OVERRATED ATGS? Hot take it!

I hear some good arguments for and against this regarding modern and old time fighters.

- with HW's at least, the size difference. Not many sizeable HW's back in the day compared to these days when 6'3 is considered smallish by todays standards.
- training and nutrition will give todays fighters a bit extra
- hard knock life- times were a tougher back then, old school training methods certainly built toughness that maybe some(not all) fighters may miss these days.

going back to 2nd point, if you lifted a fighter from the 40's/50s(or earlier) and they had access to today's nutrition and training and you took that into account when comparing...?

 

idk really, vibes mostly tbh. I had Manuel Ortiz there first but then I felt that was too high too. I don't like doing lists because somebody always ends up out of place and I made this in a bit of a rush to be quite frank. Harada, Medel, and Rudkin is a strong list of scalps though.

 

Roy only stayed at MW for 3-4 years. And he only had 2 fights at JMW.

Most fighters train down.

He was never a natural CW.

Don’t be silly.

He was weighing in the low 180’s for the majority of his LHW fights, and he was 5’11, with a 74” reach.

He didn’t have any size advantages over his SMW-LHW opponents.

He wasn’t significantly bigger than any of his opponents.

Most of his opponents had similar height, reach and in ring weight.

 

So what was lucky about that?

 

That’s not what happened.

Griffin caused him a lot of issues, but Roy was up on the cards when he knocked him down.

 

I’m sure that we could try.

The thing with Roy, is that although he hasn’t got an amazing resume, it’s the manner of most of his victories that make it very impressive.

He destroyed Hill in 4 rounds.

He toyed with Reggie Johnson.

He knocked Griffin out in a single round.

Those were good fighters. And nobody else could ever beat them in that same manner.

So Roy emphatically beat world level fighters like nobody else could.

 

There have been incredibly skilled fighters in every era.

Ezzard Charles is probably the GOAT at LHW.

Fighters are ranked on ability, resume, accomplishments and longevity etc.

Evander is ranked highly both at HW and CW.

Charles is normally ranked higher because he has a superior set of wins/resume.

Evander beating Charles at CW wouldn’t really change anything, even if it could be proven.

Charles wasn’t a CW.

His peak was at LHW, back in the days of same day weigh-ins.

Charles could have beaten today’s SMW’s and LHW’s.

Truly great fighters would excel in any era.

There’s no cut off by date.

Any great could beat any other great from any era.

Any great would have mixed results against other greats, simply depending on how they’d have matched up on the night stylistically.

 

Of course.

Evander was in his prime at HW.

 

I think that Inhoue is great.

I’m really enjoying watching his career play out.

And I hope that he remains active, and if possible, moves up.

But this just brings me back to Roy Jones.

Because Inhoe’s opposition is similar to Roy’s, where many of his opponents were B level guys, but where he emphatically beat them like nobody else did.

Now through no fault of his own, Inhoe hasn’t fought better opponents. As he can obviously only fight who’s there.

But I’m going to question why you think Roy Jones was vastly overrated, when you’re not questioning Inhoue’s standing, and you’re heaping praise upon all of his wins.

Because what he’s been doing over the past few years, Roy did similar things for a whole decade.

 

It doesn’t make sense though, when he emphatically beat guys just as good.

 

I feel Roy Jones Jr is overrated because people think he was unbeatable in his prime. He was definitely beatable at 175 and tall southpaws with great jabs like Tarver and Dawson would have always been nightmares for him. Beterbiev would have probably knocked him out. The fact that he never faced Dariusz and didn't become undisputed in any division hurts his legacy. However I do have him winning H2H against 95% of the 160 & 168 world champions in history

 

Any fighter can be either overrated or underrated.

I’ve personally found that it’s practically impossible to have an objective debate on the careers of Mike Tyson and Floyd Mayweather.

Both of those guys are now both horribly overrated and horribly underrated.

Regarding Roy, nobody is unbeatable. But at SMW, he was amazing.

At LHW, there’s guys like Moore, Spinks, Charles and Foster etc, which would all have had realistic chances of having beaten him.

Regarding Beterbiev, I wouldn’t say that he’d probably have knocked Roy out. I think that Roy’s speed and unorthodox style would have caused him huge issues.

 

Inoue has regularly faced the top 5 opponents at every weight he's fought at. Roy didn't. Eric Lucas, Bryant Bannon, and Tony Thornton were not as good as guys like Eubank, Benn, Collins, Liles, McClellan, Dariusz, or any decent HW. Roy's opposition was carefully picked, he ducked the best opposition for most of his career, his level of ability is vastly blown out of proportion to the point where some people are deluded enough to genuinely believe he was impossible to beat because he was fast, and had the HBO hype machine behind him. He was only lineal champ in 1 division and it was the division where he refused to face the real lineal champion there for years on end. His top 5 wins are a drained Toney, an inexperienced B-Hop who was only a fringe-contender at the time, paper champ John Ruiz, Montell, and Gonzalez. Not very inspiring considering how highly he's touted. He ducked his fellow champions, never faced the best opposition available, fought at home his whole career, and is vastly overrated respective to what he actually accomplished. You can type as much as you want to try tell me that a bunch of barely ranked randos were as good as Benn and co. somehow but I will die on this hill and no amount of evidence or reason will dissuade me.

 

Most underrated ATG in my book is Bernard Hopkins. His longevity is something that we will never see again in boxing / any combat sport. I can't imagine there will ever be another 49 years old world champion, let alone unified world champion. He was widely defeated for the first time 2 months shy of 50 years old by a prime monster