Top ten head to head heavies pre-Dempsey

didnt johnson duck langford once he was champ

 

Ali didn't win a round against Berbick.
Sullivan was gone when Corbett got to him ,even Corbett admitted it.

 

Being kind you might give Ali a share of a round against Berbick, point being to state he nearly won the fight is ludicrous.
Arguable rounds would be the 3,6,8.imo.

Vague? Well let's be more precise , Sullivan had suffered a total physical collapse and had been brought back to fighting shape by Muldoon for the Kilrain fight in which he scaled 198lbs. Blurry photos of the bout show he is carrying some suet around his mid-riff.

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Three years later he comes out of retirement ,a month off of 34 years old ,and now a stone heavier at 212 , to take on a trained to the minute Corbett . Five and a half years previously Sullivan had struggled to a draw with Patsy Cardiff after badly breaking his arm. it was never 100% again.
I think we can say he was "gone".

 

Marquess of Queensberry rules only.

In their primes :

1. John L. Sullivan
2. Peter Jackson
3. Bob Fitzsimmons
4. Jim Corbett
5. Jim Jeffries
6. Jack Johnson
7. Tom Sharkey
8. Charlie Mitchell
9. Sam Langford
10. Harry Wills

 

Yeah.

 

Mitchell might be too high.

 

Mitchell knocked Sullivan down though. That's more than Langford could do to Jack Johnson ...

Anyway, I take Mitchell out, I'd probably put Joe Jeanette or Tommy Burns on the list.

 

Hard to see without footage and McGrain's list looks fairly solid. I think boxing as a sport gradually progressed and became more competitive. Sullivan himself stated boxing had moved on in the Jeffries era.

I'd rate Corbett above Jeffries though given an old Corbett ran Jeffries very close. The black dynamite crew are very much busier and more experienced boxers.

I think Wills may well have been the best HW of the lot, or not, but it's a possibility.

 

Well i dont intend to watch the fight again but if i remember correctly, rounds 1 or 2 were also pretty close werent they? So, potentially that would have Ali getting the nod in 5 of the 10 rounds.

Looking through the forum for some guidance, i see that back in 2010, some guy called mcvey said:
I gave Ali the 5th , and the 9th , and a couple of the early rounds, could have been scored even, imo.

Adding these two rounds to the 3,6 and 8 arguable rounds and two close early rounds, then this means that you yourself might have conceivably scored the fight for Ali or even (in the course of just two separate posts). I would say that is pretty close to winning the fight

In seriousness, i guess my point was that Ali was a lot better against Berbick than Holmes and not as far away from some of the best fighters in the world. I certainly dont think that you could find ten guys that would have beaten the Ali that fought Berbick.

Thought to be fair, i am not sure ten guys existed that could have beaten Sullivan when he fought Corbett and both were so far from their prime it is irrelevant. To be even fairer, i cant even remember how we got on the topic.

 

If I said that I must have been pissed. Ali was pretty pathetic in the fight imo, he pushed his right hand for the most part.
The Sullivan who lost to Corbett would probably have lost to,Godfrey, Choynski, Griffin,and O Donnell , possibly Childs, and almost certainly to Jackson,imo