Disagree. Ray Robinson Ali Duran Leonard Whittaker Jones Jr These are just a handful of the many boxers clearly more skilful than Mayweather. No way is Mayweather top 10 in that regard, or any other regard for that matter.
Absolutely. Styles evolve and improve over time. That's why you watching fights from the 30s looks so different to watching fights of the 90s. And Mayweather had one of the most dominant styles of the last 25 years.
Very reasonable. The width of skill is on the decline IMO though, just the shortage of the fight length. There's no "final argument" though. Ray Robinson Eder Jofre Roberto Duran Pernell Whitaker Ray Leonard Kid Gavilan Charley Burley Archie Moore Willie Pep Barney Ross You could easily exclude him.
Anyone who agrees with this is delusional.. Floyd fans are just simpletons how can you look at the context of his resume and say hes one of GOATs ... He's a cherry picking fraud. You demonstrate skill in the ring when you fight top opponents in their prime. Which Floyd did very little of, and when he fought tough opposition he imposed various conditions..his best wins are Corrales, Castillo and Canelo. Corrales and Castillo are always mentioned as elite, but they're absolutely not. Canelo is a good win regardless if he was green. I can never understand the mindset of Floyd fanboys, clearly delusional.. That said Floyds defence is a joy to watch.
Thanks for asking this question because he's fits comfortably in the top 10 pure skilled boxers. No the greatest fighter ever. For a number of reasons but the man's boxing brain is elite. He will always find a way out of difficult situations. Top 5 in my book.
Agree on Whitaker, But Jones Jr window of greatness was so much shorter by comparison, and against much lesser competition Duran did have a great style and would have been a great clash of styles vs may, but I would pick may on this one till I could actually see the fight. Leonard's another great one, but I have to be honest, about a year ago I purchase a DVD set of his entire career include several of his amateur fights, and after watching every fight of his career, I came away a little underwhelmed...his blazing hand speed combos that you see on the highlights were actually few and far between, or sporadic to say the least, and he rarely dominated any of his opponents outside of may be Davey Boy Green, pretty much all his big fights were life and death struggles Clay had a great style at HW, against bigger, slower plodding guys, but I don't know how well that would translate P4P wise...how many fast handed guys with power that could move did he actually beat? And of course SRR, had a masterful style, with great beautiful combos, but again I go back to who he was fighting...he did beat the best of his era for sure, but boxers today look nothing like boxers from SRR era, and are not nearly as flat footed, reason being more athletic guys have come in and replaced them
The question wasn't if he's the GOAT. He isn't for a number of reasons including the cherry picking that he did when he had the ability to do so. Canelo has 43 fights when Mayweather took him to school. Calling him green then is desperate. Corrales was an undefeated knockout machine when he faced Floyd. Zab was another good win where floyd had to make adjustments against a different southpaw. ODLH was giving Floyd problems, then floyd took over. Don't forget that he took Ricky Hatton's confidence.
Clenelo was green because of those 43 fights, 90% of them were bums. He fought Mosley's corpse, a super blown up Josesito, and then should have lost to Trout. Corrales was 168 pounds at the start of training camp and couldn't really make 130 anymore. Plus he had bronchitis and was mentally messed up because of the assault charges he was facing in court the next month. Zab had just lost to Baldomir and was at best a dangerous gatekeeper.
Going life and death with ATGs like Duran, Hearns and Hagler should not be held against SRL. Mayweather would have probably been beaten by all three prime for prime. Frazier is a very underrated boxer. He had a better skillset than many great middleweights.
You've missed out a lot of context here. Calling Canelo green at this stage is far from desperate and is actually logical. It's not just about how many you have fought its about the quality of opposition , which up to the Floyd fight was severely lacking. Canelo didn't have much of an amateur career and his best wins up until Floyd fight was Trout, a fight he very arguably lost, 40+ shot Mosley, shot Baldomir. If it weren't for Trout Canelos resume up until this point is borderline Wilder quality. Even with Trout it's terrible. And not only this Canelo has clearly evolved as a boxer and the nuance in his skill is far more developed than when he was in the Floyd fight. This isn't arguable. Look the hype around Corrales is ridiculous, he had some good wins but he was a limited slugger and you can see that if you watch his fights.. His strategy against Mayweather was incredibly low IQ. What? OLDH cwas 34/35 and clearly aged.. Come on seriously?! Hatton was a 140lber and moved to 147lbers. This is not nitpicking this is simply stating how it actually is and how Floyd is a fraud.