Your Hottest Takes:

Micky Ward was the rare example due to some rare case scenario where a fighter was better at 35 than at 25.

 

It's been hard to for me to get into weight classes under lightweight, just not interested in seeing fighters that small

Ali shouldn't have brought race and politics into boxing. He may have had the best HW resume but Frazier was the better man and Ali never decisively beat Frazier.

Buster Douglas is underrated and the Tyson he beat was still good enough to beat most active HWs that night.

 

Race and politics were always into boxing, Ali didn't bring it into it.

My hot take would be: Tokyo Douglas still could beat even '88 Tyson.

 

Whitaker decisions lightweight Duran is acceptable,I only give 4 fighters a chance to beat Duran at lightweight anyways.
Ike Williams
Benny Leonard
Pernell Whitaker
JCC Sr

 

At the lower weights this is true the striking is there to set up takedowns and their boxing is awkward by itself. HW MMA though has been very boxing centric because your typical HW fight is two guys trying to knock each other out right away in a few minutes. Tyson Fury learned this difference the hard way.

 

Most of us fans know eff all about what we are watching, don't understand stylistic nuances and don't have the verbal/writing skills to relay accurately what's happening in the ring even if we do understand what's going on.

 

Who is your 3rd or a third you would accept?

 

There are inconsistencies with your post.

1. Dubois becoming champion shows that a governing body is not motivated by financial gain.
2. The WBC currently has Kabayel as interim champ, a guy who you named as someone who should be highly ranked.
3. The WBO has Parker as interim champ, another guy who you named as someone who should be highly ranked.
4. The WBA and WBC have Banavidez as interim champion. He's not ranked by the WBO and IBF he's a champion (aka glorified nunber 1 contender) of the other organizations.
5. Canelo did not move up that I'm aware of. Haney is the WBC number 1 contender at 147 which I think is consistent with their rules. And Crawford has not moved up that I'm aware of.
5. You brought out he blanket term "corruption'" but failed to mention that The Ring was once involved in a ratings fixing scandal has been passed between boxing promoters over the last decade, not impartial owners.
6. As for Whyte, I've written long posts on that and do not feel like digging them up. He basically ducked Luis Ortiz, whom he needed to beat to become a mandatory (which is distinctly different from a number one contender). He additionally had a failed drug test along the way and got knocked out by Povetkin. He's an example of a guy who didn't do what the WBC asked of him and it doesn't matter if fans in Britain felt that he'd "surely done enough."

 

I have Lewis at third. There are also two guys who won about twenty title fights each. And there's another guy who won ten title fights in a row, was the first to unify the big three and lineal (and he did it in separate fights) and later won another couple of titles. There's also a guy who put together a nice title reign and retired undefeated and another guy who had a nice reign and capped it off by winning the biggest heavyweight fight in history. I'll stop there.

Now who is the two time champ with the huge win who failed to have a notable reign? Is it Foreman or Hasim Rahman?

 

I am going to make a fairly confident guess that's Holmes W Kiltschko Marciano Tyson Frazier as the 5 you hint to.

 

Agreed on Foreman not belonging in the top 3 (top 5 is generous and rather reliant on criteria that would not go on to be widely accepted), but to come up with a description that would make one wonder whether it's a bout Foreman or Rahman is extremely reductive, if not outright petty.

Foreman's both reigns were extremely notable if not outright extremely famous, despite being short. Demolition of Frazier during the Sunshine Showdown, taking the heavyweight crown outside of States to evade taxes, demolition job on Norton after he went 24 rounds with Ali, winning one bout and dropping a split-decision against arguably best looking post-exile Ali. Then culminating in one of the most famous fights of all-time in Rumble in the Jungle, which was one of the very, vert few fights broadcasted in Soviet states like Poland, the second one being Hagler-Leonard. George's first reign, build-up to Rumble, and the fight itself produced We Were Kings which was a highly acclaimed, Oscar-winning documentary about the fight. His second reign is self-explanatory. A masterpiece in self-marketing, if a tiny bit of smoke and mirrors. China would not pay Rahman millions to fight Tyson like it was willing for George getting into the ring with him. Foreman essentially embedded himself into the American pop-culture during that time.

Rahman's Lewis-Sanders career is curious at best compared to Foreman, though I agree with the general point, that pragmatic numbers don't favor George.

 

I actually think I’d make Sanders the favorite over Norton, Moorer, and rematch Frazier in separate bouts. I also wouldn’t be surprised if he beat Frazier when he had the belt.

As for Foreman’s championship in the 90s, he’s also the only guy at heavyweight I can think of to get three title shots in a short span without beating a single guy in The Ring’s top ten. I don’t think he should leapfrog ten plus spots up the rankings for knocking out Michael Moorer while being old and down on the cards.

 

Dubois becoming champion is an example of the IBF having to adhere to their guidelines at the expense of their own greater credibility, which is implied in my post. I agree that there was reason within their rules for the title to be vacated, but if it comes down to a choice, which was the context of my original comment, you can only go along with this ruling if you think Dubois should be champion instead of Usyk.

Ok, by what fair metric is Huni more accomplished than Zhang or Joyce, then? You can go a long way down before coming to Justis Huni or Fabio Wardley as number one contenders.

Canelo moved up from middleweight, hence why the middleweight championship is vacant. Crawford moved up from welterweight and Haney from lightweight. The current titlists are arrayed in the top five of The Ring in their respective divisions. I prefer that ranking to having Bentley as number one contender.

I don't deny The Ring having their faults. Never claimed them as being close to the paragon (again, this is in the post you quoted). I don't recall the exact occasion you speak of, but I'd venture to say the same could very possibly apply to any one of the other bodies. The alphabet orgs receive direct incentive in the form of fees- that's why the WBC has an interim and a silver belt- The Ring does not.

Finally, I was careful not to refer to Whyte as a mandatory. Whyte became silver champion in 2017, was officially listed as the WBC number one contender, but was never installed as a mandatory challenger. Ortiz, therefore, was a lower-rated non-champion (who also turned out to be on drugs) receiving a mandatory title shot before the newly crowned silver champ. The WBC ordered the eliminator with Ortiz AFTER the Cuban had already lost to Wilder.

Some YEARS later, Whyte was upgraded to interim status but was again passed over for Ortiz. All of this occurred before he met Povetkin. I personally don't care whether Whyte's done enough to earn it. I am commenting on the WBC not Dillian Whyte.

 

Huni and Bentley both hold lesser belts for the organization that ranks each highly. Huni isn’t truly number 1 though, since Parker has the interim belt and imagine holds that cards for getting an Usyk fight or full status. Zhang and Parker have both taken loses recently so I don’t see why they’d be ranked highly.

I’m not going to dig into it again and get it exactly right, but I believe Whyte had two separate occasions to fight Ortiz and didn’t do it on either. He would’ve been mandatory had he won either. I think he and Hearn went with Chisora on one of those occasions and possibly Rivas on the other. He tested positive for steroids after Rivas. Ortiz got the title shots as a sanctioned opponent rather than a mandatory, which makes sense considering that Whyte didn’t fight him. Ortiz also didn’t test positive for PEDs during those years. He tested positive for beta blockers, which are hypertensive meds that screw up athletic performance, and was cleared.

Ortiz also tried to step in for Povetkin in the rematch with Whyte and again got declined in favor of the corpse that eventually showed up.

If Whyte had won an eliminator and not tested positive for steroids, he would’ve shared a ring with Wilder or at least Fury at an earlier date.