It's a overrated stat IMO. Can you imagine the accomplishments some of the boxers would of had if they had 17 divisions to choose from without same day weigh ins. Not to mention Duran started his career at 119 and won a title at 160 and competed for titles at 168. Beating fighters of the caliber of Benitez and Hearns are exceptional accomplishments, especially while being under 25 yrs old. Your right it wasn't the same Duran from Montreal and the 1st fight always tells the story, but a win is a win.
The comment wasn't really based on one particular fighter, I was just quetioning the bias in your list wheter you are aware of it or not. To be honest, I dont think you are, it is the sensible and "clever" thing to put more older fighters on the list. They have the mystery about them which means most boxing fans cant really refute their "greatness", as they are not too aware of them. How many fights have you seen of those guys...?
yea nice list. Guys I think belong in there would be Pac, Marciano. I can see your list is very much ESB classic forum influenced.
Nice list although i think its biased to the pre 1960s fighter, like most are. Id also have Ali higher, Top 5.
I think there's a valid reason that these type of lists are biased towards pre 1960 fighters, because they fought more.
Because they forte more do-sent mean that they are better, the quality of more than half the opposition was worse. There was some shockingly bad mismatches. Obviously there are some great great wins. I think re-evaluate it to make it a more fair comparison with more modern fighters, the way its going its going to be near impossible for any future fighter to break them kind of top 10 list, no matter what they do or achieve.
I assume forte means fought. That aside, I don't think it means that at all. Look at SRL he doesn't have that many fights under his belt and he's usually in the top 15 or so on people's list. Duran fought over 100 fighters, but he too is semi modern in that he fought in the 70's and 80's. Ali fought about 60 fights, so I don't really agree with this. But someone like Harry Greb was basically a middle weight how beat Tunney who later became the heavyweight champion. Now that's impressive regardless of which era this happened. He also fought blind in one eye for the last 5 years of his life..and still held his own..this is amazing stuff regardless of the era. That said, no one would honestly get licensed to do this today, so it's not something that can be replicated.
I can live with that. In any event someone like Pac could conceivably crack the top 20 so it's there to be had if you're a good enough fighter. But the top 10 is a pretty elusive category and it deserves to be extremely difficult to crack.