Unjustified criticism of Fighters.

I suppose the area that really annoys me is when someone brings up a mythical matchup and they will match fighter A with fighter B, but always bring up fighter B's post-prime inadequacies. I will see someone match a fighter with Jose Napoles and say, so and so might take this on cuts. Like Napoles would bleed during the national anthem or something. Before his first fight with Backus - almost 70 pro fights - he was stopped once on cuts. That was it. No cuts after engaging Curtis Cokes (twice), Emile Griffith, Eddie Perkins, Carlos Hernandez, Bunny Grant, Adolph Pruitt, Raul Soriano, Baby Vasquez and Alfredo Urbina. The Backus fights were rough on his skin. He didn't mesh with the southpaw style and was cut in the first round in both fights after clunking heads. After that he would pick up a cut (I believe the first Lewis fight and the second Lopez fight) here and there but it was the Monzon fight that finished him and the Muniz fights that buried him. That was a long career before the skin let him down and should not be remembered as a bleeder.

Another one that annoys me is when a fighter suffers a severe KO that they were not noted for and the jaw just wasn't the same (O'Grady against Ganigan, Bramble against Rosario, Curry against McCallum and most noteworthy, Cuevas against Hearns). I will see a mythical matchup with some fighter against Cuevas and will see, "Oh, yeah, so and so would knock out Cuevas. Cuevas got KO'd by Herman Montes." I just shake my head and say to myself, 'Did you ever see Cuevas fight pre-Hearns?' You would need a baseball bat just to get his attention.

Anyways, that's just me on my soapbox.

 

If you understand that you can be unsure of rankings, you should know that saying that whoever is ranked at five is 'definitely' above whoever is ranked at six is a crock of bollocks. Which is exactly what you said. This, and this alone, is what I said was ridiculous.

And anyway, why are you arguing? It's obvious Foreman wasn't a top five heavy of the nineties.

 

You're calling my statement ridiculous while ignoring the fact he was far from "unsure" of his rankings. He was pretty adamant. That was my point.

Who do you have in your top 5?

 

I'm not talking about him at all. I couldn't give a **** what he said. You said: 'When you have a numbered list of a top 5, you are saying the 5th guy is

This content is protected

above the 6th guy, the 3rd guys is

This content is protected

above the 4th guy, etc. That's how rankings work.'

This is what I said is ridiculous. This is the end of this discussion.

The top four are easy to pick, obviously.

#01. Lewis/Holy
#03. Riddick Bowe
#04. Mike Tyson

Five could be a number of people.
Morrison should rank above Foreman. I don't see an argument as to why he wouldn't. Head-To-Head could be Tua, Ike (who accomplished more than Old Foreman did as well IMO), Mercer, Rudduck. Even Buster Douglas could rank highly given he has the best win of the decade and would beat all but three of the 90s fighters on that night.

I just don't see what argument you could have to have Foreman over all of them.

 

You missed the point 3x in a row. I said if you're unsure then that's one thing. The context of me saying "definitely" was in response to noneck. I am not saying that on any top anything list whoever is listed above the next is 100% superior to the one below no matter what, it's a case by case thing. So yes I'm gong to keep bringing up Noneck because there is a very specific reason why I said that in regards to my convo with him. Because he was adamant that you definitely can't include Foreman in the top 5 which implies that whoever is #5 is definitely above him.

Morrison has far worse losses than Foreman. When you say top 5 of the decade you have to include both wins and losses. Morrison had 3 very brutal KO losses in the 90's, including a completely 1 sided 1st round loss. In any case, I already agreed that Morrison could be ranked ahead of Foreman based on the sheer number of wins and the fact he actually beat him in the ring.

Douglas beat Tyson and then immediately lost to Holyfield in a one sided loss, then did basically nothing the rest of the decade. Sure on paper he has the best win but a single signature win isn't enough to make up for the mediocrity for the res of that time period.

H2H going to Tua is a strange claim since the best opponent he KO'd, Rahman, was a controversial cheap shot. Ruiz had not done much until the 2000's decade. He lost to Ike and Byrd. He did not beat any of the top 4 biggest names of the 90's (Holy, Lewis, Bowe, Tyson) so how can you remotely claim that he was the best h2h? Do you just mean based on the eye test? Even that's debatable.

I also said you could argue for Mercer.

Ruddock? Hell no, his best work was in the late 80's.

Ike had a close fight with Tua that could have been scored either way and a signature win over Byrd. That's it. Neither Tua nor Byrd were ever the best of the 90's, not even top 3. He never became champ either so in terms of accomplishments he is nowhere near top 5.

I was never claiming Foreman was a for sure lock in for top 5, my argument was it's not easy to argue that guys outside the top 4 (lewis, holy, bowe, tyson) were "definitely" above him for that spot. Which is how this entire discussion began, mind you.

 

You know my friend, I can really appreciate your post, great job.