There was a time when some people considered Mickey the greatest fighter who ever lived. He seems to be lightly regarded here. Is he underrated?
A giant among men, fearless in his challenges over heavyweights giving competitive fights with great results whilst vastly outweighed. One of the most ballsy fighters ever he actually fought an aggressive fight against likes of Max Schmelling which is the equivalent of Canelo fighting Bellew today and taking the fight to him. ATG at welter and middle with an incredible resume.
You're right, when I was a kid 40 odd years ago he was considered one of the real greats. He doesn't get mentioned that much on here.
I'd say he is. He's a top 10 welterweight (I have him at 7) and arguably a top 10 middleweight too. He fought everyone, never ducked and like has been mentioned, competed against and beat men far bigger than him. He should be in most people's top 20-25 p4p all time.
To decide whether he is underrated or not, one has to do actual research (and that includes lots of bouts, not just several well-known fights). Anybody here has done that? If any people thought he was the greatest fighter who ever lived, they were ignorant fools, plain and simple. Not including his relatives, of course, who couldn't be objective.
I think the issue is, with fighters often fighting so often back then, underperformances would be more common. You could easilly cherrypick (intentionally, or just from poor research methodology), to inflate the fighter. Imagine you took Young Peter Jackson, and just focused on his draw and then subsquent win over Joe Walcott (both when he was champion), KOing Sam Langford, KOing Mysterious Billy Smith, KOing Philidelphia Jack O'Brien, beating Mexican Pete Everette. You make him sound like an ATG, but while he was good, he wasn't on that level.
He had some losses or close fights, one can't just ignore those when shaping an opinion about this or that fighter. It's also good to figure how he fared against this or that style/type of opponent.