ATG's Who Never Beat A Fellow Great

:good

All good mate...I know the feeling I just finished exams a couple of weeks ago and your head is mush after cramming so hard.

Now to turn it to mush with copious amounts of alcohol.

 

Appreciate it bro :good

 

Hmm Dempsey's resume was as good as Lewis's? And Harry WIlls about 40places above both?

Not easy to make these lists and easy to nitpick but thats a bit off

 

My main gripe SS and actually the only thing Im going to question you on, is why McLarnin is so low SS...Everytime I look into this guy more thoroughly I see more reason for him to move up an alltime list.

Outside the 50 just doesnt still well with me TBH.

 

no One thinks of Kaokor as an ATG I don't think, but he has better winsbthan Khaosai and Ricardo Lopez in Moon and Vasquez.

 

You're right, Lewis' resume probably is a tad better than Dempsey's....

How would you score their resume's?

And where would you have Lewis,Dempsey and Wills on a p4p list?

I'm no connoisseur on the heavyweights so it's good to hear some criticisms for my heavyweight rankings.

 

Using my scoring criteria, how would you score him to bring him up to what you regard an acceptable range?

McLarnin beat a lot of great fighters, and traversed quite a few weight classes to do it, but I guess my main argument against having him too high is his lack of real dominance. He lost to quite a few of the best fighters he fought, even if he beat them in return matches. Hard to be dominant when facing such a high level comp I know, but it's what distinguishes him from most of the guys that are in the top 50.

There's also the issue that he caught a lot of great fighters at the tail end of their careers, somewhat diminishing the level of his resume (e.g. Villa in his last fight, Leonard in his last fight, Canzoneri when he was on the slide).

 

I really like the list, myself.

Surprised at Archer making it even at the tail end, though i don't begrudge it as he was a terrific fighter and a favourite of mine, but he seems like he would be one to prosper on the head to head side of things.

 

Probably a bit of bias on my part Mante, though I do think he clearly won the first Griffith fight and the second one could have gone either way. Together with a win against Dick Tiger and a few other notables (I thought he won the controversial Mims fight btw) he didn't have a bad time of it really. Definitely has a better middleweight resume than someone like Bernard Hopkins imo.

 

I think HWs are very hard to rank, because the likes of Lewis/Wills have clear size advantages over the likes of Marciano/Dempsey/Tyson/Patterson at the weight, then again for the most part Lewis fought bigger men and wasnt always the bigger man and Dempsey/Marciano didnt fight many bigger men Firpo/Willard aside. However Tyson/Patterson were nearly always the smaller man

I think theres a case for the following:

Patterson & Marciano above Archie Moore based on their head 2 head meetings and them relatively being the same size and competing in a tougher division (if it wasnt tougher why could Moore beat the LHWs but got dominated by a similar sized HW, Patterson certainly wasnt a bigger man being an ex-MW himself).

Now if Patterson went for the lesser LHW title (which he could make easily), beating Moore for it and dominating smaller men for a longer period of time, then on this P4P scale he would be rated higher. But instead of that he stepped up to HW to take the sports biggest price. Its also worth noting that although Patterson was twice blasted out by the bigger Liston that Moore himself has plenty of stoppage losses against lesser opponents too including a first round KO loss

I think HWs are usually underrated on P4P lists, there is simply more talent in a division that encompases men from 175lbs-300lbs, than in a division that encompasses 126-135lbs, not to mention everyone wants to become HW champ because its the sports biggest prize.

Tyson/Patterson/Holyfield to have high rankings based on the fact they were nearly always smaller gave up allot of weight to elite opponents

Now in terms of your criteria, I'd go with Resume:

Lennox - 35 - you have three top 20 HWs, ATG power punchers like Tua/Rudduck, and many many top contenders with plenty of depth, I only rate Ali/Holyfield as having better HW resumes. HOWEVER LEWIS COULD BE DOCKED SOME P4P POINTS GIVEN TYSON/TUA/HOLYFIELD were all smaller

Dempsey - 25 - Dempseys comp is weak, Miske was litterally dying, Firpo was a weight lifter, Willard was big but cumbersome with average skills. Brennan, and Sharkey are good but not great wins.

WIlls - 22 - Wills comp is a little bit better than Dempseys but given he was such a bigger man than his opponents, according to your P4P scale it should drop down

 

That's true.

We can't take it as a given though that Floyd Patterson wouldn't have been blasted out in some fights if he stayed at light heavyweight.

I also think it's a stretch to say Marciano and Moore are the same size. Rocky Marciano in tip top shape was about 185 pounds. Archie Moore was about ten pounds south of that in his best shape. Ten pounds matters.

I can't say the film evidence backs up that point at all. And I don't think that point is countered by saying well look what happens when you put middleweights and lightheavies at heavyweight, they usually lose. Sure they usually lose, but they also usually come in outside of their best form.

Their conquests at heavyweight definitely need to be given more weight given their smaller stature.

Not to mention Tyson was just about cooked and Holyfield had seen better days too and looked absolutely useless, especially in the first Lewis fight.

10 points is way too large a gap between their resumes, especially considering that Dempsey was the smaller man in some of his key wins. Fulton was 20 pounds heavier, Firpo was 25 pounds heavier, Willard nigh on 60. He beat his share of light heavies too, but his wins against some giants are worhty of note.

I don't think he was much bigger compared to his comp than what Lennox Lewis was compared to his really.

 

In Chang you could say Zapata

Very good list, my only gripe is no category for ability

 

Ability and resume goes hand in hand, really.

 

Yeah, McLarnin's a good 40 spots too low for me as well. I'm with Rock on that one. His level of competition for his amount of fights is probably greater than any fighter who's ever lived, definitely moreso than Canzoneri or especially Ross. He beat every fighter he ever faced outside of Lou Brouillard (during his prime anyway), who was an excellent fighter in his own right and one McLarnin never got another crack at.

You could say Canzoneri was on the slide, but I'd combat that by saying the same for McLarnin. Canzoneri would go on to a respectable record afterwards while McLarnin hung them up after beating Ambers (who consequently beat Canzoneri twice around that same period). I honestly don't know what to make of the inconsistency talk whenever his name is brought up. There isn't a fighter who's ever lived that fights that kind of schedule and doesn't rack up a few losses. If anything, he should get even more credit for his success in rematches. A borderline top 20 all time great for me, right on par with Canzoneri and Ross.

 

:huhReally?