Which Fighters Have Benefitted/Suffered The Most From Revisionist History Here?

Bert Sugar even said Carnera would have beaten the Klitchko`s!

 

Bert Sugar.....he was a sensationalism loving man. I often wondered what was in those cigars

 

Have you ever seen Reznick and Bert Sugar in the same room?

 

Benefit: Freddie Steele
Suffered: Tony Zale

 

Charles still needs a good bio written on him to be fully appreciated. Almost 1/3 of his bouts were held in Cincinnati, yet the recent bio on him used just 1 next-day report from local newspaper (Cincinnati Enquirer, May 6, 1947; two other issues were from 1961 and 1999, and there was listed one Cincinnati Post from May 12, 1947). "exhaustive research", "thoroughly researched", etc...

 

To be fair, I think it was more balance issues than chin issues. The hardest he was ever hit and the most hurt he ever was was against Arguello and he didn't go down.

The times he actually got knocked down he never looked hurt just off balance from his early round rushes. He was up immediately ready to go again as soon as he hit the floor.

 

Bernard Hopkins doesn't get enough credit for the Felix Trinidad win - I remember clearly at the time FT was undefeated, had just beaten De La Hoya, Vargas, Reid and had won a MW title by demolishing Joppy. Hopkins was 36 years old, seen as an old, journeyman champ who's claim to fame was winning a few rounds against Roy Jones. The majority of fans expected Trinidad to win by KO easily and then he would fight the likes of Roy Jones or have a rematch with De La Hoya.

Roy Jones' stock has risen a lot over the last 10 years or so. During the late 90's and early 00's when he was in his prime there was a tremendous amount of frustration and anger over his level of opposition and unwillingness to take real challenges. While that anger is still there to an extent it has faded and people are judging Roy's greatness now on his talent rather than quality of opposition.

 

Is that the Detloff one? I’ll cross that off my list then!

 

This isn’t true. Roy gets rated far lower nowadays (and rightly so) for example no one in their right mind has him in the top 10 at LHW and I think most people on here would have him outside the top 50 of all time.

After he beat Ruiz the LHW shambles was quickly forgotten about and he’d never been more highly rated. Nowadays, it’s acknowledged that many, many former middleweights beat half-decent heavyweight contenders, so it’s not even that impressive a win.

 

After the Ruiz win many were rating him as a top 10 ATG (absolutely crazy in hindsight).
Then after all the bad losses he was seen as a glass chinned fraud who while having tremendous athletic ability was a cherrypicker and ducker who was in the right place at the right time.

But as time has passed and over the last 5 or so years he's started becoming greater than he really was in many eyes again, maybe all those Youtube highlight videos have something to do with it.

 

You get two kinds of revisionist history on here, and it is important to make the distinction.

Some are merely saying what some people thought about the fighter, while they were active, and which has since been forgotten.

Others are putting forward an entirely new perspective on the fighter.

 

If the ‘many eyes’ are on ‘all those YouTube highlight videos’ that would explain why he seems overrated to you.

 

If that's aimed at me, I only said he ducked Burley, which has been said by loads of other people, and my entire point is that it doesn't stop him being one of the greatest.

If it's not, uh, have a nice day.

 

I guess I'm referring chiefly to the latter.

Trying to remember what people thought about something at the time and getting it wrong is called Roosterism.

 

Revisionist history isn’t always a bad thing either.

For example, there were plenty of fighters hyped at the time who, with the benefit of hindsight and research we can draw our own conclusions and put forth a case that it might not have been correct.

If that’s the latter of Janitor’s options so be it.