Who is greater P4P Floyd Mayweather or Archie Moore?

It's pretty clear that he improved after the Burley, Booker, Williams, Bivins, Wade, Chase losses

The Henry Hall loss came after that when he was still picking up losses every few fights.

Then he goes on an immense winning run with wins over everyone at LHW and HW bar a loss against Harold Johnson which he quickly avenged. So the question is if you consider the divisions much weaker then or if you think he improved and learned to fight more tactically with better judgement. I think it's pretty obvious it was mainly the latter.

If you don't agree, fair enough

 

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Watch from 14:20-14:40. In the span of a mere 20 seconds Moore crafted 4 ways to land clean power shots against a P4P ATG, 3 of them being right hands, 1 being a left hook. Floyd never showed such versatily.

Look at 5:45 and 6:16 as well. Moore puts his hands high and wide to gauge the centre line to set up a power shot, leaving himself open down the middle, basically asking to get hit in the face, but he predicts the jab and comes over with an overhand. Floyd never did anything this tricky to land his right.

There's also a moment in Maxim 1 where he throws a double right hand off a shoulder roll in the blink of an eye. Moore has the best right hand in LHW history. If he had even more natural KO power, it'd be the best right hand ever, period.

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There you go.

The Charles fights aren't even on film for you to say he was a punching bag

Plus his second fight with Charles was a SD, he wasn't exactly a punching bag for that to happen, now was he ? Not to mention he was ****ing 40 vs Patterson, at Heavyweight, where the combination of bigger and faster is a death sentence. I'm sure if you scale up the Floyd that fought McGregor, he'd get torched by Patterson as well. Marciano too. Marciano is horrible for Floyd in a P4P mythical match up.

Also, how can he always have lost to the best, when he's 4-1 vs Jimmy Bivins, 4-1 vs Harold Johnson, 2-0 vs Lloyd Marshall, 1-1 vs Holman Williams ? Those are all top 100 P4P greats. He beat several top HW contenders too.

 

Much better pressure fighter, much better infighter, better right hand, better body puncher, better finisher, better offence generally. Probably a better jab too.

 

Moore didn't cherry pick a damn thing. If he had, he might have the best record ever. Because everybody understands how great he really was in the ring. He'd fight them all.

 

Pretty much. Corrales was just a guy that threw a lot of punches; he didn't know how to fight.
None of those guys could have done what Archie moore did, fighting every week for years. Not a single one of them.

 

I think Moore might be in the biggest need of available footage out of every ATG, aside from like, maybe Sam Langford. I think it's close to impossible to fully understand him just from his record alone. Even the Charley Burley fight would do wonders here.

It's easy to assess most upper echelon ATGs based on just their records. Their progression is mostly linear, and the timing is right. Robinson was ahead of the field until he reached his 30s. Pep was ahead of the field until the car crash, even then you could argue he still was, until Saddler appeared. Greb became elite around 1917 and was the closest thing we've seen to God in modern history from around 1919-1922. Armstrong had a very concentrated prime that is easy to point out (mid 1936 to late 1940) before his early expiration date hit. Charles had a few hick ups early on but then went on a legendary tear after he turned 22 and before he killed a man. It's easy to grasp. Their opposition usually got better as they got better too.

Moore ? His is a total mess. He faces one of his best P4P opponents, Teddy Yarosz, as his second top 10 rated opponent, the first being Johnny Romero, whom he split a series with. He then fights a few fringe contenders like Ron Richards and Shorty Hogue, and the results are positive but not without blemish. Then he's thrown into the wolves again after he finally conquers Hogue, this time with the Murderer's row. He dominates Chase, but loses in his sole encounter with Wade and can't beat Booker to save his life. He then faces Burley and loses every round. Moore was always reverent of Burley, and I simply don't think there's a way he didn't have a long talk with himself the days after such a one sided loss. I'd give my left nut for this fight to become available.

Its impact showed in his next fights, I think. But it's still messy. He goes 2-0 vs Lloyd Marshall, the largest member of the Murderer's Row, beats a washed Cocoa Kid in their sole encounter, and even splits a series with Holman Williams (Burley's biggest nemesis), beating him more convincingly than Williams beat him. Jimmy Bivins proves too big, but that one is understandable, Moore knew not the ways of Heavyweight yet. What is not understandable, is how he still somehow gets draws with Jack Chase and Oakland Billy Smith in back to back fights, when he graduated from their level years ago, and then has a very close, MD loss to Charles a mere 3 fights later. Were the draws predetermined ? Did Chase adjust after so many fights with Moore ? Was it an off night for Moore ? Was Smith a new style he wasn't accustomed to ? Was it Charles who had an off night ? It's impossible to tell.

Then we reach 1948, which was horrible for Moore. Charles knocks him out in a desperate retaliation, Morrow somehow stops him in 1, Hall decisions him and he gets DQd for low blows in an era where they didn't care about them. Was he still changing his style and experimenting with low blows ? Was he still not recovered after the Charles KO, and Morrow was the one to finally land a good one on him, "resurfacing" the effects of the KO ? By all means he shouldn't be losing to either Morrow or Hall. Had he not recovered vs Hall after the Morrow KO and played it safe ? Who knows.

He then proceeds to have one of the top 10 runs in the history of the sport. But he's in his mid 30s, with so triple digit fights. Utterly illogical, but real. But then you have the man himself claiming later in life that yeah, he was indeed prime during the mid 40s before his streak of dominance finally came. Did he get better ? Did he merely stay the same ? Again, impossible to tell. His P4P opponents were weaker on average on that run, but he also dominates a prime Harold Johnson by going 4-1 with him, a bigger H2H threat than anyone before him aside from perhaps Jimmy Bivins, who Moore also went 4-1 with. He also won every round vs the #1 Heavyweight contender who outweighs him by a full 30 lbs.

It's a mess. An extra 15 available fights from the 40s would do wonders for understanding his progression as a fighter.

 

Bivins, a caveman? He's well inside the greatest 100 fighters in history.

 

Great post, casuals are never going to understand Moore's career at face value. They need to break the shackles and do a deep dive into his career. Many trip on age, they can't get past how a guy can be at his best many years after what is the norm. Physical prime and boxing effectiveness often meet or thereabouts, however Moore is the ridiculous outlier to that theme. Hopkins was another. Jersey Joe due to multiple reasons was another to an extent.

Moore's is one of the more fascinating careers, and as complex as it gets.

 

I picked Mayweather but it’s def true that Moore improved once he changed his style after his almost career ending surgery. Before that he wasn’t a cross arm defensive specialist and was more orthodox. He depended to much on his speed and power. He changed styles to protect his week midsection area.

 

I don't think the greatness of Moore's longevity can be overstated.

In gloved Boxing's entire history, which is close to 150 years now if we think it starts with Sullivan, only Hopkins was as successful well into his 40s as Moore was. Hopkins and literally no one else. But Hopkins faced his first world class opponent at 28, a mere 24 fights in. His next one was when he was 30, 29 fights in, and it was a historically weak fighter. Moore at 30 (keep in mind he was actually born in 1916) had already fought Charles, Burley, Williams, Bivins, Lytell, Cocoa Kid, Booker, Yarosz, Chase and Wade, close to 20 times combined. He was more than 100 fights in. By all means, he should start slipping any point now. The wear and tear has to have caught up to him, it's only logical.

Yet you see him fight vs Maxim, 36 years old and 162 fights in, and he doesn't fight like any 36 year old you've ever seen. Modern recovery be damned. He's walking him down, bobbing and weaving, pivoting his ass of and changing levels, as if he's Joe ****ing Frazier. He drew with a HoF champion at 45 in a fight many thought he won, and said HoF wanted no part of him again. Whatever Moore was doing when working on himself, it worked wonders. Either his methods of recovery and preservation were better than anything we have going on today, or his genetics were so elite that today's stuff would keep him on the world level until he's actually 65.

 

He's a freak, the likes of which have never remotely been seen and never will be again. Talking longevity, well he's the greatest ever, surely. Besides being able to perform like he did for so long, I'm unaware of any CTE/etc repercussions at any point until he died a few days off 85yo.

He's a miracle to be frank, in the true sense of the word.

 

I went with Moore. he lost many at heavyweight at an old age. how do you compete with a 22 year old?

 

Floyd deserves huge credit for his professionalism and his longevity.

For never getting seriously hurt or knocked out.

But then he simply lived on another planet to Archie Moore.


Yes, Archie was utterly humiliated by the Morrow loss.

He said himself that he badly underrated him, and that he didn’t believe that he could hurt him.

He underestimated him.

And he had a rude awakening.

No, we cannot just ignore those types of losses.


However, as always, CONTEXT is the key.


Although things like that never happened to Floyd, he never lived a life/career, where he sometimes fought once or twice PER MONTH.

A modern day fighter fighting once per month is simply unimaginable. Yet Archie did it frequently, and again, sometimes TWICE per month.

Now under those same circumstances, losses like that weren’t surprises.

They also happened to other greats of the past.


Floyd did not fight that kind of a schedule.

Floyd did not fight the same quality of opponents,

He never faced guys like from the ‘BMR’


It’s okay noting that Archie struggled with Burley etc.

Yet who did Floyd fight of that calibre??


Their schedules and opponents, are simply a laughable comparison.


Who were Floyd’s best opponents?

A young Canelo, who could barely beat Lara?

A 36 year old Manny?

An end of career Oscar, who’d only fought once in 3 years, and who retired just 2 fights earlier??


Would Floyd have even fought Burley and the BMR??


Yes, it would certainly be ugly reading if you did a comparison between the best guys who they both fought.

 

Sure.

But they were simply lesser fighters, in a weaker era.