BoxRec

Heres the premise,

Take any two legends, and compare who wouldve been a champ in their class during more eras (each decade representing a new era). Im going with Heavies, because its a fairer contrast. Rules are they have to be able to, in their prime, beat someone who held the title during that decade --- for instance, to use Holmes and Marciano, they would have to be able to beat one of Johansson, Patterson, Liston, Ali or Ellis to be a 60s champ. Although Holmes and Marciano are in their prime, they face the champs as they were, whether they were prime or not.

......goodnight...i'm not certain if i understand your premise correctly....but i think harold johnson would have had a good chance to beat patterson...in fact i'd make him the favorite.

Not quite sure I understand the question properly but IMO it all boils down to Muhammad Ali or Joe Louis. I think they would have beaten the champs from any era.

It's a nice idea that would require more research than most are willing to put in. But the premise is to take two fighters all through time and match them with the champions.

So you would take Ali & louis through the decades and match them up with the champions of the time period and give a check mark to the guy with more wins. In that situation you would probably have quite a few ties with them beating everyone. I'd go Ali even though Louis is my #1 Heavyweight. Guys like Tunney & Holyfield would have a better chance of puling the upset on Joe.

Ali/Witherspoon is a dark secret mythical fight of mine that I would love to see. I really think Tim would have given him hell. Not that tim was ever THE champion. Though I did think he barely beat Holmes.

Ah, okay. Yes, that would be very time consuming as you say. Lets just shortcut it and say Ali would have beaten everybody :-)
Seriously though, Ali-Witherspoon would be a great matchup also Tyson-Foreman for me.

Saad gets it but, yes, on reflection it may be too taxing.

...oh..i think i get it but i'm not sure.....but as it is too taxing anyway i can ..say the hell with it

I have a spreadsheet of head to head matchups with 137 HWs from throughout history. Since a single win over an opponent isn't always conclusive, as evidenced by history, rather than a simple check mark of who would win each H2H, I assign a number of 1-5 to determine which fighter would win the most if they fought a series of 10 fights. 1 means that the fighter would lose every fight, barring an unexpected mishap, 2 means they are likely to pull off 2 or 3 out of the 10, 3 means it's likely they split the series, 4 is the inverse of 2 and 5 is the inverse of 1.

When entered as a 2 dimensional array, this gives an easy way to total and rank on a H2H basis. It also gives a numerical basis to do analysis by the fighters weight, height, or even applying factors based upon the era in which they fought. As an additional component, I also have numeric ratings for a variety of skills and physical attributes for each fighter that is added to the H2H rating in order to rank the HWs in an overall rating.

This xls has evolved over the years, but has been pretty static recently, since there is so little significant activity in the HW division.

Goodnight, Irene wrote:Heres the premise,

Take any two legends, and compare who wouldve been a champ in their class during more eras (each decade representing a new era). Im going with Heavies, because its a fairer contrast. Rules are they have to be able to, in their prime, beat someone who held the title during that decade --- for instance, to use Holmes and Marciano, they would have to be able to beat one of Johansson, Patterson, Liston, Ali or Ellis to be a 60s champ. Although Holmes and Marciano are in their prime, they face the champs as they were, whether they were prime or not.

Does that mean that for the 70s to count they would only have to have been able to beat either the Ali that lost to Leon Spinks or Neon Leon himself? At that specific point Ali was awful, Spinks wasn't much better.

That set of rules basically imply, find the worst performance by a reigning champion and see if your fighter would beat them.

Goodnight, Irene wrote:Saad gets it but, yes, on reflection it may be too taxing.

You can say that again.

Brett Paul Dunbar wrote:

Goodnight, Irene wrote:Heres the premise,

Take any two legends, and compare who wouldve been a champ in their class during more eras (each decade representing a new era). Im going with Heavies, because its a fairer contrast. Rules are they have to be able to, in their prime, beat someone who held the title during that decade --- for instance, to use Holmes and Marciano, they would have to be able to beat one of Johansson, Patterson, Liston, Ali or Ellis to be a 60s champ. Although Holmes and Marciano are in their prime, they face the champs as they were, whether they were prime or not.

Does that mean that for the 70s to count they would only have to have been able to beat either the Ali that lost to Leon Spinks or Neon Leon himself? At that specific point Ali was awful, Spinks wasn't much better.

That set of rules basically imply, find the worst performance by a reigning champion and see if your fighter would beat them.

That's right. They would just have to beat a champ in a given era, to be a champ for that era. That means they could take on any champion from that time, including the Ali of 78 or Spinks.

Questions such as these raise more headaches and arguments than they create answers. However, you can make the case for many champions and contenders to have being a champion in other eras. Take Quarry, Bonavena and Lyle. Today they would make mince meat of David Haye, the Klitschko brothers, and the lesser 'cheese' champions of the 80's and 30's, and they were contenders. Joe Louis once said that Tony Galento should have been produced in the bareknuckle era, for he would have been more succesful. As for the all-time greats, HBO did a series in the late 70's or early 80's and rated Louis, Ali and Marciano as the top three heavyweights of all time; it can be argued those three could have defeated every other champion and contender in history, and split wins/losses between eachother.

I used to hold the theory that on the night/day a champion was crowned, no heavyweight could beat that particular fighter. The night Frazier beat Ali, nobody could beat Joe. The night Dempsey dethroned Willard, nobody could beat Dempsey. And etc, etc etc. However, that theory has its loop holes. Willard was no great fighter for he beat an older washed up Jack Johnson and lost 20 of the 26 rounds it went in the process. Ali was slower, older, and didnt take Frazier seriously, and the like.

Personally, it all comes down to eras. I maintain that if the MQ rules never altered from its original draft where championships were 20, 45, etc rounds with no neutral corner ruling and three ounce gloves, Jeffries would probably stand head and shoulders above the rest. Today the fights are shorter, more fast paced, with numerous rules and impartial judges, referees, etc. I think even today, because of fights being called off on short notice, a Muhammad Ali would even have trouble in todays world, especially if you take into account the Cooper fights, the Frazier battles, etc. Marciano wouldn't have went far either.

In the end you can only judge by eras.

Ali didn't take Frazier seriously? Wow

SaadOffTheDeck wrote:Ali didn't take Frazier seriously? Wow

Two tune ups, and he believed he could beat Joe. If that isnt taking someone lightly, then I dont know what is. Dundee said Ali should have waited 6 months to a year for Joe, took some more bouts. Ali believed his own hype and powers, refused to believe his reflexes had diminished after 3 years in exile.

HomicideHenry wrote:

SaadOffTheDeck wrote:Ali didn't take Frazier seriously? Wow

Two tune ups, and he believed he could beat Joe. If that isnt taking someone lightly, then I dont know what is. Dundee said Ali should have waited 6 months to a year for Joe, took some more bouts. Ali believed his own hype and powers, refused to believe his reflexes had diminished after 3 years in exile.

Of course he believed he could beat Joe, that's an essential part of being a fighter. But if you think he really took his opponent lightly in the biggest fight in history than you most certainly don't know what it is.

The two "tune ups" were against top contenders. Ali got his ass kicked, period.

HomicideHenry wrote:

SaadOffTheDeck wrote:Ali didn't take Frazier seriously? Wow

Two tune ups, and he believed he could beat Joe. If that isnt taking someone lightly, then I dont know what is. Dundee said Ali should have waited 6 months to a year for Joe, took some more bouts. Ali believed his own hype and powers, refused to believe his reflexes had diminished after 3 years in exile.

The notion that Ali truly took Frazier lightly is absurd.

You are really, really naive if you indeed believe this.

Ali knew he was in for the fight of his life on 3/8/71.

And as for the two tune-ups nonsense, Ali had quite a few more rounds in the ring in the time leading up to the FOTC than Frazier did.

Frazier was also coming off a broken ankle suffered in 1970 and had other health issues not commonly known before the FOTC.

And I guess you believe that Ali spent zero time in the gym during his "exile", right?

But go ahead, swallow down the revisionist history like a good little boy.

Well it surprises me, considering how much crap Ali talked, and how much he told guys like D'Amato that Frazier was nothing, and regardless of his 'contender tune ups', he simply wasnt ready for shit, but did it anyways. I cant believe you fanatics are ripping me wide open over one sentence. I must have did real good considering no one has debated me over my other points of interest.

LOL, it was a stupid statement. I can't believe you're clinging to it. Ali belittled every opponent he ever faced. Are you of the opinion that he has never taken anyone seriously?