Overrating Past Greats?

Because past eras had greater fighters.

 

I SMELL ALT! Here we go again with this ****. This has to be Cerebral lobotomy or pimp Cawk. Mayweather is not the best ever p4p. Deal with it:deal

 

You are bound to have more great fighters over a period of decades (the past), than a single snapshot of time (the present).

 

The fights speak for themselves. Fights were easier to make back then, the elite fought each other constantly, taking more risks, leading to more high quality fights. Great fighters fighting each other 3, 4, even 5 times was alot more common. Today it is a rarity.

 

ofc its him, just wait for criticsm of some fighters soon.

 

Because boxing isn't great as it once was.

 

Because, once a fighter's career is over, and a few years have gone by, you can take a look at a fighter's entire body of work and the men he fought (whose careers are usually over, too) and make a pretty fair assessment of his standing in the overall picture of the sport.

You really can't do that with an active fighter.

Every era has boxers who people AT THE TIME thought were great, and after many years go by, and you view their careers as a whole, they weren't as good as they seemed at their peak.

I always go back to Roy Jones. When Roy Jones beat John Ruiz ... I read an article by a guy (now deceased) who felt Jones was the second-best fighter in history ... only behind Robinson. And this writer was someone who knew Ray Robinson and trained at the same gym as Robinson did.

Three fights later, after Jones struggled with Tarver, then got starched in two by Tarver, and then was dominated and then knocked cold by Glen Johnson ... no one on the planet thought Roy Jones was the second-best fighter who ever lived.

Same with Holyfield. When Evander first became heavyweight champ and he was defending against 40-year-old challengers like Foreman and Holmes, fans AT THE TIME ran Holyfield into the ground. They said he was an embarrassment. A blown-up cruiserweight. It was ugly. Most felt Holyfield was a JOKE as champion. One of the worst ever. And they said he was afraid to defend against the young guns like Bowe, Lewis, Mercer, Morrison, Ruddock, etc.

When Holyfield regained the title by knocking out Tyson, everyone did a 180. One publication (I believe it was Ring), rated Holyfield the third-best heavyweight in boxing history (behind Louis and Ali). A couple years later, after Evander lost to Lewis, Ruiz, Byrd, Toney, Larry Donald, etc., no one thought he was the third-best heavyweight ever.

In the end, Holyfield was considered better than they thought he was when he was first champ, not as good as they thought he was when he beat Tyson, but most feel he's a top 10 all-timer. (Some don't.)

Hell, I remember when Donald Curry was coming up, and people thought he was the next Ray Robinson. By the end, no one thought that.

Take Floyd Mayweather. He's unbeaten. He's won titles in all these divisions. He's made more money than any fighter who's ever lived. He could retire in two more fights undefeated and go down as an all-time great.

Or, Floyd could lose six of his next seven, get knocked out two or three times by guys who aren't considered anything special, lose all his money, and show up unmotivated and fat, and quit in fights against club fighters (like Tyson did against McBride).

That sounds like it could never happen, but actually the second scenario is far more common than the first (where he retires unbeaten and rich).

It happens. So, in head-to-head fantasy fights, people who have followed the sport for a while tend to side with people whose careers they can judge as a whole, because most (like me) have been burned by thinking some active guy is the best ... only to find out a few years later they were REALLY way off.

 

Did Sugar Jay get banned and come back as this guy?

 

I was doing a google search about boxing a while back and a forum thread from this site came up from around 2003. Everyone on there was saying Roy Jones was the greatest boxer ever, and pretty much all the stuff *****s say about Mayweather now. How times have changed.

 

Boxings not what it used to be

 

Not as many active boxers means a smaller talent pool

 

To many belts mean top fighters don't have to fight each other much or even at all

 

The modern view that some fans and tv companies have that once a fighter has more than 2 or 3 defeats he is somehow irrevocably tarnished

 

Way to many ****s declaring that boxers have glass jaws or no heart from the safety of the Internet