Is Dempsey top-10 HW on your all-time list?

We have looked at the resume argument, the head to head argument, and the historical impact argument.

I think that we should also consider the pound for pound argument.

No other 190lb fighter in history, has ever been able to demolish world class superheavyweights, with such terrifying efficiency.

 

And there lies the rub.

Whether or not a fighter is a top 10 ATG great or not can often rest on the criteria being used.


A h2h top 10 list is going to be different than a list which focuses on title defenses, and these lists are, or might, differ from a list that's based on the quality of the competition fought, or the amount of time a fighter was prime. Hell even the size of fighters can become an issue, think of Burns being a fighter Johnson beat and Vitali being a fighter Lewis beat, there's a huge difference between the two.

And then there's the p4p issue, as mentioned, I would rate fighters such as Dempsey, Marciano, Holyfield etc. far higher on a P4p list than I would on strictly a H2h list.

 

Only Willard would qualify today as a superheavy. Fulton was more a Dave Jaco-type stringbean.

My counter would be that never did such an era have such sh*tty superheavies.

 

What I mean is, regardless of weight division we had a prime great fighter in Tommy Gibbons. I'm not talking about as a HW, I'm talking about as a p4p fighting machine it was a very good victory against a very good opponent. He doesn't make my top ten at HW neither.

I thought the horse was flogged last decade

 

I rate h2h. Much more fun and easy going.

 

I don’t see the current crop of 190 pounders lining up to take on the B class superheavyweights, or looking particularly dominant against them when they do.

When you are a 190 pounder going up against a man that size, you are aiming to win somehow, not dominate him.

 

Dempsey is not a heavyweight lol

 

NO? Holyfield? Moorer? RJJ? Toney? Adamek? Haye?

 

The superheavyweights that they fought usually had the luxury of finishing on their feet, even when they weren’t all that good!

 

Such ****.

You attribute over simplified biases to people who were around the subject matter for years. It's not a comic book. Fighters like Sam Langford don't make bold statements like that for silly reasons.

Nobody receives the praise Dempsey got without being spectacular. You need to give the human race more credit in it's observational abilities.

How ironic will it be in 40 years when some kid laughs at you for saying Tyson was great. All he'll have to do is mention his embarrassing losses, use words like "drivel" to devalue your opinion, and mention how you only like him because you were young.

 

It is a pretty natural and universal tendency to rate higher those things associated with the one's own prime. I hope you are not contesting that.

 

The winning option in this poll has Dempsey rated highly. We are living in 2016.

Abe Lincoln is commonly regarded as the best president.

Jim Brown is in everyones top 5 of all time in the NFL.

Yeah, there is some bias when you live in the moment. But it's a small element of a much larger truth.

Tyson isn't great just because we grew up on him. He's great because he's great.

 

Actually, the majority opinion at this time 23-19 places him outside of the Top Ten. I have him in the Top 15 if that helps.

Resume to resume, heavyweight run to heavyweight run, victims to victims, Tyson's career is more impressive. He beat better true heavies and more of them.

 

Won't matter. That annoying kid will just keep talking about how he got KO'd a bunch, and that you only like him because your testosterone was at a certain level.

 

This. :deal