Better resume/greater fighter: Floyd Mayweather or Barney Ross

First, let’s be clear you’ve already conceded the biggest point. Your original argument implied that American fighters were simply superior because they kept producing most of the world's best boxers. But now you’re admitting that other countries were able to catch up and produce elite fighters like Duran, Monzón, Arguello, and Harada. If greatness was possible without American infrastructure that proves the point: it was always about who had access to opportunity and resources, not some inherent national superiority. You’ve moved from arguing “American boxing is objectively better” to arguing “America had better conditions,” which is a very different, and much weaker claim then the absolute objective claim you were making about American boxing being inherently superior.

Second, you’re trying to confine the conversation strictly to professional boxing, but when we talk about Soviet and post-Soviet impact, the amateur ranks can't be ignored. For most of the 20th century, the Soviet bloc wasn’t allowed to turn pro yet they dominated the Olympic and amateur scene for decades. From 1960 to 1988, the USSR won 14 Olympic golds in boxing compared to America’s 10, and topped nearly every World Championship medal table. Soviet fighters consistently crushed American amateurs at a time when the U.S. had a massive head start. You can’t just hand-wave that away because it undermines your argument about the superiority of American boxers.

Third, the post-Soviet pro scene has existed for only 30 years, compared to over 100 years of professional development in places like Mexico, Italy, Japan, Panama, and Puerto Rico. Yet despite that massive gap, they've already produced names like Usyk, Lomachenko, Golovkin, Beterbiev, Bivol, and the Klitschkos, genuine pound-for-pound elite fighters across multiple weight classes. You're stacking 30 years of post-Soviet output against a full century of Latin American and European history and then acting disappointed that the raw numbers aren't identical it's an apples-to-oranges comparison. Considering the limited time frame, what these countries have accomplished is actually remarkable. Dismissing it simply because it doesn't perfectly mirror the success that took other nations a century to build is a flawed and unfair comparison.



Fourth, you’re cherry-picking the cream of 1960s–80s Latin American and Italian fighters (Duran, Laguna, Cervantes) and ignoring the very real mid-tier.

• Betulio Gonzalez (Venezuela) was a talented flyweight but had an inconsistent title reign and lost major fights.
  
  
• Ernesto Marcel (Panama) retired early with a good but not great résumé.
  
  
• Miguel Lora (Colombia) was good but never dominated the division.
  
  
• Alfonso Zamora (Mexico) was exciting but collapsed the moment he fought true elite opposition.
  

The 60s-80s weren’t wall-to-wall legends. They had their Duran and Monzón but they also had dozens of guys no one today talks about just like today.

Now, on the “death” of Panama, Venezuela, and Italy yes we can admit they're not producing the talent they once did, but you ignore the new powerhouses that rose to fill that vacuum:

• Japan produced Inoue, Kazuto Ioka and Junto Nakatani. Japan had champions before (Harada, Shibata), but its modern output is more consistently high-level now even if you can argue they don't produce as many fighters.
  

• Mexico had greats like Olivares and Zarate earlier, but modern Mexico produced Canelo Alvarez, arguably the best fighter of the late 2010s, and continues pumping out champions across weights.

• The UK always had boxing, but now it’s producing far more world champions across multiple divisions; Fury, Taylor, Sunny Edwards, Josh Warrington, etc. Far deeper than just the Cooper/Minter era.

• The Philippines produced Manny Pacquiao, an 8-division world champion and the greatest Asian fighter of all time and Nonito Donaire, a four-weight champion with a twenty-year elite career. In the 60s-70s, Filipino boxing was not anywhere near that level of global prominence.

In short: yes, Panama, Venezuela, and Italy declined. But countries like Japan, Mexico, the UK, the Philippines, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan rose to fill their place. The scene didn’t collapse it shifted, as it often does in global sports. And while you're right that Uzbekistan hasn’t produced a truly great pro yet, their professional scene is still young, and they already have several promising fighters rising through the ranks. Who's to say they won't produce all-time talents given enough time? Comparing countries that have only had a few decades of professional development to ones that had a century-long head start is an unfair standard.

 

Yeah Mayweather is a top 20 fighter probably. He can fight too. You Greg and George have great lists to go with Mat's.

 

You've entirely misunderstood the point. The point is America is the adopted home of pro boxing; which is why all the vast majority of champions, and most major fights have taken place there (at least before the Saudis got involved). This isn't arguable. It's just not. When America is interested in boxing, boxing is at its best. If you made a list combining the ATGs from every countries except the USA, that list would still be less impressive than the list of ATGs from the USA. By a distance too. And what's more, is that the vast majority of those guys from other countries, wind up having to go to America either to prove themselves or to spend their career where it's more lucrative and where there's better competition.

This is really basic boxing history. And I'm not even American

You absolutely can just wave the amateurs aside, it happens everyday Nobody cares who the amateur world champion is, nobody cares about gold medalists who never turned pro - or indeed, gold medalists who turned pro and didn't amount to anything.

And the irony here is amazing. You ruled out an entire era of pro boxing just 2 pages ago because it's barely filmed yet you're trying to prop up the less regulated and barely filmed global, amateur scene just to help your point

You've literally just proven this entire paragraph useless in your second point. Former Soviet Countries had infrastructure for boxing, or else they wouldn't be the amateur powerhouses they've been for decades. They also improved as countries in general - like the vast majority of the world. Their 30 years as pros is backed by decades of boxing culture and infrastructure. If anything, they should be held to a higher standard than the countries who got into pro boxing with zero infrastructure, and much worse living conditions.

I can't tell what your point is here. Are you saying these guys weren't great? You do realise that proves Ioakiems point, not yours right? I'm not really bothered about that debate, but you are wrong about three of the four.

Betulio Gonzalez is a top 15 flyweight of all time. Charting him up as just a talented but inconsistent flyweight is asinine. He was at the heart and centre of the deepest flyweight division of all time.

You're especially wrong about Marcel if you're categorising him as 'mid-tier'. He is arguably the best featherweight ever, and to put it into perspective, there has been precisely zero fighters from former Soviet countries who were as good as Ernesto Marcel. Zero.

Miguel Lora was a phenom, and a better resume than everyone today except Choco, Estrada, Usyk & Canelo. He wasn't merely good, he's one of the best bantamweights on film.

They aren't consistently putting out high level fighters though? They've had 3 in 10 years and one of those three is completely unproven. Compared to the 60s, 70s or 80s, outside of Inoue, Japan is in a significant lull right now.

But that's just it, all countries should have more champions at more weights because there's more champions and weight classes. The level Mexicans who are champs today, were contenders in the 60-80s. Mexico has been a power house since the 60s, and had the odd guy before that. It's not new and it's not taken anyone's place.

This is just marketing. The UKs talent right now is dire outside of the heavyweight division. There's no fighter in British boxing today who was as good as Walter McGowan or Alan Rudkin. I even heard it said the other week that Nick Ball is our P4P #1.

That's two fighters in 20+ years; 3, if you add in Gerry Penalosa. That's not a boxing powerhouse, at all. In the 20-40s, you had nearly a dozen ATGs from the Philippines such as: Little Dado, Young Tommy, Speedy Dado, Little Pancho, Small Montana, Pancho and Panchito Villa, You also had Elorde shortly after, the country's second best ever.

It isn't just Panama, Venezuela and Italy which have declined. Most of Latin America has declined, and we've more or less lost Cuba completely. And Mexico, Philippines, Japan and the UK are not new editions to the sport, and they're producing less great fighters, and less overall quality today than in years past. While I agree, there's still a lot more to come from the Soviet countries, from what they've given us so far, they've not even covered the loss of Cuba imo.

 

This isn't even worth breaking down.

50 fights in a year is harder than 50 fights in 20 years. Duh.

Modern fighters absolutely do have worst stamina, though. Everything you mentioned simply doesn't matter. Old school fighters were better conditioned and it not even arguable. Get Canelo to fight 45 rounds lmao.

I'm convinced you don't even know half of these buzzwords you keep typing about modern training, especially when you're summarising old school training as "running in the mountains". With all this marketing you've fallen for, I've got a really nice bridge to sell you.

Lol at me being nostalgic for something which happened 50+ years before I was born. The real problem here, is your recency bias and what appears to be a fascination with Eastern Europeans.

 

@Ioakeim Tzortzakis and @George Crowcroft should be getting paid for the lessons they're delivering in this thread. Some great posts, gents.

 

One of the most casual boxrec warrior takes I've seen in a few years I actually felt like responding to this because it's so bad. You also obviously know nothing about Asian boxing.

Lurk 10 years.

It's an alt mate. Has a very similar writing style and viewpoints to a certain poster who has suddenly barely posted in a while, all the while becoming extremely active themselves. I don't think you're actually gonna get anywhere with this debate.

 

Seemed that way to me. It does remind me of when I'd school Mendoza.

 

Not who I was thinking of, but those were the days

Now, is GGG greater than Chang, little Crowcroft?

 

I don't think TheMaster is Mendoza, tbf. He just reminds me of him (not a compliment, if you're reading this btw).

They were the days, indeed mate. GGG vs Toney, Ggg/Chang or the endless Vitali and Wlad debates. What a time to be alive. Especially with him sending me memes

 

The war carries on.

 

Whilst the topic of the thread title is reasonably debatable - ok Ross currently leads 26 to 10, but multiple posters, myself included, have commented they've voted for Ross but consider it close - some of the side debates on various issues of boxing history haven't been a war, they've been an utter one sided obliteration.

 

I did warn him