Who is the most overrated heavyweight, Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson, Tyson Fury, or others?

Few people argue Ali's greatness rested solely on his skills. Skills =/= greatness. I can name a dozen quarterbacks who were more skilled than Tom Brady. I'd be pressed to name one that is greater.

 

That's ridiculous. Fury may be overrated, but Gonzalez was an average heavyweight. Wilder, Whyte and Chisora might beat him.

 

All respect to ETM, a knowledgeable member, but Gonzalez never fought with the heart and resiliency Fury did against Wilder. Actually, he never displayed the courage Wilder fought with in those last two Fury fight, either.

I do agree that Fury is without question overrated. But if he has a win over somebody like Joshua or Usyk in the future I'll have him in my top 15 ATGs for sure.

 

Joe Montana. Played in an era where you could clothesline a QB, rip his helmet off WITH head still inserted, then chuck it down the field and everyone watching would know it was just another play in the game.

 

How else aside from resume & career acheivments would you judge and rank someone p4p? Also not to sound rude, but you didn't post the list I asked for to see the supposed context that would clarify his resume.

 

His biggest hater could put him at like fifth. Wlad, Louis, Lennox and Holmes. They'd just have to argue he was prime vs Frazier and Norton, won a robbery vs Young, Liston dived x2, won two robberies vs Norton, he cheated with clinches vs Frazier and Henry Cooper would have KOd him if not for illegal tactics.

*These are not my personal opinions, obviously. The day I give Lennox credit is the day Inoue loses

 

Babe Ruth's legend fits his resume imo. He changed how his sport is played in a way nobody has changed another major sport since. It's like Hakuho or Karelin, insanely famous, but nobody else has been like them.

 

I take those into account, but also how skilled one is. And the truth of the matter is that the big guys/HWs are nowhere near as skilled as the boxers in the lower divisions like WW or MW. That's just how it is.

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- he got beat up pretty good against

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in the Garden early in his career but got the nod;
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was in his early 40's when he fought Ali. He went into their first fight carrying a shoulder injury and barely trained. Took a dive in the second;
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was a shot fighter. One year before his fight with Ali, he was shot with a .357 magnum by a cop. The bullet hit Williams in the stomach and lodged in his right hip. Williams had to undergo four operations in the next seven months for colon damage and an injured right kidney. The right kidney had to be removed in June 1965. Doctors could not extract the bullet, which had broken his right hip joint and caused partial paralysis of some of the hip's muscles, he also lost over 10 feet (3 m) of his small intestine, and sustained nerve damage which affected his left leg above the knee and caused it to atrophy as a result;
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went into the Ali fight with an injured sacroiliac joint. Plus he wasn't a natural HW;
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was a bum;
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- were B level boxers, good, but not great;
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only had a left hook and he was partially blind in one eye since the late 60s.
Frazier beat him in their 1st fight.
In their 2nd battle, Ali kept holding Frazier’s head throughout the entire fight (a foul but never any warnings much less point deductions from the referee) thereby taking away Frazier’s inside fight game, and got the decision.
In the 3rd fight, Frazier came in about seven pounds over his best weight and consequently ran out of gas. And Ali was about to quit in the 15th round. Had Eddie Futch not thrown the towel, Ali wouldn’t have gotten up and subsequently would have lost the fight.
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was never that great of a boxer and certainly not a very hard puncher. He is overrated simply cause he beat Ali and always had Ali’s number, giving him hell in all 3 fights.
Ali's fights with Norton could have been 3 losses. Broken jaw in the first fight, a decision in the second encounter that was “biased” for Ali since it set up a rubber match. In their final fight, it was dead even going into the fifteenth round. Norton took that round clearly but again, the nod went to Ali.
Bottom line is, where he not a favorite of the press and public, Ali could very well have more losses than wins against Norton.
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was an average boxer skill wise. Plus he lacked stamina.
Shavers only landed a few good shots. If he knew how to throw combinations and if he would have thrown more than 1 punch at a time, Shavers would have KO'd Ali. Basically, Shavers failed to go after Ali after he had him hurt. Plus his punching power is grossly exaggerated.
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is the only win Ali deserves credit. But the again, Foreman was slow and never that skilled to begin with, he just had power. Ali tricked Foreman, who punched himself out. And Foreman never landed any clean punches.

Also, like I said:

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He did not have an orthodox style and never learned the rudiments of classical boxing. He had many weaknesses and made many tactical errors in the rings: he did not know how to properly hold his hands, or how to duck (he pulled back or sidestepped), nor did he know how to parry or to block a jab. He didn't know how to throw a proper uppercut.
Technically, Ali wasn't a very good fighter, it was due to his physical gifts (speed, reflexes) that he was able to get away with things that would have gotten most fighters beaten up.

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I was at work, so I didn't have time then. I was talking about Liston taking a dive in their second fight. The motive is still unclear, but the dive is more than obvious.
Also, Ali had no idea Liston was gonna do it. He realized during the fight, and that's why he kept yelling: "Get up you bum, nobody's gonna believe this !"

 

We have no way of knowing whether Ali would have quit in Manila. There is nothing in his history to suggest that plus Frazier took a hellacious beating in the 13th and 14th round. It was the first time in his career he was backing up. He didn't even back up against Foreman in Kingston. Ali told his biographer Thomas Hauser , "There was no way I'd let Joe say I'd quit." This whole notion that Ali was going to quit was invented twenty six years after the fact when Mark Kram wrote Ghosts of Manila. Why didn't he mention it in his contemporaneous account for Sports Illustrated:

https://www.si.com/boxing/2014/08/11/si-60-thrilla-manila-muhammad-ali-joe-frazier

Ali was 35 and well past it for Shavers.

We can discuss how other boxers acquitted themselves at 35 when they were past it. As for Jones it was a hotly contested decision with the judges and a majority of ringside experts giving Clay/Ali the nod. I could go on...

P.S. If Joe showed up out of shape for Manila what about Ali who came in at 224 1/2 pounds?

 

I think Riddick Bowe could be the fourth name.
Two defeats against Golota would confirm that, but Golota is not a sportsman.

 

Hector had eleven bouts. He won one.

 

Only two things from your comment that I'd agree with or make no comment on as the criteria you have for greatness can be unique to you and I can't sit here and say the men you have in front of Ali are bad picks because they aren't.

With that being said, I can do just what you did right there and cherry pick my way through a fighters resume and easily make it look worse than it actually is, even if it isn't necessarily true. "Louis lost to Schmeling who was a league below him and his win over him is overrated because Schmeling was ancient for the time!" Or, "In SRL's biggest fight he lost but he clearly lost but the judges robbed Hagler blind!" What about, "SRR isn't the greatest of all time, he struggled with Jake LaMotta and got beat in his prime!"

Except when you actually look at those 3, you can see that for
1. Louis lost because he got exploited in a technical flaw and the rematch is at least a top 3 in historical significance at hw.
2. Leonard did not win a robbery against Hagler, it was a very close fight that fans see different.
3. LaMotta was significantly heavier than Robinson and was himself one of the greatest mw's of all time.

The same thing goes for your comment on the men on Ali's resume, here are the three examples I take the most issue with.

You act as though Liston was done even though after the second Ali fight he went 15-1 (14 KO) and still had enough viciousness to make Chuck Wepner say he made Foreman look like Mr. nice man (can't remember exactly what he said). And from now on, if a fighter is over 40 and they lose, it's nothing major just ignore what they did before hand, especially if it includes knocking out the reigning undisputed heavyweight champion in the first round, twice, which is something never done before or since.

Folley was somehow a bum yet he was ranked for over a decade and he somehow beat good contenders in Machen, Cooper, Jones, Chuvalo, and Bonavena.

Ali was suddenly going to go against anything he ever did because, "he said so!" He said he wanted his gloves cut when he was blinded against Liston yet what happened? Dundee pushed him out! Even against Holmes, Ali wasn't going to quit, if it were his words over Dundee he would have likely died in that ring due to his misdiagnosed Parkinsons and the medication he was taking.

The last thing I have to say is in relation to this statement

Now this is something I'm not actually sure about, was it ever recorded Ali said this with actual evidence? I ask this because Ali wrote several things that directly contradict this statement in his autobiography, writing about what he thought of the fight saying, "Why did he fold up? I believe all the pressure, the FBI, the rumors of assassination, and the rifle-carrying policemen, all directed at me, somehow transferred to Liston. He must have felt that somebody really planned to do some shooting. I believe while he was looking out around the ring at all those bulletproof shields, he thought if somebody was out to shoot me, I’d be dancing and moving so fast they wouldn’t be able to get a target. That they might miss me and hit him. All I know for sure is that I hit him hard enough to knock out any man." Something I've just been curious about for a bit.

 

Ali was so far ahead on the cards in Manila when they stopped the fight. I wish I could find the quote where Ali was interviewed about the fight. He said he kept telling himself, "I'm the champion of the world and nobody is going to take away my title".

 

I think elite punchers tend to be more overrated than their more rounded, boxing type counterparts.

This is due to the dramatic and emphatic nature of the KO puncher’s victories.

Look at the incrementally rising odds in favour of histories HW KO Champs - often peaking as at the very time of their downfall - constituting many a major “upset” - as perceived.

However, these “upsets” often involved many more rounds than the punchers were generally accustomed to - especially as compared to their most resolute KO victories.

As such, far more questions were put to the punchers, questions they didn’t necessarily have all the answers for when the time came.

The obvious irony here (imo) is that in the very brevity of their successes, the punchers are not demanded to answer questions that are otherwise put to boxer types over a durations that are typically that much longer.

When punchers are assessed, it seems less is viewed as more when really, less is simply less. Take Tyson vs Spinks. How can that fight be confidently upheld as Mike’s absolute pinnacle when the window for assessment was a mere 91 seconds or so?

In the same realm, Ali looked brilliant for 3 rounds vs Williams but what if the opponent doesn’t fall - would Ali fold like a cheap suit?

Well, we have proof over multiple fights that Ali didn’t and wouldn’t fold.
Particularly against Terrell who Ali repeatedly rattled with volleys exactly like those put to Williams - and Ali consistently kept the jab and volleys up from round 1 to round 15. In terms of “proofs”, Ali’s career literally left no stone unturned - his rating couldn’t be more solidly founded.

Finally, the most impressive blowouts (or should I say WOW KOs) by punchers are often inappropriately applied as viable approaches inducing similar outcomes against the vastly more talented HW ATGs in history -

Tyson KO 2-4 rounds over Ali or Holmes? Never going to happen. And when it doesn’t happen, Muhammad and Larry absolutely take over - and there are mucho proofs to support this conclusion.