Your Hottest Takes:

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.

 

I disagree that Huni and Wardley should be highly rated over men like Zhang and Joyce on the strength of regional accomplishments. Put it this way, if I asked you to compile a top five at heavyweight, I'd be very surprised if these two figured into your list. I don't have either one in my top ten.

On Whyte, he had already been passed over for Ortiz in 2018. Ortiz was absolutely a mandatory before the failed test put his status into question. That's the issue here. Why was Ortiz, as a lower ranking non-champion, given the nod over Whyte? I'm specifically referring to the time before the Wilder fight even occurred (for Ortiz), before he renegotiated with Wilder, and before Rivas and Povetkin (for Whyte).

Lastly, I can't tell if you're being facetious here, but Luis Ortiz was widely reported to have tested positive for what is, pharmacologically, first and foremost, a diuretic. Diuretics, when used in conjunction with performance-enhancing drugs, act as flushing agents. The specific drug Ortiz took, as a SIDE EFFECT, is known to reduce blood pressure, which incidentally is also sometimes desired to counteract the hypertension caused by steroid abuse. Ortiz also popped for nandrolone (an anabolic steroid) in 2014.

 

To be clear @NoNeck, I am commenting on the inconsistency displayed by the WBC, not backing Whyte nor targeting Ortiz.

 

Fine, I’ll check with Google.

Ortiz tested positive for HCTZ and a beta blocker. HCTZ is a diuretic (HTN med), but you can’t take it with a beta blocker if you have normal blood pressure because your pulse and blood pressure would go too low. You’d have shortness of breath. It would suck. Ortiz got cleared for this and was backed by the doctor who was treating him for HTN. The WBA dropped him as a mandatory, unfairly imo and likely influenced by Hearn, and he fought Wilder in a sanctioned fight, but I see no evidence that he ever was a mandatory. 240 pound black men who are pushing age forty have high risk of high blood pressure. Tony Thompson had the same issue.

In 2018, Ortiz and Whyte were ordered to fight a WBC eliminator for mandatory status. Whyte never came to the table. He fought Chisora and then further screwed himself over by testing positive for steroids against Rivas, which was later overturned and important in him finally getting his WBC title shot, which he got embarrassed in.

Hearn strikes me as shady guy in all of this. He briefly signed Ortiz to Matchroom and gave him crappy opponents instead of Joshua and Whyte. He then steered Whyte away from Ortiz for a chance at Wilder and went the political route instead. And he never put Whyte in with Joshua when the window was there for the rematch.

 

I wouldn't, though he has a puncher's chance. Truly a sniper, though what Tubbs and Rahman did can be replicated by a better, more accurate fighter with proper power. Corrie couldn't take as much as he dished out, though once again -- he could dish out a lot. Frazier from the Foreman rematch is a question mark, granted. Past it by all means.