I would probably change my pick to Barney Ross now actually. I think that a problem with today fighters is that they often have huge wholes in their skill set. For example Chad Dawson is a great fighter on the outside but he lacks an inside game; he is therefore not a complete technician.
I beat everybody to it on the 8th post of the ****ing thread, but apparently nobody takes any notice of that. :fire
without relying on natural athletism-mike macullum and hagler.with the help of a little athletism.ray leonard could do all those things u asked for
I'd certainly agree that there's very little between those two and Ezzard Charles. I would only say that Charles also didn't have any special physical talents, but went on to be arguably the p4p greatest of all time. Certainly, Charles has to be up there with SRR, Greb and Armstrong, and he's the only one of the three without any special physical talents. He was just a really good, technically sound boxer-puncher who had a style that worked against any other style. I think Archie Moore is another possibility because, while he did have very good power and a very good chin, his style was the key to his greatness and it's a style that can work no-matter how fast or powerful you are.
I think the longevity of Witter and Nelson has been entirely down to good conditioning and the fact that they took relatively little punishment in their youth. In the case of Witter, that was largely down to the bouts he ended up in (and his, er, "unorthodox" performance against Judah) while Nelson only really started to try to win half of his bouts until the middle part of his career.