better in the 1940's then the 1930's and much better in the 1950's then the 1940's. However, the level of improvement from one decade to the next began to decline. Boxing was like that as well, only it was 40-50 years ahead of the NFL.

The difference in the level of play in the NFL this decade as compared to the 1990's is negligible if it exists at all. You certainly can argue that the Cowboys of the 1990's were as good as the Patriots teams of the 2000's or that the average team was just as good in both decades. You could also argue that the 49er teams from the 1980's were as good as the 1990's Cowboy teams. And of course you could argue that the 1980's 49er teams were as good or better than the Patriot teams in the 2000's.

In the NFL there really hasn't been any "new" offensive or defensive schemes in decades. In boxing, there hasn't been a new punch in 100 years. In a certain weight class, a particular decade might be stronger than average, but weaker in another weight class.

You also have to keep in mind that even when sports are in their infancy, there is often a handful of athletes who were ahead of their time and probably could have competed with athletes in later era's.

There were bad, below average, average, good, and great fighters in every decade. It's silly to dismiss people because of when they happened to be active.

[Robinson]

The trouble I find with alot of people, not so much here but in general, people do not give a reason or argument for there opinions on how A beats B.

And often, whats worse is that they simply have not seen A fight let alone a few fights of a guy, yet they pass judgement and make calls on a guy as to how he would do against such and such.

I think its hard to say how pre film guys would do against other eras only because opinion is based on word of mouth and romantic literature of these men. It seems that the fight reporters of long yester year were by far more less critical of boxers in subsequent years.

Kym

[ben geoghegan]

People pick who they like thats that ! !

There's no reason great fighters can't compete with each other especially clever boxers. But when size becomes so overwhelming it makes no sense. Gans and Griffo would do great and they both began fighting over 110 years ago !

[Tantum]

Terry Norris was the greatest. Ray Robinson a close second

Hey Terry, how you doing in retirement buddy?

[Elton John]

Terry Norris was the greatest. Ray Robinson a close second

Hey Terry, how you doing in retirement buddy?

Terry is doing just fine thank you.

[Ambling Alp]

The trouble I find with alot of people, not so much here but in general, people do not give a reason or argument for there opinions on how A beats B.

And often, whats worse is that they simply have not seen A fight let alone a few fights of a guy, yet they pass judgement and make calls on a guy as to how he would do against such and such.

I think its hard to say how pre film guys would do against other eras only because opinion is based on word of mouth and romantic literature of these men. It seems that the fight reporters of long yester year were by far more less critical of boxers in subsequent years.

Kym

I agree that it's more difficult to rate pre-film fighters. However there are things that you can go on. For one thing you use results between fighters that there is some film of and fighters who fought before the days when film became better quality and more common.

Actually film can be a bad thing. Often people will see a fighter just once or twice and assume that is always how the guy fought, when in fact the fight that they saw was far above or below their normal performance.

As for the "romantic literature of the past" there is no question that this occurred. Part of it was the style of writing that popular with sportswriters at one time. There is also the fact that the early writers didn't have as much to compare it to. Lets say you were a writer in the 1890's you natually would be impressed with Jim Corbett's speed and boxing skills since obviously Tunney, Ali etc had yet to come along. (However that doesn't mean that Corbett wasn't great.)

However there is certainly some value in old newspaper and magazine articles describing a fight. If you just go by a database or a record book, you might see KO8 or W10 to describe a fight. Obviously that doesn't tell you how close the fight was, how good it was, or what kind of fight it was. An article can do this.

Of course a database or a record book has it's uses too. At least it will tell the result of each fight of a fighters career and you can then take a hard look taking into consideration the phase of both the fighter that you are reviewing and his opponents at the time they fought.

When rating fighters, all you can do is get all of the information that you can. You should look at film, at articles, at record books (and try to be as objective as possible). It's really an ongoing process as new information becomes available.

[Robinson]

It seems to me as time goes by, and as the sport grows popular. Writers are more aggressive and less affectionate towards contemporary fights and fighters. IT is only after time, that revisionism has writers and historians complimenting fighters and fights.

I think the trouble is alot of people dont go into much detail on there opinions without watching fights in detail. Its silly because with the internet and all that, we have access to so much more info on guys and fights that used to be near impossible for the average joe to get his hands on.