Rocky Marciano v George Foreman

3 years is generally about right for a true prime. But no, actually, the question is more complex than that.

In essence, nobody who fought Charles at HW fought the prime version, I would say. At LHW, I'd rate Charles as one of the single greatest fighters in history. He was a machine there. 3 wins over Moore is ridiculous. I've always said, it's basically like Louis beating Ali three times.

Also, the incredible footage of him at the weight. I've never seen high class technical boxing fought with that kind of swiftness at anything approaching the poundage. Marshall for sure played his part...but Charles is the star of those clips. He's my pick for #1 h2h at the weight.

Now, at what we'll loosely call cruiserweight and against genuine heavyweights he's still a monster up to a certain point, but he faces different challenges; guys more able to hold his power, guys more able to hurt him with single punches. That does - should - change the way a fighter boxes a bit.

So no heavy fought prime Charles in the strictest sense; i'm talking here about his heavyweight prime.

At heavyweight, I personally see a clear demarcation between his very very best - in and around the timeframe i've laid out - and the one that is suffering so much attention here. You and choklab want to call it an off night or a series of off nights. OK. At the very least, then, it should be agreed that he didn't have those off nights in what i'm calling his prime. We can agree to disagree, but agree that he became inconsistent. That will have to do. For me, however, the ATG machine that was Charles in his prime could defeat ATG fighters in close fights even when he had an off night. Or, he just didn't have one, which given his schedule, would be an incredible feat.

This is as clear as I can make it.

Yeah - he went from winning close to losing close. That, literally, can come down to two punches landed and one punch slipped. It's certainly true - inarguably true, I would say - that some small amount of slippage is enough to account for these.

Were it not for the fact that Charles had suffered other bad nights in this period, this would be worth exploring IMO. But as it stands, he does, so it probably isn't.

As I've already said, Charles remained one of the most difficult challenges for any 168-200lb fighter in this time. But really good guys were capable of beating him in this time-period and we know this because it happened. At his very best? Didn't happen, with the exception of Ray, in an incredibly close fight and he, by my eye, was a monster of a heavy.

That fighter there is no less than a 49% chance against any fighter ever in his weight range and he would be favourite (to me) in 99% of those fights.

I just can't make an similar argument for a fighter who lost to Johnson and the Cuban. I know Johnson was close, but it is my opinion that the guy who was beating up Moore, Louis, Bivins etc. was clearly tougher to beat. Ergo, primed.

But you probably use the Wills-Langford series to trail the rise of Wills and the decline of Langford. You also use Tunney-Greb to trail what happened with those fighters. I bet you use Britton-Lewis in a similar fashion.

It's possible to forge a contrary argument for Walcott-Charles, and this should be acknowledged, but the other way of looking at their fights (in the light of other results) is telling.

 

I would flat out disagree with this best-for-best, but heavyweight Johnson a better fighter than light-heavyweight Marshall? Absolutely not.

That'll do. If we agree he slipped physically by the time he fought Johnson, i'm happy with that.

 

Please don't interrupt when men are talking.

 

I don't understand what this means.

 

Any member can post anything they like at any time.

There's a hierarchy here though.

 

It's really not. Buster Douglas has a one-fight prime, basically. Joe Frazier 2 or 3. But that's not what i'm talking about here.

Also, certainly not seven months, off the top of my head it was more like 3.5 years, but i'll get to that.

For me Ezzard Charles was the best and the greatest LHW in history. What that means is the hardest to fight LHW in history, who would do best against the wider field, better than any other fighter of his poundage. It's speculative, but it's reasonable.

Ezzard Charles was not the greatest and best "cruiserweight" to have lived, nor at heavyweight. At cruiserweight there are a number of guys that should be favoured over him prime-for-prime, not least Marciano.

What is a fighter's prime? It is the spell in his career at which was the most dangerous. At 175lbs Charles is among the most lethal fighters pound for pound to have ever boxed. At unlimited, this is nothing like the truth. At cruiserweight, still very dangerous

Mid twenties is about right for this era, and absolutely not when he was 174lbs. I'm not sure what you mean by that? I think that Charles lost his best to the war years as much as any man did, but when he came back, that's when he became really deadly. He was unbeaten at and around that weight (where both fighters were in the 170-177 range) from 1944-1948. So four years as I see it. True, in this time he was dipping in and out of the HW division and remained enormously dangerous, but peer-for-peer, because he found the range easy to make, this weight range and this era was him at his most dangerous.

To summarise, a featherweight can fight a light-middleweight in his prime years, but if the fight is not at his prime weight, there are obvious complications.

In what sense?

This is what it boils down to. And that's all really. It was a great fighter starting to lose fights he would have won during a previous (heavyweight) prime. Certainly not worth pages of debate, and certainly not some mar on Rocky's legacy given the quality of fighter under discussion.