Worst boxer you'd pick to be P4P #1 today?

I mean Usyk and Crawford are incredible, so is Canello although less so IMHO. You need someone pretty amazing to be better. I even think there's a possibility Crawford upsets Mayweather H2H.

Maybe Ray Leonard could beat Crawford and Canello, but neither are a given and I certainly would not bet my house on either fight

 

In an era with Canelo, Bivol, Canelo, Inoue, Nakatani, and others, you want me to pick the worst to be P4P #1? What's that mean, picking Ray Leonard instead of Ray Robinson? Lol

 

Think tactically here people.

Don't go after teh strongest weight class, go after the weakest.

Find the weak spot, then put somebody in it who will alter the landscape.

 

Maybe Eddie Booker under the right circumstances.

 

Oscar De La Hoya

 

Donald Curry

 

Didn’t he beat Archie Moore why not Archie Moore at 160lbs? That was his prime years and he was hardly #1 in his own middleweight era.

 

Archie Moore at 160lbs? still in his prime down there towards the later 1/3 of his stint there, a great fighter but not the number one guy in the division by quite a bit. He’d wipeout 155-168lbs hysterically easy right now if he hopped into a Time Machine.

 

How about we go with Jersey Joe Walcott at 175-200lbs? What do ya think? He’s a fringe great, for me he is for others no and he had real skills. If he got a new youth and kept his skills I don’t see why he wouldn’t bust up Bivol, Old Artur and Jai.

 

By the way this is a GREAT thread idea, love it. How about 220lbs? We could have someone be the Joe Louis of the division pretty easy… consistency not considered you could stick Liston in there to rule for ages fighting scraps and build a crazy record? Imagine Patterson at 175lbs that’d be interesting - Joey Maxim at 160lbs?

 

Possibly, just can't think of anyone worse at the moment.

Middleweight Moore is not a prime Moore though, maybe you could argue he was prime physically (and even that's arguable, as he was still probably recovering from stomach ulcers), but he clearly wasn't the fighter he would become from 1947/48-1955. And while 160 Moore would still most likely dominate 160 today, that's only because the division is an utter wasteland, it's not enough to prove he's over someone like Usyk. LHW Moore absolutely clears though.

 

I have to disagree for my 0.2$ he'd been fighting as a pro since 1935 Ol Moore debuted at 18 or 20? I forget his real age but AM fought within the middleweight bracket till 1944 he had 74 fights and was 60-9-5 finishing the campaign at 27-29 years old... that's a prime fighter no way around it. His career read like he kept getting bumped off by the top guys in his division before he could fully get going I'd wager he felt he needed a fresh start up the totem poll as he was aging, gaining weight etc he got smarter but he was not in his prime in his 30s-40s.

 

How many fights did he have against opponents that were world class when he fought Booker in 44, though ? A big amount of fights doesn't really say much if most of them are just there as substitute for lack of an amateur career. Moore had like what, 9 fights as an amateur and lost 4 of them ? 9 years into his career, Young Corbett III was a physically prime 23 year old with a record of 76-7-18, yet his only opponent of renown was Young Jack Thompson and Sergeant Sammy Baker, and he was still a clearly developing fighter.

Level of opposition definitely matters in a fighter's development. And while Moore was no spring chicken, by the time he got stopped by Booker he had only shared the ring with Yarosz, Booker x2, Shogue x3, Chase x4, and Tiger Wade. Certainly not all that inexperienced, but 1. he had already fought half of them when he practically had to learn how to Boxing again after the ulcers, negating his development by that point. And 2, while those guys were far from chumps, later sharing the ring with fistic giants like Charles, Bivins, Burley, Williams and Marshall clearly made him a much fighter and developed him further than guys like Chase and Shogue ever did. The results speak for themselves, from 1949-1955 before Marciano he went a crazy 53-2-1, one loss being a DQ and going 4-1 against the the man that gave him the other one. Middleweight Moore just doesn't do that against the level of opposition Light Heavyweight Moore did.