Agreed, post title reign he fought a whose who it seems I think sometimes it is easily forgotten that every fighter is protected at one time or another from certain styles......it is naive to think a successful fighter has not been navigated to the top
Tbf we do know that D'Amato tried to protect Floyd from Liston, but Floyd then took things in his own hands.
Yep, that's my thinking too. He just didn't look like a HW champion. Not in the least bit scary. And it doesn't help that he was crushed by such a scary guy as Liston. Truly "the baddest man on the planet".
I'm not saying you're wrong. The benefit Archie had over Floyd was that, as lt heavy champ, he was entitled to fight non-titles, whereas, Floyd could not. Take away those over-the-weight matches Archie engaged in and he has one of the worst championship reigns of all time. But he fought often ( 9 times in '53, 12 times in '56, 10 times in '58) and against high-profile fighters which obviously endeared him to the public and the Press. Also, Archie had the gift of the gab while Floyd was withdrawn. A lot of reasons the Press took to one and not the other.
I think it was the losses to Liston, and the way he lost is what most remember. Also running around in disguise after those losses didn't help his legacy if thats true.
I think that he made some questionable choices in terms of title defenses, but when you add up the strengths and weaknesses of his choices, he was by no means a bad champion. He had eight title defenses where he selected the opponent, and half of them were against the current #1 contender. Compare that to any lineal champion of recent memory.
The more you go into these things, the more impressed you have to be with Louis's reign. 12 years and didn't miss one nr 1 contender.
Wladamir Klitschko is rightly respected as a champion, and he defended the lineal championship 11 times, if you take him as lineal from the Chagaev fight. He fought the #1 ranked contender twice during this period, plus two additional men ranked in the top 3. That gives earlier title reigns some perspective!
Well, he only missed one nr 1 contender on the other hand, said guy just happened to be top contender for a long time. And his brother. Their refusal to fight each other will be probably be the subject of a long running debate.
If we say Lewis became lineal after beating Briggs, he defended against the other top man, Holyfield, the year after. In 2000, Grant was The Ring's top contender after Holyfield, whom Lewis had faced twice. After him it was Tua, with Ike in jail. Lewis defended against both plus Botha that year, so even though he got stripped by WBA for not defending against Ruiz, it seems hard to have too many complaints. Rahman was not top ranked, but Lewis would theoretically have had time to take on a higher ranked contender that year had he not lost. Not taking on either Byrd or Wlad in 2002-2003 is harder to justify, though.
Interesting that Mike DeJohn was brought up. DeJohn had the power to do what Ingo did in Fight #1...put Floyd on Q-Street early in the fight, keep him there, and win by TKO.
Correct. Yank Durham had a little speech talking about "We will fight the winner of the WBA Tourny"; plus NYSAC, and several other State recognized Frazier as champ...and then for the Dave Zyglewicz fight Frazier was recognized as World Heavyweight Champion by New York, Texas, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Maine and Massachusetts, as well as Mexico and Argentina. But those following boxing in 1969 knew the real fight out there was the showdown between Ali & Frazier.
Agreed. I am surprised at the revisionist history regarding guys like Patterson - or Primo Carnera, for goodness sake! Patterson had a mediocre championship reign, avoided most of the top contenders of his day and fought guys like pro=debuter Rademacher and journeyman McNeely.
Wasn't Patterson always high in rankings from a few decades ago? I doubt there's a single champion (people talk about much), that we aren't revisionist about. Revisionism isn't a bad thing.