How do you rate greatness?

LOL. Lets see you make a case for that one! We are talking about criteria for greatness here. And you have not provided any criteria. WHY is he the greatest?

This is so typical of the Duran acolytes. No facts, just the intangibles.

 

I can't see Marciano winning a belt in any heavyweight decision post - Ali.

 

I think he was pretty good.

 

I find it very silly that people are extremely eager to use "dominating their own era" as a metric, but then pretend like all eras are equally competitive with equally strong talent pools. The inevitable conclusion to this is that boxers from the dog **** eras of boxing in the primordial soup that is the 19th century get rated higher than boxers in later eras who were less dominant on account of fighting better competition.

For example, why on earth would Joe Gans be rated higher than someone like Roberto Duran? Slavery was abolished 8 years before Joe Gans was born, when America had a population of fewer than 40 million people and when boxing was in such an undeveloped state that his boxing career predated the popularization of the jab. I repeat, Joe Gans was dominant in an era when most of his opponents didn't even ****ing jab, yet we pretend like being dominant in his era is anywhere near as impressive as being as dominant 100 years later? It's ridiculous in my opinion.

Ditto whenever someone brings up the 6'0 tall grappler-boxer Jack Johnson. Heavyweight is **** in general, let alone in the early 1900's when his claim to fame was defeating John L Sullivan, a man who is so old that he was born during the slave trade and who boxed with London Prize Rules. Johnson was basically just the Wladmir Klitschko of his era, yet people speak as if he'd be competitive today. Nonsense.

A lot of people seem to think respect only goes one way and that it's only possible for young to disrespect the old and not the other way around. But in my opinion it's genuinely disrespectful to the greatest fighters of the post 1930's and onwards to pretend like their forefathers would be anywhere near as competitive in future eras as they were in their own.

All that to say that JUST using how dominant a fighter is in their own era without comparing the strength of each era is dumb and leads to very silly conclusions, of which usually favour extremely old fighters OR fighters with shiny records against relatively mediocre competition, a la Ricardo Lopez, Rocky Marciano, Joe Calazghe etc

 

So you said;

1. Rating a fighter relative to their own era IS a good practice, I agree it's what one needs to do. However doing it without rating the era itself is useless. I think we're having a misunderstanding though. When I say "compare eras", I don't mean have H2H comparison's between different eras to determine the better era. That's fun but not particularly useful, wouldn't make sense and you're right in that it would punish older fighters. When I say compare era I mean comparing the actual strength of the talent pool in each era. How many fighters were competing in the era, how developed was the sport itself, what was the average level of athleticism for each fighter etc. By doing this you can see which fighters stand out more relative to their own era.

Runner A running the 100 meters in 11 seconds and having an entire 1 second gap between them and the 2nd fastest runner in their era is more impressive than Runner B running it in 9.58 seconds and only having an 0.11 second gap between them and the 2nd fastest, so even though Runner A would lose "h2h" because of improvements in the sport, it could be argued they're better because they're better relative to their era. HOWEVER, when you take into account Runner A competed in an era when the sport wasn't popular at all, and Runner B competed at the height of its popularity, then the argument sways back in favour of Runner B. You get what i'm sayin?

2a. It being subjective is a very odd reservation. Rating era's isn't any more subjective than any of the other multiple subjective things one needs to do to make comparisons on the Classic Forum... That's like saying you don't think Classic Forum should exist because it's all subjective lol.

2b. It's also not subjective. People having different opinions about something doesn't make that something subjective (especially oldheads that think a lot of stupid ****). Something being extremely difficult to determine, or impossible to prove scientifically also doesn't make it subjective. There is an objectively correct answer to whom is better than whom, we'll just never be able to prove it. There's no way of comparing my height to the height of Robert Wadlow because he's dead. Yet, just because we can't use a time machine to bring him back, doesn't mean his height compared to mine isn't objective. Likewise, the 1870's era of boxing is obviously hot garbage compared to the 1970's era. My not being able to prove that scientifically doesn't mean it's subjective.

 

Nothing determines greatness more than rematches , taking and winning them. Especially after a loss.

 

I guess resume/achievements/longevity and how you won/lost would be my main one's.

 

Holyfield has way more losses and his resume is artificially inflated by beating guys he initially lost to

 

Well I used decades as a specific example, but in certain sports it's just a straight up "yes". Being the best NBA player in the world in 2026 is much more difficult than being the best NBA player in 1976. Likewise there is more parity now than there's ever been before, so it's also more difficult to win a championship twice.

Boxing is usually a bit more specific to the weight class & era than the decade. The best minimumweight and the best Cruiserweight of all time aren't in contention for the boxer of all time because the weight classes are weak.

And even though European participation in boxing increased, American participation in boxing massively decreased, so it's difficult to say whether or not the talent pool is significantly stronger overall. That, and even if the talent pool IS stronger in theory, more than a doubling of the amount of weight classes in addition to an increase in belts, could mean that the average ability of fighter is higher than before but the average level of competition is lower.

But, despite all this, there are times when it the circumstances coalesce in such a way that it's easier to tell when one era or weight class is more talented than another.