Heavyweight Division Depth by Decade: Let's Discuss the Rankings

70
50
60
90
80
30
2000
40
2010
To early for 2020 to rate. I know people will whine about 50s being so high but may I remind the public the most ranked fights occurred in that decade w multiple champs. Was competitive w a lot of quality HWs. They weren’t top heavy like the 90s or 60s. I’d put the top 20 of the 50s up against any era.

 

I'd rank the 80's a lot higher here. As much as we had a lot of fighters with somewhat scrapped primes, we still had some amazing fighters who I think rank definitively over most of the fighters of the 2020's and 1930's.
Lemme think a bit about my rankings.

 

70's
90's
80's
50's
60's
30's
2000's
40's
2010's
Scrapped 2020's from the listing cause we're a tad early on for that.
I think that the 80's, 50's, and 60's are really close in quality here.

 

90s
70s
2020s
50s
60s
80 (talent was as good as any, but a lot of fat 1-shot drug addicts who didn't fight)
2010s
2000s

 

70 had better fighters, but 90s had more depth, which was my understanding.

70s
Ali
Frazier
Foreman
Norton
Lyle
Shavers
Quarry
Young

90s
Lewis
Holyfield
Tyson
Bowe
Mercer
Moorer
McCall
Morrison
Tucker
Seldon
Ruiz
Ibeabuchi
Byrd

 

Hm. I think that it's mostly due to prime versions of the Klitchkos along with good title holders running over from the 90s (Along with decent guys purely from the 2000s).

 

If you're gonna name that many 90s guys, you definitely gotta go more in depth with the 70s. It's a lot more than just big names, and I'd say that it's pretty comparable to the 90s in depth, only with more quality.
As you said;
Ali
Frazier
Foreman
Norton
Lyle
Shavers
Quarry
Young
And then;
Bonavena
Chuvalo
Ellis
Bugner
Spinks
Evangelista
Tate
Mercado
Weaver
Holmes
Etcetera etcetera.

 

70s,30s,90s at the top

pre 1910s, 40s and 50s at the bottom.

Everything not in one of these 2 categorys is somewhere in between(10s, 20s,60s and 80s and 21st century).

This is generally how I view things.

 

Well, I don't think a lot of those guys were actually forces in the 70s capable of influencing the title picture, and it we are getting that deep in the weeds, there are literally dozens more in the 90s. Add..

Briggs
Golota
Grant
Hide
Bent
Maskaev
Rahman
Sanders
Damiani
Bruno
Mason
Norris
Ruddock

The woods are just a lot deeper.

 

Although many of the men I listed either had titles or fought for a title during their respective time they weren't capable of influencing the title picture? That's mostly due to the 70s having the most tightly kept belts of all eras, Frazier defeated Ellis to become undisputed, then Foreman beat him, then Ali beat him, and then Spinks beat him. Past that we only had Holmes and Tate, whereas the 90s had belts changing hands almost as bad as the 80s did.
If we're talking quality, the 70s wins out, and if we're talking quantity, 70s still wins out.
I could go on and on about the 70s and who they've got, I just kept it brief.

 

Not mentioned in the original post but the 1890's had as good a top 10/15 as most. I think the 70's great but maybe, maybe a little overrated while the 80's are underrated? 1910's poor, past the great 5/6 black fighters while the 1920's poor. The 30's had so-so top 10 but great depth. 1940not as mach. 1950's kinda had two groups the aging late 40'd fighters and the coming '60's fighters, overall quite surprisingly good. Marciano, Walcott, Moore, Valdez, Charles, Liston, Patterson, Machen, Folley, Johansson....60's had the best of some of these and the emerging group that Ellis won over, plus Ali and Joe. the 70's need no blowing up but some had seen slightly better days in the 60's and some would improve in the '80. I really think the 80's had the greatest depth, probably 30 fighters at near peak even if half of them underperformed. (90's realyy good top end, second tier decent too.