As I say, it has happened. As you go through more and more divisions you'll see. Braddock didn't win because he was great. He won because Baer took the ****.
Must have been the Dunky magazine I was reading. Would certainly explain why Scott Harrison was above Sugar Ray Robinson on the all-time list. Who was consensus top at that time anyway? As Mr Kipling would say "the division was exceedingly shite".
Quite a lot better so:thumbsup the principle still applies though, you dont necessarily need a defining fight/fights to earn your place as an atg. Consistently defending your title by beating good fighters in dominant performances will force people to call you more than a footnote in boxing history.
Being the best in your division, is only the first step to becoming an ATG. After that u need dominance, which Wlad has And/Or A good record against a good set of fightes. If you get both of the above, then theres no reason why you shouldnt be considered an ATG. Wlad suffers due to not having well matched rivals, the closes thing he had was Haye.....and Vitali and Valuev
Agreed, Wlads 'dominance' has, unfortunately for him, never seen him beat the best fighter around......his brother! Still, I don't give him a free pass for it. And as Azzer has said, Haye, Peter, Ibragimov, I really couldn't give two shits where they were ranked, I know (by using my eyes) that they weren't all that. Do you know; there hasn't been a 'unified' Flyweight champ for nearly 40 years? The last one? Venice Borkhorsor, who probably just misses out on 'greatness'...although if anyone thinks he is then I won't argue :yep
I think martinez was top but i'll look in more detail when I get to it. Perhaps it does but is that a bad thing? A man campaigning in his division can only be expected to be the best there, anything after that is gravy as far as i'm concerned. These guys aren't gonna be atg or hof but i'm willing to call them great. Using cinderella as an example, he went in there and beat max baer against all odds; whether or not he was a journey man in the past, he was the best out there that night and I can't ask any more of a fighter. Still that's my definition, what's yours mate?
Great=Exemplary career with numerous fights against top opposition. Many fighters have had 'great performances'. For example, Chan-Hee Park against Canto. But his out of the ring antics and less than stellar chin means he fell short of greatness IMO. Forrest was great against Mosley, but not a great fighter. Great for me is 'one of the greats' and you have to be pretty special to attain that level, I don't chuck the word around loosely.
The term "great" is something that is measured through boxing history IMO. I'd really have a cut-off of point of 100 or so fighters that I would term great in that context. My criteria for entry on that list would rely heavily on competition faced and beat. Someone like Ricky Hatton I would term as world class for his era, but I would not call him "great" in the historical sense. There are different graduations of greatness of course, but I would not feel comfortable refering to both Sugar Ray Robinson (the GOAT imo) and Ricky Hatton as great, whereas I would feel alright calling Sugar Ray Robinson and say Tommy Hearns great because while there is a level or two between them in what I would term "greatness" its not wide to the point where I'd feel uncomfortable about mentioning them in the same sentence.