Undefeated records: agree or disagree?

You sure about that one?

 

Who had a undefeated record 30-40 years ago? ( 1980-1970 )

How good an undefeated record is depends on a great many of factors.

1 ) Retirement age.

2 ) Quality of competition fought.

3 ) Management style.

4 ) Fighters avoided.

5 ) Depth of division.

6 ) Total amount of fights.

I tend to think its harder to retire undefeated in modern times, because fighters do not retire young, and the money is often too great to stay retired.

 

All i'm asking is you consider this angle...Ricardo Lopez and Rocky Marciano were so good that they dominated their divisions, ****ed everybody's **** up, not allowing them the chance to shine as a great, because fight A that ****ed up fighter B, only ****ed up a guy that Lopez/Marciano already ****ed up, and fighter A is indeed himself a fighter previously ****ed up/soon to be ****ed up by Lopez/Marciano...devalue-ing the significance of the victory, thier percieved h2h capabilities and not scoring any points in resume for longevity or dominance as a no.1 guy, because they were not the no.1 guy for even an instance...which then devalues the wins of the no.1 undefeated fighter

 

Lets look at some statistics for Marciano.

Any heavyweight champion who manages half a dozen title defences against genuinely elite level contenders is almost automaticaly ranked alongside Johnson, Dempsey, Louis, Ali, Holmes, Tyson etc

All but one of Marciano's title challengers were the current #1 ranked contender, and the one who wasnt (Cockel) was the current #2 ranked challenger.

That is a prety impresive quality ethic for a title reign.

Now consider that although Marciano was managed gently for part of his career, he was actualy set up to loose fights in his first half dozen profesional fights. The guy was thrown to the wolves.

 

You can thank todays governing bodies,champion is a very loose term these days,a lot these belts are just used to schedule 12 round fights,i mean how much does it mean if your the Coors Light champion,see my point.Marcino clearly fought better comp than Calzaghe and Mayweather who both picked and chose their fights their perfect records are somewhat meaningless,Mayweather has fought better fighters than Calzaghe even if they were handpicked,Calzaghe is far from great he clearly wasnt a courageous fighter and thats a huge strike against him,if Mayweather wins against Pac his legacy is safe.Marciano i would not say that he did not fight great fighters in there prime Louis for example, but beat very good fighters and he fought everyone they put in front of him,Ricardo Lopez was really that good.

 

It was usually bull**** then... and it's the same today.

Sometimes, it's a mixture of a great fighter and not so great opponents though.

Wilde, Chavez, Marciano, Lopez, etc. are definately greats... but sometimes they fought less than great fighters/Tijuana taxi drivers/etc.

Guys like Brian Neilsen (until he fought Tyson), Billy Fox (until he fought Gus Lesnevich), Alex Stewart (until he fought Holyfield), and some others simply fought bums or washed up fighters.

Joe Calzaghe is borderline great IMO. He beat a weight drained and past prime Eubank then fought weak opposition for years. He retired before the SMW division got hot.

 

Marciano was amazing. He went 7-0 (6) in HW World Title fights and 6-0 (5) vs. Hall of Famers (Louis, Walcott x2, Charles x2, and Moore). He still fought some bums on the way up, so do most fighters. Some more than others. At least 30 of the men he faced were average at best.

 

Nope. As I say there are exceptions.

 

To put this into context, Wladimir Klitchsko has never faced his no 1 contender ever (Vitali), And probably only Byrd and Chagaev were ever the no 2 fighters. I think their is a big difference between fighting the best fighter in the world, and fighting the 4th or 5th (or worse best).

 

There is more chance of keeping an unbeaten record today.If you want to duck fights you can by either using the "promoters cant sort it out"excuse or move up a division.It seems that in the old days public demand got fights made and moving up a division was a lot more of a risk as there were fewer divisions.

 

Vitali wasn´t the number one contender for all of his reign.

 

I think Marciano, Calzaghe, and Lopez all retired undefeated primarily because they dominated average/weak divisions.

I think Mayweather is undefeated primarily because he hasn't fought the level of opposition that you'd expect from a fighter of his calibre.

 

Please explain to me how Marciano´s opposition was weak.

 

Who didnt Floyd fight that he should have?

 

It should be remembered in official public boxing fights from his professional debut, in which he was paid, Rocky Marciano was not undefeated...