Joe Frazier- Greatest level of competition in the fewest fights?

Mathis was unranked.

 

How is a draw a gift??? If they were going to royally screw cummings the way easier thing to do would be to tilt one or two rounds in Joes favor and give him the win.

 

Jimmy Britt

23 fights. He faced :
Joe Gans x2
Packey McFarland
Kid Lavigne
Terry McGovern
Battling Nelson x4
Frank Erne

I'm probably forgetting a name or two too

 

Young Corbett111.

 

I think it was a going away gift for Joe to be honest. They couldn't really give Joe the win so threw him a draw instead. Better than going out with a loss imo.

 

Exactly.

 

They wouldn't have done that though, would they? I mean, they didn't do it for Ali against Trevor Berbick.

 

OR maybe they did Ali favor anything to get him out of the ring! He had no business fighting for years by that time.

 

Which doesn't add up. He was unranked according to the Annual Ring Ratings but he was fighting for the NYSAC title, the winner was getting the next shot at Ellis, he was 23 -0 (granted against weak competition ), and he was ranked 6th by the WBA when he fought fought Quarry the following year.

 

I think youre giving the sanctioning bodies too much credit. If they wanted Ali to retire they wouldnt have allowed this fight in the first place after his horrible fight with holmes.

Why not give frazier the boot?

 

Mike Spinks

 

I have actually thought about that, I think if they had fought before Ali was badly beaten by Holmes, he might have gotten a gift against Berbick. Like someone else mentioned Ali's time was long over and nobody wanted to see him in a boxing ring ever again.

 

You are right. I was giving the sanctioning bodies far too much credit, if there was cash to be made there they would have done it for Ali as well. The smarter play is to follow the money. The NOI had put the boot to Don King for trying to stiff Ali. As a result as the promoter alreadylosing his cash cow he didn't have the motovation to influence the result.

My favorite fact about the Cummings fight was an incarcerated Cummings suing ESPN for rebroadcast ing the fight claiming it defamed him.

 

Looking at Oscar's final record at 39-6, it looks pretty average but looking through it he did fight quite a lot of top names and high profile fights.

Jorge Paez
John John Molina
Rafael Ruelas
Genaro Hernandez
Oba Carr
Ike Quartey
Felix Trinidad
Shane Mosley
Fernando Vargas
Bernard Hopkins
Floyd Mayweather Jr.
Manny Pacquiao

Also fought faded versions of Julio Cesar Chavez, Pernell Whitaker and Hector Camacho.

 

Lennox Lewis only had 44 fights.