I think he's a little bit better than Cooney, but probably not enough to be placed in an entirely different category. Both men earned their ratings by beating deteriorated named opposition, both have relatively thin resumes with not too many fights, both burned out at a young age, and both are best known for gallant losing efforts to ATG's, so yeah..
Exactly. In fact, with Cooney, there's little doubt that he faced a very much prime version of Holmes. Whereas the Tyson who faced Ruddock was perhaps a bit sloppy and off his best.
Ruddock just did more. Ruddock has: Old Weaver, James Broad, James Smith, Old Dokes, Old Page and Phil Jackson. Cooney has: Fat Young, Old Lyle, Old Norton, Phil Brown. Just did more.
I think McCall gets in off Lewis, yeah. I think anyone who has a marquee win like that sneaks in, Douglas, Ruiz, Brewster and that golfer can't be far behind.
True.. Even if the Lennox he beat in 1994, wasn't the dominant version that he'd later become, it was still a huge win. I can remember as if it were yesterday, most people saw Lewis as the best heavyweight in the world before McCall sparked him and it was probably one of the top 5 biggest heavy weight upsets of all time.
I think Dokes is actually the only guy who was deserving of a top 10 rating at the time Ruddock beat them. (And Dokes was past his best and only become highly rated again due to a losing effort with Evander.)
He was. I remember ( vaguely ) the alphabet and ring magazine ratings for that year. Not in full clarity of course, but Ring had Dokes in their top 10, while all three sanctioning bodies, WBC, WBA & IBF had Dokes ranked anywhere from about 3 to 6. He was also keeping active since the Holy loss a year earlier. It was his devastating KO of Dokes that made Ruddock feared by a lot of people.
I reckon he did more, better than Cooney though. That's a harsh comparison for me...both of them would rank higher on...ability I suppose you want to call it than what they actually did and in that it's a fair comparison.
First off, I don't think being compared to Cooney is an insult, as he is never really given his due - but Ruddock does rate higher, even if they both fall under "resumes that don't match ability (shown primarily in step-up losses)".
Tough call. Those resumes all have very different strengths. Ruiz win over an aged Evander may well be the best win between the three of them. But that's also offset by getting sparked in an embarrassingly 20 seconds by David Tua.. Not to mention some of the most dull performances of all time.. Tucker had an impressive record until he reached the age where he could hang with Mosses, but also didn't have too many big wins of note, though he did beat Douglas and McCall who make your top 15 list on this thread.. I don't know if Cooney rates above either.