I think at 57 I am about 42 yrs less newer than you. And if I never learned in those years about a favorite subject, then I would just be ignorant. I am not. I learned, messed up, learned from my mistake and never thought I was the end all & be all on any subject. No matter the depth into which I sank myself into a subject.
One of the goofier posts I have ever read but with age you will see you are wrong. Hopefully. Irregardless, you are entitled to your own opinion & can't be proven wrong or right. That what this forum is all about.
One of the goofier posts I have ever read but with age you will see you are wrong. Hopefully. Irregardless, you are entitled to your own opinion & can't be proven wrong or right. That what this forum is all about.
Generational picks are hard, and imo requires proper definition of the criteria, sorry to be a raincoat about it. Head to head can mean a number of things. You can do like a generational head to head - how would different generational fighters of a given weight do against fighters from around their time. This is important because Stanley Ketchel, for example, hardly ever weighed in as a 160lb middle. He tended to weigh in as a modern-day light-middle or a pound above - but he WAS a middleweight. That was the middleweight limit for most of his title matches (or just above). Where does that leave us? Well, it's difficult and unfair. Hopkins couldn't make 154lbs. So Hopkins has a notable size advantage over Ketchel. Might not matter in Ketchel-Hopkins as a fight, but it gives Hopkins a noted advantage against the wider field - these are very small margins. A guy weighing 168lbs on fight night after rehydrating will have a significant advantage over a guy who boxed at 160lbs. Of course, in a fight they'd have the same weigh in rules, but you still have a light-middle moving up in weight for that contest. The other thing you could do is consider career 160lb fighters rather than career middles. Or guys who "could have made" 160lbs but didn't that often. If you're actually "imagining fights" rather than just head to head abilities, what are the rules? Very difficult to know how Kelly Pavlik's face would react to being hit by 4lb gloves, very difficult to know how Ketchel would function wearing "pillows". Clinching/wrestling allowed? What era refereeing? It all adds up. Because the differences between these fighters are absolutely tiny. Almost nothing in some instances. A size advantage, a familiarity with the rules, a friendlier referee, official's reaction to gore - judge's reaction to aggression; are there judges at all? All matters.
All valid points,I think perhaps we get a bit obsessed with data? I think I do ,and we also forget these are men not robots,men who will have good days and bad days. The other night I put Holman Williams in my five and dismissed Cerdan as having too shallow a resume.Yet Cerdan beat Williams. Cerdan has a good win over Georgie Abrams,but closer inspection reveals Abrams was recently back from a long absence from the ring.It's not only who you beat,but when you beat them! Where should we place Charley Burley? He played pass the parcel with many of his black contemporaries Anyone 100 % sure of his rating in respect to say Williams,Lytell,Charles .Wade,Marshall,Chase? I'm not! Another huge factor is H2H, one I confess I struggle to evaluate when so many of these guys are just names and stats to me! For example Williams has a very good record with some top guys as victims,but from all accounts he was no puncher,how would he keep monsters like Tiger,Ketchel,Steele off of him? Stylistic foils and nightmares,how do we know a guy like say,Kelly Pavlik a champ I don't think highly of, but a fighter over 6 '2" with power and strength,might not have a surprisingly easy time with some of the celebrated, smaller ,albeit more skilled middles of the past? A fighter has a great win? Maybe he was a swarmer who liked to get inside and whale away,and was fortunate to encounter a referee who permitted him to do so .On another night,he might have a third man who is a prissy martinet like some of these continental jokes ,breaking the fighters as soon as they get near each other,and he is then prevented from doing his best work,"fighting his fight," if you will. We look at BoxRec and whatever we have seen on film or read about a fighter and make our definitive lists based on no more than educated guesses at most. I'm thinking we take all this rather too seriously ,we get caught up in the moment and in defending our choices against dissenters. I've been following boxing for over 60 years,but WTF do I really know about Billy Papke? Fred Apostoli? Tiger Flowers,Dave Shade? Or a hundred other middles? Its hard enough getting a handle on the boys who were active from the 50's onwards! I think we have to try and retain a sense of proportion,after all, this is supposed to be fun isn't it? WTF Maybe Lazslo Papp really should be in there? No **** it! Scrub that!lol
Wellllllll, we did it! I'll let Greg and Lachlan cover their own backs regarding their lists, but for mine I'll just add a few notes I didn't get across in the podcast. Just a few corrections first; Charles was 165 for Maxim. He only fought one of the Murderer's Row at 160. Anyways, on to what I wanted to get across but couldn't verbalise properly. My list was finalized as This content is protected This content is protected This content is protected This content is protected This content is protected Steele is a guy who has really bad stylist issues. His upright stance and less than Mayweather-esc defence is quite the treat for swarmers and I'm sure Lachlan would agree with that. LaMotta, Tiger, Walker, Greb, Ketchel and the rest of the front-runners at 160 aren't too appetising for him. The issues he had with Apostle say so. His overall class is enough for me to favour him ever so slightly in razor-thin vs these, but I can completely sympathize for having them going the other way. His movements, power, skill and length cause everybody at the weight issues though. I covered Ezz how I pretty much wanted to here, but I do have to say that Robinson and LaMotta are really tough fights for him. I'd also like to add that Charles was around, and could've fought/beat LaMotta, Holman, Lytell, Booker and maybe even Zale. Had he, I'd say he he'd have a claim for the GOAT. That series with Overlin should be analyzed though, since Ken's style clearly troubled him. I definitely think Lach and I covered the bases on Hagler's weaknesses, but I'd like to add that his stance-shifting was one too, imo. The way he went into Orthodox was unnatural and made him less fluid and easier to hit, doing that whilst fighting the calibre opposition he'd be against here ain't good. Monzón especially would be the best to capitalise on this. Given the weaknesses we mentioned it really wouldn't surprise me if he dropped to Giardello or Toney in a series. I don't have much to say else on Greb or Monzón. As for honourable mentions, guys like Hopkins, Robinson, Ketchel, Fitz ect; ect. are all arguable but my rationale for putting Steele at #5, aside from simply playing devil's advocat, is that Ketchel and Fitzsimmons have limited footage, and none which we can assess their styles at MW from. Robinson is hard to explain, the reason's for which I'd pick those who I do over him are varied and mostly down to pocket arguments based on styles and some select size disadvantages. I'd be comfortable favouring my top 5, along with the guys who actually beat him. Dick Tiger is an awful match up for him, in my mind. Hopkins has issues with speed, imo, as I said, there's a lot of speedsters who could beat Hop imo, especially ones coming up like the Hearns/Robinson/McCallum type. LaMotta is perfectly reasonable at #5, but it's hard to throw him above Robinson, imo. Tiger is hell on earth for several guys, but he has very bad issues with boxers skilled enough to take over and fight at arm's length given that he had a notion of arrogance which led him to believe he was winning just be letting them run. You could mention Roy Jones Jr but I'd basically say what I said on the podcast. 36/45 minutes is a long time to be perfect vs guys like Monzón, Hagler or Steele and personally I can't see it. Everyone can be timed, and Jones was hardly made of iron. James Toney is interesting case, but he struggled a lot with, the admittedly amazing, MWs of his own era, but the issue is that these guys weren't Marvin Hagler. They weren't Ezzard Charles. They weren't Carlos Monzón. You get my point? It's a deep division, and it's hardly something that you're gonna get a reasonable level of agreement on. @The Malibu Mauler, @The Undefeated Lachbuster. Anyways, the whole thing is here. This content is protected
One of the very best and most honest posts I've read for a while. Kudos McVey - you've pretty perfectly articulated what it means to be a classic boxing fan!
Just following up on my original list in light of some of the excellent posts in this thread as well as the podcast. The Greb thing bothers me. Some of us have refused to rate him (me included) and others have him unequivocally number 1. I wanted to explain why I didn't rank him but also a list without him seems immediately incomplete and inconclusive. Greb reminds me of the parable of the elephant and the blind men - he can be all things to all people because we've never seen him. Or to put it in a boxing context, how would you describe and rate Roberto Duran if there was no footage of him? A swarmer, a slugger but also a defensive master? A fighter whose style changed as he got older and who fought across 5 decades from featherweight to super middleweight. We often can't agree about fighters we've seen lots of so getting a consensus view on a fighter none of us have seen obviously isn't going to happen. And I wonder how much the lack of footage actually benefits Greb sometimes. We have his record to go on, plus descriptions of his style but because we can't see him, it's only ever a best guess. Even the small amount of footage of Charlie Burley is somewhat instructive. But all we have of Greb is some training footage alongside Philadelphia Jack O'Brien. People have been quick to either dismiss him or try to form an opinion on his style from that alone but training is training, sparring is sparring and fighting inside the ring against a live opponent is something else. I feel more confident making a judgement call on Burley from just one round of boxing than Greb.
