Which Heavyweight Is Possibly Overrated Because Of Nostalgia?

Usyk.

 

Jack Johnson

 

Liston- bit of a weight bully. People predicting he would excel today when his best opponents were 189-199 pound.

Holmes- never unified, rarely fought a #1 contender, certainly never gave a rematch on a controversial fight, very lackluster resume. "I like fighting little guys for big money." We know, Larry. We know.

WladKlit- awful, awful era that he split with his brother

Dempsey- well, sort of. He's a bit out of fashion these days. But really, this guy who fought less than once a year and never got Wills in the ring was some kind of great champion?

 

Jeffries. Fought a bunch of small guys and refused to defend against a black fighter.

 

An argument can be made for Dempsey due to his management holding him to the color line.

 

No one who won the heavyweight title should be considered “over rated”…they earned their place in history.

 

I believe Dempsey would have fought Wills if allowed. Jeffries was just terrified in my opinion.

 

You are not wrong, but he is one of those who is a bit problematic to say is "overrated" because he's not exactly that highly rated.

 

Quite a few of them are pretty equally overrated on nostalgic prestige to be honest. In fact almost every heavyweight champion has fans who do it.

 

Definitely Ali.

A lot of people won't even consider the idea of Lewis, Wlad, Vitali, Marciano, Holmes, etc beating him. It's just muscle memory to pick Ali over everyone except 50/50 with Tyson and 75/25 against Louis.

 

Jeffries was considered to be invincible in his day. Now we understand he was an oaf with his main skill being the ability to get beaten bloody and survive.

 

Ray Mercer, Chris Byrd and David Tua are the holy trinity of overrated HW's.

Jerry Quarry and Cleveland Williams have large cult followings but I don't think nostaglia has much to do with either.

 

Good call. He often got favourable decisions against his more formidable foes. If he'd dropped two fights to Norton, and the fight to Shavers, I don't think his mystique would be nearly as high ... and those fights could be argued to have gone his opponents' way. There's this idea that fighters would struggle to land a glove on him when it's clear that not only did guys land on him but also land on him often. Watch the footage.