Who had the better Career Resume...Liston or Johnson

Johnson.

 

Johnson has a big advantage in terms of depth and longevity.

In these departments he is only behind Louis and Ali.

 

it is possible that i 4got 2 include 1 or 2 names out of d list of mentions u made here , but then it's also possible that i still should not have .

I just don't feel like geting 2d depth of it now but suppose Johnson's resume should consist of : Jeannette , McVea (again , it's just a supposition) , O'Brien .

D size advantage Johnson had over Langford , Ketchell and Thompkins was bigger than what Liston had on Patterson .

Liston's resume is still what i mentioned which is still better .
Even if maybe (just a maybe) by a slightly smaller margin than i think .

 

You can keep repeating this mantra but it just does not play out in their respective resumes in terms of fighting true heavyweights in their primes.

 

Langford is a better name on a resume if we ignore all context, but a 156 pound Langford who hadn't yet beaten a heavyweight of note is not a better heavyweight victory than Patterson, Machen, Williams or perhaps several others on Liston's resume. And Johnson actually was a heavyweight by the day's standards at the time of this fight.

I hope this delicacy of logic is not too hard to grasp.

 

All things considered, the best individual victory is the prime floyd patterson destroyed by liston.

However if you drew up a list of the top ten from 1902-1912 (johnson's prime) he fought them all and by some reports beat them all.

You can criticise that individually the guys he fought when he fought them weren't as good as they would go onto be. And my only rebuttal for that would be an argument of synergy: the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts.

With that in mind, on the whole johnson beat the top ten of his era and liston did not.

Had liston also destroyed ingo before fighting patterson. Maybe doug jones as well then he'd have a much more sound argument.

 

I suppose we are giving him tons of credit for beating Fitzsimmons, also.

 

Johnson , no shrinking violet, declined to take any credit for beating Fitz ,Jack said he was far gone.

It's obviously true that McVey,Jeannette and Langford, were not prime when Johnson beat them.
It's also true that neither was Johnson. So ,maybe things are on a more level playing field than you suggest ?

 

If you go by historic impact, then Johnson takes the cake.

Based on most other criteria, I'd give it to Liston. Granted, Liston's title reign was short, although he was unlucky to run into the best heavyweight ever. By contrast, Johnson lost to one of the worst champions ever.

Mr. Johnson has a lot of big names on his resume, but none of them were anywhere close to their primes. Langford wasn't even a middleweight yet, Jeannette barely had hair on his balls, Mcvey dito. The Jeffries win is nice but fairly meaningless as he hadn't had a fight in 5 years time. What makes things worse is that Johnson avoided the 4 best challengers during his title reign (Langford, Mcvey, Jeannete and Gunboat bro). The opponents he did defend against were **** poor, even 40 year old Liston would've crushed them.

 

Chris, Langford scaled 156lbs for Johnson ,if we take his best weight as around 175/180lbs,that is 20/24 lbs below his best weight.

Johnson scaled 189lbs,Johnson said he was in the shape of his life for the Jeffries fight, he scaled 208lbs for that so 19lbs below his optimum weight.


Factor in that Langford was the more experienced fighter,with over 50 fights under his belt.


Harry Wills gets a ton of credit for beating a porky, 39 years old Langford, yet Johnson is castigated for beating a younger version.:huh


When Johnson absolutely dominated McVey, before koing him in the last round, McVey had allready stopped names like Kid Carter,Fred Russell and Denver Ed Martin..

McVey was no middle either ,he scaled 207 to Johnson's 190lbs


Jeannette was 26 when he first fought Johnson and ,27 for their last encounter.I think it's safe to assume he had pubic hair.

Jeffries was past it , but whose fault was it they did not meet in their primes?

 

Funny that Johnson get´s faulted for fighting smaller fighters but Liston does not. You might call that hypocrisy.

 

What other HW champ has to boast his rating by claiming credit for beating a 5'6 superwelter? Fact remains that Mcvey and Jeannette were both green as grass and were avoided by Johnson as they grew into their respective primes.

 

My stance is quite clear: he gets credit for the fact that if you drew up a top ten list of his prime, you'd find he'd beaten them all.

The whole is greater than the sum of it's parts and even if you're to claim each individual victory is ****, the feat of cleaning out a top ten certainly isn't.