Unpopular opinions

The only problem with this line of argumentation is that you don't "play" boxing. It is only an athletic competition to a limited degree.

Do you really think that Joe Frazier, a man who for 4 years dominated the star division of a sport still at its peak, was among the greatest athletes of his era? How about Marciano? Monzon?...

Turn the argument on its head... Since boxing was still more popular (and paid better) than the NFL or the NBA in the 1970's, would one argue that those sports were deprived of superstars in Ali (who had the footspeed of a jr high girl), Frazier or Holmes?

 

I agree but I'm not sure that I follow how this is a problem with my line of argumentation. Maybe an omission though?

 

What is your point? Boxing trainers would go crazy for Iversons athleticism, but a high school basketball coach wouldn't salivate at a 17 year old Cassius Clay coming to try out for the team? You're joking right?

Almost every list I've seen so far has Ali in the top 5. Anyone can google this for themselves.

 

I was very clear in my point. The NBA and NFL are chock full of superior all around athletes. What don't you understand?

Nonsense. Maybe you're thinking of the "greatest athlete" lists that I specifically said I wasn't talking about earlier?

http://www.espn.com/espn/page2/story?page=degree/list_allaroundathletes

 

And for the record, no-- I doubt that a 17-yo Ali would drop jaws if he tried out on a top basketball team the same way that an Iverson would excite people at a boxing gym. Do you realize how many extremely fast, agile, 6'3 kids play high school basketball??

 

So a 6'3 guy can't wow people on the court? And yet a 6'0 boxer would have people drooling?

You are not convincing at all.

 

Hard for me to believe that this is a good faith response to what I've been arguing. If Iverson walks into a major boxing gym, he'd be regarded as having insane upside just off of his athleticism alone (until he demonstrates that he can't learn how to fight). The combination of his height, reach, balance, speed, coordination, agility, explosiveness, etc. would be jaw-dropping. Not the same with an agile 6'3 kid walking onto the court at a major basketball school. I'm sure most high school coaches would love to have someone with his physical talent on their team but it wouldn't be considered as jaw-dropping. That's no knock on Ali, it's just a reflection of the fact that the bar for athleticism and physical talent is much higher in certain other sports.
Probably my fault for bringing Ali and Holmes into this-- could have stuck with Marciano and Frazier, who you claimed were exemplars of athleticism.

Can't tell whether you've been intentionally trying to distort my posts/dodge my points or if it's just a matter of you not knowing enough about sports other than boxing. Like I said earlier, it seems like your fixation with classic heavyweight boxing has limited your appreciation of sports and athleticism in general. Either way, good day.

 

I think I understand your point, but I'm rephrasing it as simply as I can, to make it obvious how ridiculous it sounds.

Is that just a list compiled by one guy? I can hardly find anything on him. Also, look at his descriptions for his picks. This is hardly a serious list. Anything conducted by a panel of experts or anything like that? Or something with a more analytical base?

 

I think you lack the self awareness to see the irony in your post. When you talk about AI, you list all these good traits. Then when you describe Ali, you omit all that stuff. The bias is obvious.

It seems you are also arguing that other sports require better athletic traits than boxing? I think that is certainly an interesting topic, but again why? ESPN, the same source you used for you top 10 athletes list (although this was a panel, not one guy), has a Sports Skills study, where they find Boxing to be the hardest sport. The criteria being the athletic requirements to compete at a high level. They judge based on things like flexibility, hand-eye coordination, power, agility, etc.

Why would you take a shot in the dark, and assume what my level of knowledge is in other sports? Weird how they got Kellerman on First Take, even though he seems to also love boxing.

 

Morales won all three Barrera fights.

Floyd vs Castillo 2 was closer than the first fight.

Ali is not top 5 h2h.

Modern fighters are way ahead of old fighters.

Tyson KOs Lewis prime for prime.

Mexican boxers have underrated boxing skills.

Duran career is overrated.

 

Fine, I'll repeat something I wrote earlier: even if we assume that the activity of boxing has the greatest degree of athletic difficulty/is most athletically demanding, it does not necessarily follow that the best athletes pursue boxing or that people who box are better athletes/more athletic than people who do other sports. Drawing that inference is committing some kind of a logical fallacy that probably doesn't even have a name.

 

So you agree that boxing is probably the most athletically demanding sport. And you're saying the best raw athletes will find their way into other sports as opposed to boxing? I think it's an interesting discussion, but I just want to make sure that is what you're trying to get across. Because I think that it very much true today in America, but not so much in Ali's time.

 

I'm actually not taking a position on which sport is the most athletically demanding because I think they are far too difficult to compare. Way too many variables to come up with a sensible, coherent ranking, imo. Even within the same sports we have so much heterogeneity that it doesn't make sense to generalize. Some boxers succeed despite having limited speed, others succeed despite having limited power and strength, others are relatively stiff, etc.

But my point was that even if we assumed for the sake argument that the composite ESPN ranking was accurate, it does not follow that the best raw athletes become boxers. We can all agree that it's not the case today and I strongly doubt that it was the case mid-century either. There have always been so many reasons for promising young athletes to pursue other sports instead, even when heavyweight boxing was at the apex of American sports.

BTW, are there many examples of 20th century athletes who went on to enjoy highly successful careers in other sports when they found that they weren't athletic enough to cut it in boxing?

 

Just to put some things in perspective, this kid is a giant heavyweight, about the same size as Ike Ibeabuchi (I tried to save the link to start at 1:47):

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More raw athleticism, this time from a high school running back:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UU4VGXLHj18

 

Great athletes are a dime a dozen, great fighters not so much.