Would AJ becoming a 3x HW champ be more impressive than one continuous reign?

No, he lost to Ruiz and Usyk because he wasn`t that great.

 

It would mean more to be undeafted.

In this era when there are so many organizations, gaining or regaining a title is way easier that back when there was only one champ.

That being said, if Joshua cleans out the division, I'll be seriously impressed and he'd earn a spot in the HOF.

 

Sure I understand your point now. To have a perfect record is better than having a blemished one. I guess the issue has always been one of how do you assess greatness without adversity. Let's say Joshua did go undefeated whilst taking on the best he could, might that not be used as an indicator of a weak era?

 

Not if he gets it beating Hrgovic.

But if he unifies Vs the winner of Fury/Usyk and he's 3 times unified champion, then yes it's very impressive and shows a degree of resilience that proves he has a winners mentality.

 

Sure that can be argued for & in that case I would consider other factors:

1) How many of the guys they faced were ranked
2) How dominant were their wins (KO > TKO > UD > SD while taking the least damage & ending fights the quickest)
3) How much did they challenge themselves by moving up (to be fair this isn't available to HW's) or taking high risk low reward (may be because the other guy is a relative unknown in terms of name or is a bad stylistic match up or has size & reach advantages or home advantage) fights
4) How many times they fought in their career & for how long (more wins > less all other things being equal)

This is a criticism that Inoue gets, that there are no ATG's on his resume except an older Donaire or that talent is less in lower weight divisions (that is true but the flip side to that is that this talent more frequently fights each other due to less money in lower weights. Look at the 4 kings at 115 vs the 4 queens at 135/140) but in my books he has no way to ensure that Barrera, Morales, JMM, & Wilfredo Gomez are around for him & the next best thing he can then do is to ensure that he consistently fights top 10 guys, cleans up weight classes, & moves up to challenge himself.

Let's say he cleans up 122, does the same at 126, & 130 that's pretty massive even if he looks just as dominant because if he stuck around in 1 division like Ricardo Lopez you can say low talent division & that is why he was so dominant but how can you reasonably claim that 6 divisions have no talent (& if that was the case then why aren't other guys like Ioka, Chocolatito, Estrada etc doing the same?) instead of having a more reasonable interpretation that may be he really is that special. Also it is pretty f'ing hard to have 1 dominant performance after another against top 10 fighters even if they aren't ATG's because plenty of ATG's had losses, off nights or decisions that are questionable against fighters that may not be ATG's (e. g. Floyd against Castillo in their first fight)

 

Inoue just needs to keep fighting champs and knocking them out.
What happens to those fighters after happens.
Inoue is snatching the belts of these solid champs as fresh as theyve won them. Fulton could be a champ again, tapales could be a champ again, let them all show their worth.
Because Inoue is head and shoulders above them and moving on and upwards.

 

Lol

 

I guess criteria's (2) and (4) would be applicable. (1) falls foul of the weak era argument. (4) is a slightly difficult bench mark as frequency of fights for heavyweight champions seems to have fallen off a cliff in the last 30 years

 

Only partly because even in a weak era 10 guys have to be ranked top 10 & let's say you are the consensus # 1 guy, if you were consistently fighting top 10 guys in that weak era for almost every fight vs going to ranked #15 or #20 for half the fights then that should for count something

On #4 yes but AJ & Parker had been both active by HW standards last year, that's 1 way to stand out. I think inactivity is a problem across weight classes (except perhaps for below 135 which many people sh*t on) really not just HW & activity is 1 way to stand out. Right now for example a lot of people are saying that Inoue's 2 dominant win's counts for slightly more than Crawford's dominance of Spence when it comes to FOTY & P4P discussions

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But this is an even bigger problem when we go into historical ATG discussions because activity has become lower not just due to fighter's decisions but due to technological change. In the days when live gate was the only mechanism fighters had to fight way more frequently to make money so they sometimes had 100's of fights (which also increases the chances of losses because I don't care how good you are you are not going 200-0), then came radio, than came TV, then came PPV, & now we have app's + streaming to add to that. Expecting a fighter today to fight 20 times in a year because SRR did that would be completely unreasonable but if they want to stand out then they should at least be more active than peers in their era

 

Absolutely not. He lost, by knockout to a morbidly obese substitute then was outclassed by a built up cruiser where he had every home advantage. Then lost to him again!
Anyway it’s only alphabet belts, he’s lost, not the”WORLD” one!

 

You said word for word what I was thinking.

 

Tbf mate Marciano was technically terrible but he had crazy power especially with his Suzy q.

Which you had to survive 15 rounds of it.

I actually have it on tape where he fought jersey Joe Walcott and he got dropped in the first round and was being comprehensively outboxed until he literally comatosed him in the thirteenth round.

Absolutely bonkers.

 

Nope,

Quit against Ruiz. This is still only one one wheres the rubber match?

Lost to usyk twice.

Should have lost to Vlad but his old mate didn't want to stream roll his career.

Will get chinned when he fights someone who hits him back.

As someone else already mentioned never fought and beat a long reigning champion to boot.

 

Would a champion who lost every second fight but became world champion 10 times be more impressive than a world champion who won 10 straight and was only world champion once? My gut says no. This is why "three time world champion" doesn't carry the mystique that some people think it does.

 

It's just spin. All it means is he got TKO'd by a fat blob, then beaten by an old cruiserweight. Then he picked up a title again due to clever matchmaking and avoiding Fury and Wilder.