Ring magazine is officially lost it

Each of us has made claims. Each of us assumed the burden of proof for those claims.

You claimed that Lenny McLean was an inferior fighter to Tom Cribb. Where is the evidence for this?

 

At best, the global sport running parallel to the hard man biographers demonstrates their insignificance *to global boxing in the 20th century*. It does nothing to establish McLean's insignificance *relative to Cribb's era*.

Give me positive evidence that Cribb's talent pool, Cribb's sport, or Cribb himself compare favorably to the Guv'nor and 1970s illegal boxing.

Furthermore, even your aforementioned best case scenario where you compare McLean to global 20th century boxing fails. At least according to your own agnostic standards.

How on earth would you know how many illegal boxing matches were going on in the 70s "on the cobbles," hm? Where is your evidence? I expect better evidence than for Cribb's England, since you claim we can't know much about Cribb's talent pool.

 

LOL I can't believe you are going the Mclean route. You are brave summer child.

 

"Foreman would destroy Hagler."

In a thread about Jeff and Fitz on which you maintain Fitz was a middleweight and therefore Jeff deserves minimal credit for defeating him, dragging up another big heavyweight and a middleweight leads to the obvious implication that Foreman to Hagler is comparable to Jeff to Fitz.

If that is not what you meant to imply, you should have considered that it is the plain implication.

 

Just asking for equal standards; that's all.

If Janitor wants to add the King of the Gypsies and Barry the Bishop to the heavyweight pantheon alongside Cribb and Belcher rather than abandon agnosticism, I shall not complain.

I hear Roy Shaw is waiting in the wings for his coronation as the next John L.

 

The strongest case that I could put, is that it is highly likely, as with Goss not defeating Fury and Joshua in the same night.

However, on our wider claims, you are the person asserting something, and I am the person saying that is is unknowable.

You might as well be trying to prove that a purple penguin, and a blue cat, existed in the 1800s!

 

Hush- If you nearly lose to a small MW you do not deserve to be mentioned along side real greats was my point.

 

You are such a back peddler.

 

Okay, why?

What facts -- historical, scientific, whatever -- can you cite to conclude that Lenny McLean being Tom Cribb's equal is "highly unlikely"?

I thought you just got finished saying that we can barely know anything about how good Cribb's era is?

We have both made numerous assertions in this thread. We each bear the burden of proof for what we assert.

We also have the obligation to be consistent, even if it might skewer a few sacred cows we'd rather remained intact.

 

We can make a fair guess how good McLean et al were relative to the best Queensbury boxers of their era.

You are free to argue that, but I don't think that you will.

That leaves them well off the radar for Cribb et al.

As for evidence of Cribb's talent pool, I can only give you what we have.

I am sure that I don't need to tell you, that some of his fights got more media coverage, than the Battle of Trafalgar.

I am also sure that I don't need to tell you, that some of his fights resulted in inns being booked up, in a 40 mile radius, and people sleeping in ditches.

While this does not conclusively prove that he was what we would consider a world level talent, it should at least leave you open to the possibility?

At the end of the day though, I don't need to prove it.

You have taken it upon yourself to disprove it, so go ahead!

 

OK, let's say that I put a pin in the Cribb McLean debate, by saying that it is unknowable, and we perhaps take it up later.

I will leave you to die on that hill.

Even if it is true, it doesn't help your core argument very much.

McLean might have beaten Ali as well by your logic!

 

Cribb called it "milling on the retreat."

Later used effectively by Sonny Liston, against Floyd Patterson!

 

"small middleweight"

I don't agree with this premise.

If two people don't agree on a premise, there is no where for a discussion to go. You base your case on a premise I don't consider accurate and so any argument you draw from it I find just as off key as your original error.

Anyway, thanks for the discussion.

 

Oh, no you don't.

You, sir, are a clever foeman, adept at playing with the burden of proof. But I wasn't born yesterday either. I shaped my question to avoid such shenanigans.

You are the one who wants to avoid the conclusion that the Guv'nor might plausibly be on the same level as Cribb. It's up to you to defend Cribb from parity with McLean.

And your attempt is, sadly, outrageous question begging, combined with an even more outrageous non sequitur. Your sleight of hand is twofold:

First, you say that *I* would never accept that McLean was on Ali's level. Well, (pardon me, but...) duh. Of course I don't. I have a sane standard of proof for such things. But you don't have my standard. You have what I submit is an extreme and arbitrary level of skepticism. You maintain talent-pool-agnosticism any time you can't get overwhelming evidence...unless the talent pool contains Lenny McLean. Poor Lenny can't catch a break.

Your second, more egregious problem is that your argument against McLean is just a disguised re-assertion of your original claim. You are supposed to show me that McLean is "probably" inferior to Cribb. But your argument is simply to note that McLean is inferior to Ali, and then...jump immediately to saying that this shows McLean inferior to Cribb, too! Your argument goes in a circle. It assumes ahead of time that Cribb is in Ali's league rather than McLean's, without ever proving it.

As to the stuff about Cribb's audience, that's a bit more like it. Hard historical evidence! So what kind of numbers would that translate to? It's you who need to do the historical spadework here if you want to bring Cribb "up to scratch" against McLean.

 

Just saw this response after I already wrote a long post. (Dangit.)

I have no problem with abandoning the Cribb/McLean discussion. But I must correct one Parthian shot in your post:

It's not *my* standards that would lead to McLean beating Ali. It's yours. I'm alleging that your arbitrary skepticism about talent pool quality leads to the absurd result that we have no idea whether Ali beats McLean.

That's my argument, anyway. I'll leave it to the readers to decide whether I was on the right track.