Wladimir or Holyfield?

The part that you're missing is that you have to be top 2 or 3 in order to even be eligible to start a new lineage.

Shannon Briggs became lineal without even being in the top ten and never being top 3 in his career.

 

Interesting take.

Of those listed alongside "New lineage", there are really only three that count, owing to genuinely complete breaks from the previous lineage. These are Schmeling, Patterson and Wlad.

Both Frazier and Holmes are men who beat the man (Ali) and most people that I know only recognize their respective lineal championships as having commenced from that point.

So the difference, as I see it, is that new lineages are relatively rare and the tradition of maintaining a lineage by being the man who beat the man incorporates all of the Top-10 Heavyweights of All-Time.

 

Fair post MM. On reflection, my use of the word "clearly" went too far, at least without "imo" following it.

I agree, it does run along the lines of our previous Lewis & Wlad discussion.

I accept 2 things about Wlad's decade of dominance (actually 11.5-years without defeat) - 1) He didn't fight the best other HW who was active during this time, i.e. his brother; & 2) Of the rest, there was no great HW during that period. He had no Liston, Frazier or Foreman like Ali did, he had no Bowe/Holyfield for each other, etc. It's for these reasons that I don't rank him top 5 all time at HW, despite the fact that by pure numbers he was just about as dominant a HW champion as any in history, Louis aside.

The above notwithstanding, I suspect one of the reasons I rank Wlad higher than you, is I believe it's more likely that an era has 1 (or a very smaller number) of fighters so good that they are outliers, than all of the contenders, for a whole era/decade, being so bad they're outliers relative to contenders of all other eras. Povetkin, Byrd, Chageav, Haye & a few others are clearly not ATG HWs, they're clearly no Liston, Frazier & Foreman, but I don't think they were necessarily miles below the general top contender standard of other eras. Yet, during his prime decade, Wlad beat these types in largely uncompetitive fights. Any fighter who consistently beats the best contenders of their era, without slipping up for over a decade, in fights that aren't competitive, is likely to rank highly by my criteria.

I concede, however, that I have a tendency to rank fighters who dominate perceived weak eras higher than the, win some lose some, types who fought a whose who from supposedly great eras. e.g. I have Zarate #4 at BW, whilst Moore, Herman & Williams are my #8, 9 & 10. The latter 3 all have multiple times the number of victories at BW over fighters who appear on McGrain's brilliant Top 50 BWs of all time article.

In conclusion, as is often the case when the rankings of knowledgeable & reasonable boxing fans differ, it's usually their criteria that is the cause, rather than their knowledge, or even their interpretation, of a fighters career.

 

I won't bias it by including any analysis in this post, but for any who are interested &/or find it useful, the below is from the notes I made to support my own all time HW rankings:

Wlad:

HW record - 64-5
Lineal HW record - 12-1 (starting from Chagaev) during his 6.5-year reign
Key HW wins - Povetkin, Peter x 2, Chagaev, Haye, Byrd x 2, Chambers, Thompson, Ibragimov, past prime Mercer, Pulev, Brewster & past prime Rahman
HW Losses - Puritty, Sanders, Brewster, Fury age 39 & AJ age 41
Notes - Was 64-3 up to age 39. Went on 23-fight win streak, including 21 world title fights, in the 11.5-years following loss to Brewster (avenged) and defeat to Fury age 39.

Holyfield:

HW record - 26-10-2
Lineal HW record - 5-3-1 in separate reigns of 2-years and 5-months
Key HW wins - Riddick Bowe, past peak Mike Tyson x 2 inc 1 DQ, past prime Larry Holmes, past prime George Foreman, Michael Moorer, Ray Mercer, Pinklon Thomas, Michael Dokes, Buster Douglas Hasim Rahman, James Tillis & Bert Cooper
HW Losses - Riddick Bowe x 2, Michael Moorer, Lennox Lewis age 37, John Ruiz age 38, Chris Byrd & James Toney both age 40, Larry Donald age 42, Sultan Ibragimov age 44, Nikolai Valuev age 46
Notes - Draw with Lewis was a clear loss, though had a decent argument for deserving the decision vs Valuev. Was 18-3 at HW before the first Lewis fight, age 36.

 

The Real Deal.

 

And that's what we come down to. The fact that Wlad didn't allow any of them to become great or even to win. I bet you anything that if Povetkin had gone 1-2 losing a thrilling trilogy with Wlad, that everybody would rate them both higher, just as happened with Holyfield and Bowe or Frazier and Ali. Wlad took an absurd amount of '0's during his era. He beat 12 undefeated fighters and numerous others with only one loss. That's called dominance. Some of the guys that he smashed were relevant even into recent times. That shows that his wins were quality material.

 

Impeccable logic, as ever, Greg.

I agree that it does boil down to differences in the criteria used, as well as the perception of the observer, in relation to the level of an era's contenders (which in itself is a criterion or a potential subset of criteria)

Perhaps the assessment of the opposition/challengers and the specific fights involved in the respective eras deserves a bit of a deeper dive.

Time willing, I might explore that idea a bit further.

 

Are "Lineal Champion" and "Lineage" American boxing terms? I've not heard these terms once outside of this forum, and even in this forum nobody ever seems to care about lineage outside of the Heavyweight division.

It sounds very cheesy and very unimportant, especially considering the lineage ends constantly. An arbitrary metric to give someone browny points for imo, yet I see it constantly.

 

To use as reasoning that say Evander didn't dominate his era is kinda an oblivious statement because Wlad wouldn't have dominated Evander's. In fact, Wlad was getting knocked out by journeymen when during the same timeframe Evander was still a unified champion.

If you take a bit younger Evander and put him into Wlad's run of domination it would be just as thoroughly dominated by Evander, Wlad's era was much, much weaker.

 

It's a line drawn from Sullivan himself. The man who beat the man. Dilluted nowadays like anything of importance in boxing. Mostly applied to heavyweight because it's the glamour division.

 

Hot take ik, but I don't think he would have. Holyfield had competitive fights with guys he honestly should have dominated just because he would get carried away and throw out his game plan and start brawling with them. While fun to watch it lead to his his fights being closer then they probably should have been. He also lost to Moorer in his prime who while a good fighter I don't think was better then some of the better fighters Wlad beat like Haye, Byrd, Povetkin, Chagaev. So while I'm sure he would have won I don't think he would have been as dominant as Wlad and wouldn't surprise me if he dropped a fight or two

 

I assume there was only a single, or at most two belts when Sullivan was around? As soon as they're 3 or more champions, like you said its meaning would get diluted.

 

I get it, but Evander dominating and dispatching Moorer in the rematch in particular and only losing by a hair's breadth in the first fight (even with the "medical condition") would leave one to believe that was an anomaly. I can give him grace for that loss because it was close and then he completely erased the taste of it.

Evander definitely liked to have shootouts though, more than he should've, but the only one he actually lost was to prime Bowe, and I definitely think Bowe would've beaten Haye, Byrd, Povetkin and "White Tyson". Note I'm talking 90's Evander, not what he would eventually become.

 

One, and the heavyweight champion skin color had huge importance for the pseudoscience of Eugenics, as well as the heavyweight king being considered an important, icon like figure through the decades of the sports prominence.