Sonny Liston or Wladimir Klitschko who rates higher as a all time heavyweight?

There does seem to be strong affinity for eastern Europeans by a few here.

 

The referee looked at Bethea's mouth, saw it was a bloody mess, and stopped the fight. Multiple reports confirm that Bethea lost seven teeth.

"Vone announced he was retiring Bethea because seven teeth were knocked out in the fight."

https://ibb.co/VbVP0JL

 

They didn’t have fluoride in the drinking water back then.

 

Pinky knocked a guy out with a jab. Buster floored a guy with the jab. Wlad never done either and he fought heaps of undermatched soup cans.
Even in the Peter rematch Wlad was draped all over him like an octopus.
If you have to make excuses then it only re-enforces my claim. He either has an atg jab or he doesn't.
Theres no caveats such as he had a better jab against this guy or at this other point in his career.

Holmes , Lewis , Louis ,Ali ,Liston had a great jabs ALL throughout their careers
Anyway the data doesn't lie. What fight is the best example of his atg jab? Waiting on an answer

 

Apparently Wayne Bethea is still alive. Someone needs to track him down and ask him about Liston (for the 1000th time in his life).

 

Buster jabbed Tysons head off. WK couldn't do the same to Sam Peter to save his life.
He clichéd more than he punched him.

This proves buster had a better jab than WK.
He doesn't even have a hight light reel on YouTube.
I wonder why

This content is protected

 

Lol at earlier in his development. He had 47 professional fights when he first fought Sam Peter.
Excuses excuses.
Robert helenius didn't need Manny Stewart to completely shut Peter out. Peter couldn't get near him and was battered from range

 

Just because Pinklon and Buster had single moments where they knocked someone down with a jab doesn't automatically make their jabs better than Wlad's. That's cherry-picking isolated incidents versus evaluating overall effectiveness.

You want the best example of Wlad's ATG jab? Watch the Chagaev fight, where he established total control with it. Or look at the Byrd rematch, Sultan Ibragimov, or Haye fights - all masterclasses in jab control. Against Rahman, his jab systematically broke down a former champion.

What's even more impressive is how effectively Wlad's jab worked against southpaws like Ibragimov and Byrd - something that's notoriously difficult for orthodox fighters. Most great jabbers struggle against southpaws, yet Wlad completely neutralized them with his jab.

The '47 fights' argument ignores context - Wlad completely reinvented his style with Steward. It's like saying Foreman wasn't great because he lost to Ali, ignoring his comeback. Ironically, you mentioned Lewis who also didn't have a great jab before developing it with Steward - the same trainer who transformed Wlad's jab.

As for Peter, the Helenius comparison is flawed - he fought an out-of-shape, worn-out version of Peter who was in much better condition against Wlad.

If the jab is measured by its effectiveness in winning fights, controlling opponents, and sustaining championship success, Wlad's jab stands with the best. There's a reason he was nearly untouchable for 11 years straight.

 

Lmao, the irony.

 

Absolutely Glass… similar to Holmes in his time Wlad was “The man” and everybody knew it, politics make things tricky and semantics shouldn’t barrier us from common sense… If Dempsey can be considered the champ despite avoiding / missing Wills and Gus Lesnevich can be champ despite avoiding Bivins then why not Wlad for missing his own brother LOL or Holmes with Page etc sometimes a champ just “ducks” someone there’s better money elsewhere, slave contracts only on the table etc the people elect “The man” in those situations… at least that’s my silly opinion I don’t know my boxing history really.

 

You have a point or just want to act smug?

 

I think I agree. Most concepts in boxing history, including the canonized ones, are pretty crude. There's not much consistency or rigor to them except as broad guide posts for how the fans typically reason. Compare the question "Who's the heavyweight champion?" to "Who's the Pope?", and the former starts to look so vague as to almost disappear into a cloud of exceptions.

You seem a clever chap, and I've no doubt that you will continue to work on puzzling the championship question out. But I don't think you're going to get an airtight answer that makes sense. More like a fuzzy, champion-shaped tradition that's been rolling through history like a snowball, picking stuff up and dropping it as it goes.

The category that makes the most sense to me, in the sense of having any pretensions to objectivity at all, is "Who was the best fighter in the world at time X?" In some timeframes, it's pretty clear (pretending that none of the fights are flukes) because there's one fighter who beat up all the other ones in a particular period of time. In others, it's not.

I would think that crowning Langford retroactively because an ABC belt said so would actually go against what I see as your strongest argument for listening to the ABC belts. Langford never competed for the belt, and never tried to get it (since it didn't exist.) Neither did his competitors try for the title. So you don't have any level of competition guaranteed by the title.

I think if the occupants of Ring's top 10 for each month (say) chronically and habitually got pulverized by unranked guys in the following months, you'd have evidence that Ring's appraisal system sucked.

That said, y'know, I'm not entirely sure that it would be easy to evaluate a fighter even retroactively. We all seem to think we can rate people correctly, whether we're talking Ring rankings or whatever, but then people end up getting their predictions wrong extremely often whenever it comes time to put our evaluation skills to the test in an upcoming bout. If I reach back through time and decide Ali should be ranked below Frazier in 1972, it would seem that I'm making the same kind of judgment as a guy who rated Fury above Usyk before their first fight. The Usyk/Fury guy didn't know how their fight would turn out, true. But then again, I never got to see what would've happened if Frazier and Ali rumbled in 1972.

 

I'd considered mentioning the dental hygiene angle, but didn't know enough about public health in that period to say for sure.

 

TBH that discusson made not a lot of sense to be because it is comparing Liston's tomatos to Wlad's potatos.

Wlad was champion already deep in the "Alphabet Soup" era.
Liston was champion when belts meant something.

On one side it is kinda more difficult to claim "undisputed" or "unified" status, when everybody around carries a belt and there is so much politics and manouevring titles around.
On the other side, during the "Alphabet Soup" getting a Belt sometimes is ridiculously easy.

Had Liston fought during the "Alphabet Soup" Era he would probably become champion 1-2 years earlier. No need to wait until Floyd got tired of running on his bicycle,