Ring magazine is officially lost it

And this is your proof that Fitz was washed up?

 

You got to remember that the ring changes editors and writers all the time and also the boxing journalists and prominent figures whose opinions they polled for their lists change as well over the years so it ain't really surprising that the results can change from one list to another.

 

I am correct yes?

 

Not in the first fight. Jeff knocked Fitz down in the second and twice in the tenth round, and seems to have gotten the best of it overall with a strong body attack. Without film, who can judge for certain.

The KO in the 11th was Fitz's fourth knockdown of this fight. On a modern points scoring system Jeff would have undoubtedly been well ahead going into the final round.

Fitz did get the best of it in the second fight until Jeff caught him and KO'd him.

 

But that's just silly, though.

Very few types of knowledge are as certain as mathematical proofs. Nevertheless, everyone makes assertions all the time.

If we needed to prove things to mathematical certainty in our daily lives, as you demand, we would barely be able to say anything. We don't even have mathematically certain proofs that Jim Jeffries *existed*, let alone how good or bad his competition was. ("Jim Jeffries existed" isn't a self-evident truth like "1+1=2". We just happen to have a lot of historical evidence that he existed.)

Furthermore, you've made plenty of assertions yourself in this thread that are not mathematically certain. That even includes the claim you just made: that people who assert things ought to either prove them or acknowledge that they are assumptions. That's an assertion about what the burden of proof ought to be. Where's your mathematical proof of this assertion?

It explicitly was the entire division in the simplified example that I gave.

Can I take it, then, that you would consider a division solely consisting of Arguello, Butterbean, and one other guy to be significantly inferior to our current division?

Possibilities aren't always likely, though.

It's possible Arguello in your example was an alien. Or a myth concocted by a media conspiracy to fool well-intentioned forum posters of the distant future. But neither of these things are likely.

This gets back to our earlier discussion about mathematical proofs and certainty. I don't require certainty like you do. I just want the best approximation. We can't *know* for certain that Marciano was a better fighter than Joe Grim. But we can make an educated guess that he likely was. And anybody who thinks Grim was better than Marciano is a wee bit eccentric.

Again, not to be a jerk, but these claims you're making aren't backed up by anything resembling a mathematically certain proofs. I don't think you're being consistent, since you demand mathematical certainty from your debate adversaries while eschewing it in your own arguments.

 

Right.

"How good was this fighter?" and "Did this fighter do everything possible to demonstrate his abilities?" are two completely different questions.

You can be a hybrid of Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson, but if your only opponents are guys fighting in their backyards a la Kimbo Slice, then your era hasn't given you the tools to prove your superiority. That may suck, but it's life.

 

If I'm reading @Kamikaze correctly, I think his argument is that 160-170ish pound fighters in their late 30s who lack access to modern PEDs generally find it difficult to win slugging matches with good heavyweights. That Fitz was able to continue doing so is evidence against the division as a whole at that time.

 

Correct, so Ruiz would not be a counterexample.

I don't think (?) I claimed that Jeffries's era was garbage. But if it's possible for us to have opinions about boxers' quality over time at all, then there should be non-circular ways of assessing eras.

Yep. Specifically to counter what I saw as abstract, debating point stonewalling from @janitor. He was demanding extreme levels of certainty from his opponents, while brandishing a sort of per se agnosticism about how good any heavyweight era is relative to the others.

My equally extreme example was thrown out to show that, no, there are criteria that you can use to judge eras. Whether fighters come in shape to fight 15 rounds. Whether they weigh over the lower heavyweight bounds. Whether there's a large talent pool. And so on.

Since @janitor is a wily and experienced debater in these parts, I felt it necessary to nail that down. We are not guessing in the dark. There are standards to judge.

Oh, it's been a really long while. If ever.

That said, fighters slightly larger than Arguello (Sayers, Goss) were near the top of the heap in the 19th century.

Of course, I agree. Head to head analysis isn't very good when evaluating greatness. The two should be kept separate, unless, I guess, the two fighters are really close in time.

 

Not exactly.

Jeffries seems to have controlled Fitzsimmons rather easily in the first fight.

In the second fight Fitzsimmons changed his tactics, and had a lot more success.

You could argue that he was winning the second fight, but of course it only lasted eight rounds.

 

I could point out that Jeffries has two victims on the list in the OP, while most of the men on it have none.

I think that their ranking of Corbett at 18 is unwarranted, but I can see the argument for Fitzsimmons at 20.

So is Fitzsimmons a good win?

Yes quite frankly, he destroyed the other contenders of the day, and he was easily the standout challenger.

 

That is a long philosophical conversation:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(philosophy)

 

"I think his argument is"

That is his argument.

"late 30's"

Yes. 36 and 39. How many quarterbacks win championships at 41 and 43 like Tom Brady did? Max Kellerman has predicted Brady going off a cliff for a half a decade now. Brady is an outlier. An exception to a rule.

"160 to 170ish"

Adam Pollack implies that Fitz exaggerated his weight down to puff up his rep as a giant killer. He supposedly was more around 180 against Jeffries. This somewhat weakens this argument. They did not weigh in back then.

What is obvious about Fitz is that unquestionably to an extent he was an outlier, like Brady. Do the usual cliches about age and size apply to him? Is it fair to Jeffries to dismiss victories over a guy no one else legitimately defeated over a 14 year stretch during which Fitz won three titles?

"non-circular ways of assessing eras"

What are they? Older champions prove an era weak? What about Ali in the golden era 1970's. Or Foreman in the outstanding 1990's. Smaller men being champion proves a weaker era? So the Willard and Carnera-Baer reigns were golden eras and Dempsey-Tunney and Charles-Marciano eras weak? Top men losing a number of fights? But all the losses are to men of the same era.

"Head to head analysis isn't very good when evaluating greatness."

That is my basic position. Accomplishment in one's own era is what matters to me. I think there are too many variables to judge on "weak eras" but defeating the best available competition is a different matter. Did the fighter meet and defeat the best out there? I think we can make a good judgment on that. And over what length of time?

 

I am aware. Your demand for mathematical certainty for a claim about boxing history is unreasonable by almost any standard, though. Notice that even in criminal law, which you article links to, you don't see that level of proof required.

 

Note that this is post PEDs. Archie Moore would be a better example.

That said, you're already in the position of trying to argue that Fitzsimmons must be an extreme anomaly. But he's not the only hard punching fighter of his size during this era. There's Choynski, there's Langford (a bit bigger than Fitzsimmons), there's Mitchell half a generation before, and there are others.

Also, if it's claimed that somebody is an anomaly, then you're already positing a less likely event to explain Fitzsimmons's performances. As the saying goes, when you see hoofprints, the first thought should be a horse, not a unicorn.

My understanding was that they at least would have weighed in for Fitzsimmons's bouts below heavyweight -- e.g., against Nonpareil Dempsey.

Do you have the quote from Pollack? I unfortunately have not read his Fitz bio.

The problem is that if you take your point too far, you'll conclude that you can't judge any fighter as better or worse than any other. But we obviously *can* know that some are better than others. If we couldn't, pretty much all of the discussions on this forum would be pointless, and judges couldn't score fights.

Small talent pools would be one indicator. Older fighters in the pre-PED era dominating a division would be another indication of trouble. Same with small fighters. The amount of time and resources available to fighters to train would be something. Fighters being poorly trained physically, a la Butterbean. Lots of fighters whose technique looks poor on film, assuming equivalent rulesets and decent film. Novices beating top fighters with minimal experience.

None of these are dispositive, obviously, but if you see a bunch of them clustered together, then you have reasons to worry.

We should look seriously askance at the heavyweight landscape Sullivan first encountered, for example: Joe Goss and Paddy Ryan at the top of the division, few fighters worldwide, boxing is illegal most places, Sullivan succeeding while often grossly out of shape, etc. That would be an uncontroversial example.

I basically agree.

To be clear, I don't think we have any amazing, highly reliable ways to judge eras' strength. Although I think there's definitely room for figuring out how to do so.

But we aren't completely at sea, either. We know some things about what makes a stronger or weaker era. We shouldn't turn a blind eye to these considerations, IMO.

 

I am not saying that I require that level of proof, though of course that would be the ideal.

My point is that people are making very broad assertions, and not offering any evidence to back them up.

We are here to discuss boxing history, and presumably to get as close to the truth as we can.

This means that introducing assumptions, and unsupported assertions, is simply bad practice.

In that hypothetical situation, I would argue that you had met your burden of proof.

You would have demonstrated a very small talent pool, and it would be reasonable to infer that the success of those three men, might be solely a function of the size of that talent pool.

I am not being offered evidence that falls short of mathematical proof, I am often being offered no evidence of any kind, or very circumstantial evidence at best.

If I asserted that Kamikaze had stolen the poor box from his local church, you would expect me to produce some sort of evidence of this.

If I failed to produce any evidence, then you would dismiss the claim on that alone.

I am being asked to accept, not only that some eras are vastly superior to others, but also that B or C grade fighters from era A, would beat the greats from era B.

It strikes me as being very reasonable, to insist on some sort of evidence for that.