Final results, heavyweight all time great polls

I've finished posting poll threads on the top 25 HW ATG's. I picked 25 because it's a big enough but not too big number composed of the best of the best, and I think there is a fairly clear drop off afterward. There's always debate about what constitutes an "All time great", and I would argue the top 25 would be a rational line to draw, unless you want to be more inclusive and do a top 100.

We had real interesting poll results. There's a number of equally valid ways to reduce the polling information mathematically, so I'm just going to group fighters in general categories or tiers and list the votes they got for you to evaluate. Overall, I think the poll results were fairly good. I don't agree with them all, and in particular, the pre Louis era hw's got undervalued a bit in my opinion. But overall, the results were better than I expected and quite good imo.

So, again assuming that either Ali and Louis are ranked #1, and the other #2, I polled the other people I ranked as top 25 HW ATG's. If you think anyone was left off, feel free to pipe up. Some of my near misses include Max Baer, Ingmar Johanson, Tim Witherspoon. You can make a good argument for Chris Byrd as well. But like I said, top 25 is a good number to pick in part because you'd really have to be a revisionist history person to have any besides the group below substantially higher than 20-25.

Anyway, the tiers would be:

Consensus 1 and 2 Louis and Ali (not polled).

Consensus top 10 (more than half of voters voted that they were top 10 HW's). 7 HW's: Larry Holmes (44 votes for top 10, 5 votes for top 15, 2 votes for top 25, 1 vote for below top 25), Lennox Lewis (62-17-2-0), Jack Johnson (15-3-0-3), George Foreman (28-2-2-0), Evander Holyfield (33-14-8-3), Mike Tyson (4-1-0-0), Rocky Marciano (13-2-0-0)

Frequent top 10 picks (more than 25%, less than 50% pick for top 10)5 HW's: Vitali Klitschko (13-6-13-6), Jack Dempsey (7-6-2-4), Sonny Liston (5-3-7-0), Wlad Klitschko (35-21-10-5), Joe Frazier (1-2-0-0)

Consensus top 25 (fewer than 25% pick for top 10, but over half pick top 25)10 HW's: Ridd ick Bowe (3-6-16-12), Ken Norton (1-2-15-16), Gene Tunney (3-6-8-6), Floyd Patterson (1-3-5-4), Ezzard Charles (1-4-6-2), Tommy Burns (0-0-2-0), JL Jeffries (1-4-3-1), Jim Corbett (0-0-2-1), Jersey Joe Walcott (0-0-2-1), Max Schmeling (0-2-6-1)

Special category: JL Sullivan. Funny results, basically either got top 10 votes or was voted below top 25 (6-1-3-11).

Going through them, I probably should have bumped a couple threads that didn't have many votes and given Tyson and Marciano more time for people to vote on, but I wanted to wrap this up and probably won't have time for an extensive post like this for a couple days. Feel free to bump old threads and revote, but for now, this is how it stands. Overall, good choices people:good! I'll post my top 25 ranking in a reply to this in a minute, feel free to post yours too.

 

My own list:

1. Louis
2. Ali
3. Marciano
4. Lewis
5. Dempsey
6. JL Sullivan
7. Jack Johnson
8. George Foreman
9. Vitali Klitschko
10. Wlad Klitscko
11. Larry Holmes
12. Mike Tyson
13. Joe Frazier
14. Gene Tunney
15. JL Jeffries
16. Max Schmeling
17. Jim Corbett
18. Evander Holyfield
19. Sonny Liston
20. Floyd Patterson
21. Ezzard Charles
22. Jersey Joe Walcott
23. Rid**** Bowe
24. Ken Norton
25. Tommy Burns