Where would you rank Roman Gonzalez on an ATG list?

1. Irrelevant, I'm talking resume not skill.
2. Adult males that size are very common in asia and latin america which is of course why they dominate those divisions. Your 2nd point is completely wrong most of these guys aren't monopolized by 2 or 3 shitty US promoters the top guys actually fight each other, unlike the higher weights.
3. Correct but irrelevant

 

It's resume built on a shallow talent pool.
Boxrec has 2200 active welterweights listed and 267 active minimumweight fighters listed. Compare small boxers to each other and enjoy their fights but it's a different ballgame.

 

It's about quality not quantity. Roman has beaten more top ranked fighters that's all that matter when listing pound for pound

 

you'd make a good politician.

 

While I agree to some extent that there are some stellar participants in those weight classes right now, the other poster's observation was valid to some degree. The problem with the smaller divisions ranging from minimum weight to about Bantam, is that they draw from a much smaller talent pool. You don't see very many combatants from places like Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia, etc.. Most men that small usually come from the Asian or Latino countries, which is fine.. Those countries definitely have talent, but like I said, its a limited pool, unlike divisions ranging from say featherweight upward where a great fighter can come from ANYWHERE. In addition you have guys in some of those smaller classes who have anywhere from 8-12 professional fights who breach the rankings and in some cases holding world titles or even at points deemed as the best in their class. You don't see anywhere near as much of that in the medium to heavier divisions. As also mentioned, its easier for someone to jump weight from say Flyweight to super flyweight because the leap isn't so far and the punching abilities of those guys isn't as intense. So yes.. While I rank Roman Gonzalez as being a truly exceptional fighter and concur that he is a future ATG, it's hard for me to rank him on par with someone like a Mayweather.

 

You hit on something I didn't even think about. The fact that there are less overall participants is probably one of the reasons that guys at the weight are not ***** footing around padding their record. 8-12 fights is how it should be for the most talented fighters. Except HW where guys naturally develop slower

Beating top ranked fighters is what makes a resume and at the end of the day thats your legacy

 

That isn't the way it generally works though.. The LESS fighters you have within a given group, then usually the LESS overall talent you have available, making it more possible for guys with 8-0 or 19-4 records to win belts and establish themselves as the best.. You rarely see that in the upper divisions where there are more competitors. Anthony Joshua is an exception.

 

It's a theory and one with some logic behind it. One might expect a bigger group of competitors, in a particular division, to yield a bigger talent pool within the same. But, as both the last decade or more of Heavyweights and the current Middleweight scene demonstrate (both divisions having probably 1000+ active competitors), this is and has not always been the case in practice.

Quality is quality, regardless of the size of the field it comes from. If we're watching talented fighters get their title shots early then it's because there's less milk for the cream to rise through; not necessarily because the class is too short on numbers to yield quality.

Moreover, where Gonzalez is concerned:- His career has now traversed four divisions, the current collective pool of which probably comes to over 2000 active Boxers, who have anything from 0-10lbs between them. Seems to me that, if you're fighting the best available opponents across different, albeit tightly clustered weight divisions, then you're expanding your reach for talented opponents. So, I wouldn't be all that sure, even if the theory did hold up consistently, in practice, that it could be so readily applied to Gonzalez, anyway.

 

I agree with you that Gonzalez has done enough to be deemed as a "great" fighter. But the congruency ends there.. Even if those combined divisions surmount to a sum of 2000 fighters it means little when each individual class only had a few hundred. And it shouldn't be ignored that most of these divisions under 120 lbs have few to almost no combatants from such established boxing countries as the U.S., Russia, Ukraine, England, Canada, etc... Your theory that fighters can win crowns and establish themselves as the best with only 10 fights is based on this notion that they don't have to wade through "milk" in the lower weight classes... Okay well let's eliminate the milk in some of the higher divisions.. Now Can you think of any 10 fight prospects who are suitable to challenge Canelo Alvarez or Ganady Golovkin, or Sergei kovalev or Tyson Fury or Keith Thurman ? I certainly can't. I respect Gonzalez for his high level activity, his willingness to fight the best in his classes and jump Divisions and of course his impressiveness on film. But a lot of those divisions are still pretty weak.. Not his fault though..

 

Not sure at the moment. This four-division champion stuff feels like hyperbole, seeing as modern boxing allows all sorts division-hopping. A win over Inoue putting him near Mayweather or Pacquiao seems a stretch, too, as I'm not convinced Inoue is some burgeoning great. He's looked quite good so far, don't get me wrong, but his resume largely rests on the Narvaez victory. And I do agree that Gonzalez's talent pool is shallower, even on the eye test alone. But he's certainly ambitious, talented--really, just about all you could want in a fighter, and definitely one of the greatest flyweights ever. I'd rate him higher if he could become "the man" at 118.

 

Less overall competitors has nothing to do with the top end talent. Less competitors is one of the factors for why you don't have all the record padding you see at higher weights which is positive. 8-0 or 19-4 champions is the way its supposed to be

 

and above 135 has almost no competitors from Asia or Latin America

 

I’m glad we can at least agree on Gonzalez being a great fighter. But, I can also see we are each looking at the approach to rating Boxers in the lower weight divisions through two quite separate and different lenses.

Granted, the objective logic in the numbers is there. Nonetheless, there are a couple of confounding variables I see in basing a line of argument in the numbers alone.

Firstly, as previously alluded to, we just don’t see a plethora of quality fighters actually shining through in some of the more heavily subscribed divisions - despite the statistical likelihood of more talent emerging from the greater pool of contestants.

Secondly, and with regard to your point on the lack of representation in the lower weights, from other established boxing nations - I can agree with this, to some extent. However, even then, take away the term ‘established boxing nations’ and you probably have a similar imbalance of representation, swinging the other way, in the higher weight divisions.

To what degree is Japan represented, through Middleweight to Heavyweight?
My guess is that it has a less than 1% stake in those divisions, while they probably have between a 15-20% stake within the region of 105 to 118.

Mexico is probably an even better example. A country with a rich tradition in Boxing and yet most likely subscribed in the lowest five weight classes, as perhaps the largest stakeholder, at much the same percentage as the USA has its lion’s share of the highest five. Mexico’s ‘establishment’ as a boxing nation is due to this competition in the lower weights; much like the USA have established themselves in the larger weight classes - where Mexico has a lesser presence.

Shouldn’t the higher divisions, therefore, be similarly as.sessed, due to the lack of demographic proportion in subscribership?


Getting back to the numbers - and the exercise you suggest - hypothetically removing the “milk” from these higher divisions - is an interesting idea. But, this approach is problematic, in that the imagined abstract cannot then reasonably be applied to the current real-world situation. The Boxers and their respective records that we try to envisage in these notional circumstances have been shaped in an entirely different environment. As such, we’re not going to find many, if any, 10-fight prospects - let alone ones, which would be considered ready to contend for a title.

Now, if in an alternate reality, the Welterweight division (for the sake of example) had had as little as, say, 300 licensed competitors for the last 10 years then do we think Thurman would have needed 20-plus bouts to land a title shot?
Likewise, would this small subscribership create a circumstance in which the “cream” rose to the top faster and earned their respective shots at Thurman’s title more quickly?
Would we, in turn, rate the quality, of both Champion and his Challengers alike, any less than we actually rate them in today’s 2000+ pool of Welterweights?
After all, Thurman is still Thurman.

If the dilution of the “milk” was actually removed then the whole landscape of those divisions would be changed, in such a way that Boxers we’ve never heard of before would quite possibly become marquee names; and, what’s more, might actually be solid, quality fighters.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not dismissing your take on things; more just putting an alternative view or three out there and posing several questions. Suffices to say that, while you make some very persuasive points, I am still undecided as to just how clear cut this matter is.

 

Who did you think won between Cuadras and Gonzalez? The scoring seems a bit off to me. I think a re-match is deserved here.

At this point in time, I'd Rank Gonzalez among the top ten best flyweights in history. Gonzalez is 29. This is approaching older age for a fighter 108-118 pounds. If he moves up to Bantam, he won't be as good.

 

Do you have Laila Ali as a top 20 all time great?