Is Bob Fitzsimmons Top 5 P4P?

Then why devote so much energy to the ridiculous tangent you went off on?

 

Sorry but when you deviate from the thread for no reason at all and spew a bunch of alternative history B.S. that even you dont accept it leaves one wondering why...

 

Because I'm aware that a different point of view existed and had had plenty of supporters, and I thought it had to be mentioned. But of course, you will only accept things that comply with your point of view. Such as, only articles that say that "when O'Brien was knocked down, a squad of police jumped into the ring and started beating Fitzsimmons into state of insensibility, while the referee was looking the other way, then they left the ring, the referee turned toward Fitzsimmons and counted him out, robbing him of all his glory" will be accepted as genuine by you, any articles that state that O'Brien was in good enough condition to continue the bout without the help from police must have been made up by his manager and himself, even if there is a hundred of different ones of them, each being completely different from the others, they must have hired a hundred of ghost writers to write them, it just can't be otherwise in your version of the world, because the articles were quoted by someone you consider to be heavily biased. When that same person is warning to doubt a writer who's saying bad things about Fitz, he must be trying to fool you, he can't say a single good thing about Fitz, impossible. What's he up to? Is that another way to depreciate Fitz, but I just don't understand how?

I can understand why so many people dislike you for the way you argue about anything. For the arrogant, negative, abusive, derogatory attitude, "I'm God, I'm infallible, I'm always objective, I know everything, anything that doesn't fit my opinion is BS by definition".

 

You know the reason why I like Adam Pollack's books a lot better than your Greb work? He could have looked up more primary sources than he did, in my opinion, like you had done, although I understand that to achieve the result in a limited time he had to sacrifice something. It's because he's providing detailed descriptions of different points of view, even those that seem to be obviously wrong or extremely questionable, he's providing the arguments about all versions of events he has found and is leaving it to the reader to decide which one he believes the most. He doesn't think himself infallible, he doesn't think that just because based on the evidence he has seen he has come up with some conclusion, it is the final, conclusive evidence of how things were. He admits the possibility that he may not know everything, that he may have missed something or drawn wrong conclusion about something. He's giving me, you, and everyone else an easy and accessible chance to consider the evidence he has found and evaluate it ourselves. I didn't have the same feeling when reading your book. Partially for the sake of keeping it within reasonable size, of course, with so many primary sources, you are omitting a lot of details, only giving your overview of them. But with that, whenever there's disagreement between the sources, you mostly mention it briefly, because you thought it was a wrong point of view, you didn't care to provide much reasoning why you thought it was wrong, to you it seemed obvious, so you mentioned it, dismissed it and moved on. Of course, you are offering anyone a chance to crosscheck what you have written, by providing the names of the newspapers and dates, etc. Something few of us can do for one reason or another, but, of course, "it's our fault, why should you provide us everything, how about getting our asses off the sofa and visiting the library and spending our own time and money on looking up those things ourselves? You could do that, why can't we?"

 

It could be said that wlad isn't the heavyweight champion because he doesn't have the WBC claim.

It could be said that John L was never HW champ because he didn't beat the coloured champ.

It could be said that Tyson didn't really unify because he didn't beat that Italian guy.

None of this means anything of course. A world championship is something generally recognised and Fitz is generally recognised as champion in 3 divisions.

Knocking out two men with valid claims to being the most talented in history at the time of his victory.

The obrien fight is debatable. As many fights in history are.

Achievement wise there are very very few you can say that achieved more than Ruby.

 

Just received that book today, and looking through the references I fail to understand why so many boxing writers from USA fail to go to their local library and request photocopies of reports from newspapers from the city where the bout had taken place, instead using only the newspapers that are available online at newspaper archives. I understand it when, like is the case with me, they live in another country and are physically unable to request any reports from newspapers that are not at newspaperarchive, etc., but the American historians/writers should be able to use interlibrary loans even if they can't visit libraries in other cities to do their research. Many of these writers I have in mind are members of IBRO, which as I thought was a way for historians from different cities to communicate with one another, where you could ask a historian from Philadelphia, for example, to look something up for you for a bout that had taken place in that city and send that information to you. Am I wrong?

 

For the first time in a long time I agree with you 10,000%. I said a long time ago on another forum that the limited access to newspapers online has made "historians" lazy and I stand by that.

 

jesus top 150 maybe if you are nice

 

So when do you next expect to see a fighter become the undisputed champion at middleweight, heavyweight, and light heavyweight?

We have been waiting more than a hundred years now, but I am sure that plenty of people could have done it.

 

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Lets say that somebody does the same today.

Make a case for them not being top five.

Go for it!

 

there's no set criteria on how to rate a fighter. he can be top 5 if u want him to be...... it just depends on the person making the list. i thought u knew that by now

 

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Lets say that somebody beat Miguel Cotto under a 154lb catch weight, then stepped up to cruiserweight, and knocked out Hernandez (that is selling Fitzsimmons well short, since he often had to fight guys over 200 lbs). Then late in their career, they step down and decision Stephenson.

I think that modern fight fans would be debating who else could be #1!