how many 'great' heavyweight eras were there?

five

 

I think that a lot about what makes a great era involves making the top fights. It m,ight just be that the main thing that sets the 70s apart from other eras is tha fact that the top fights were made.

The gloved era did not start out verry promisingly, despite the emergence of a tremendous and dominant talent in John L Sullivan. Towards the end of Sullivans title reign, you have a tremendous body of talent emerging with Peter Jackson, Jim Corbett, Frank Slavin and Joe Goddard. That should have made for a stacked era with the right match making.

The era of James Jeffries started verry promisingly, with an emerging all time great taking regular defences against high quality challengers such as Fitzsimmons, Sharkey and Corbett. He becomes less active towards the end of his title reign, when another high quality body of challengers are emerging in the shape of the black dynamite fighters. You have two dominant champions verry close together in Jeffries and Johnson, whose primes overlaped, and then you have contenders like Langford McVea and Jeanette emerging. Only the colour bar prevented this from being an era compared the 70s.

The 20s is somtimes held up as a weak era, but you have Jack Dempsey, Harry Wills and Harry Greb sharing a division. Fighters like Miske Gibbons and Godfrey were certainly not regardede as weak contenders or fighters who were products of a weak era in their day. In fact I can't recall any contemporary refference suggesting that this was seen as a weak era.

I could go on but I will leave it there.

 

the '80's get shitted on for what it seems like nothing
more than jumping on a band-wagon. as far as overall
depth goes, the '80's is one of the better divisions in
that category. it may not have had the group of
superstars the other decades had, but, it definitely
had very deep talent pool through 1980-1989:

mike tyson
larry holmes
mike weaver
john tate
tony tucker
gerrie coetzee
frank bruno
pinklon thomas
trevor berbick
evander holyfield
michael dokes
michael spinks
renaldo snipes
francesco damiani
razor ruddock
james smith
tim witherspoon
orlin norris
bert cooper
tony tubbs
carl williams
james "buster" douglas
greg page

'80's are much deeper than given credit for

 

Its a myth created Klitscko fanboys. Because the division today is utter shite, possibly the worst ever. So they have 2 choices 1) big up the current division or 2) diss other eras just to make this era look better.

 

1- early to mid 90s
2- Late 30s to mid 40s
3- early 70 to mid 70s

 

There have been a lot more potential great eras, than great eras.

 

Let's have a look decade by decade

1900-1910: definitely a great era
1910-1920: a transitional era
1920-1930: a great era
1930-1940: a transitional era
1940-1950: a great era
1950-1960: a transitional era (one of the worst)
1960-1970: a great era
1970-1980: a great era (one of the best)
1980-1990: a great era
1990-2000: a great era (one of the best)
2000-2010: a great era
2010-present: a transitional era (one of the worst)

I've singled out 4 eras there. The competition in the 70's and 90's was draw droppingly good.

The 50's-60's was barely a HW division, an anomaly in the time line that featured past prime LHW guys and very small HW fighters.

The 2010-present is terrible for me because of the dominance allowed by virtue of clinching. I'm not saying it's the sole reason but without clinching who knows how action packed the division will have been.

 

Makes sense to me thanks

 

Only the 90's. Corbett, Fitz, old Sullivan, old Jackson, young Johnson...just a bevy of talent the likes of which the division has never seen and shall never see again. You really just had to be there.