What's the worst All-Time-Great of boxing?

H2H? Plenty of older boxers get ranked highly based on résumé and newspaper clippings, but we’ve got no real footage to judge how they'd stack up against modern, well-rounded fighters. They’re All-Time Greats on paper but that doesn’t mean they'd hold up in the ring against elite talent from later eras. Take Harry Greb or Sam Langford, massive achievements, sure, but how would they deal with modern opponents who are faster, more athletic, and wouldn’t let them get away with the tactics they relied on?

As for a specific case, I’d go with Jack Johnson. Great for his time, a pioneer, but I don’t think his style holds up against any modern heavyweight ATG, or even a lot of top-tier contenders. Too slow, too reliant on clinching and his size, and not enough power to keep up.

 

Jack Johnson comes to mind, great defense but probably not against those that followed him.

 

If we want to call Joe Walcott an ATG, I’ll go there — his record overall is nothing terribly special (some nice highs and some low lows) and while he had skills he was ridiculously inconsistent. It’s almost fair to say he never had a prime, although I guess he did have that one good spell. And he’d have never been champ had the mob not kept lining up title shot after title shot for him … five years and three (more) title fight losses after giving a fading Joe Louis a good go (in a loss) he was still being rewarded with shots at the title based on that and little else.

 

The least great one that somehow qualifies and an all time great?

You are basically looking for someone who gained that accolade, by getting the right breaks.

I might suggest Paddy Ryan is you woudl consider him as such.

 

It's also possible that he would have beaten every single campion who came after him, because we are only seeing 20% of what he could do.

We just don't know.

 

I remember in champions forever Larry Holmes said he would have beat every fighter but would have struggled with Jack Johnson.

 

I have also speculated that modern rules might actually favor Johnson, as long as he knew what they were.

Those bigger gloves are going to be easier to obstruct, and the scoring is going to be more favorable to defensive tactics.

To top it all off, people will want a charismatic black American champion.

 

Yes potentially very true.

 

I'm going to go out on a limb & suggest either Toney or Trinidad.

Toney's ATG status is based on the breadth of weight classes that he found success in, but he lacked consistency &/or longevity in any single class.

Tito's best wins came over promising talents who ultimately came up short of true greatness (i.e. Vargas, Reid), his lone win over a prime ATG was a highly dubious dec., & he was beaten soundly in other fights w/ hof comp like Hopkins & Winky.

 

No actually we DO KNOW.

Why Jack Johnson is Not as Great as You Were Told - YouTube

 

The video presents a strong opinion without much to support that opinion. I hesitate to level too much criticism at Johnson for his championship opposition because of the circumstances in front of him at the time.

For most fighters winning the heavyweight championship of the world would be something to celebrate. Then the opportunity to be a good champion,make $ fight the best, most deserving guys would be a worthy goal.

Jack had to deal with being hated by his home country. Like he did something wrong in winning a fair fight against Burns. Then he had to answer to the "real champion" Jefferies.

JJ beats the brakes off of Jefferies only to find out now there are race riots because he won a fair fight. People died in these riots and films of Johnson's victory were banned from being sold.

With all that the idea that he could have fought another black boxer in America doesn't seem realistic. If they lost their mind over Johnson how would they cope with 2 brothers in the ring? A real possibility of something ugly happening as well as question of what $ would they draw in that racial climate.

Ofcourse it didn't stop there the Mann Act was used against him to essentially jail him or run him out of the country. So there's that.

I don't know precisely how good or great Johnson was. He had the respect of his peers as a boxer. Just sayin if we're gonna give anyone a pass for not fighting certain challengers let's give Jack Johnson one.

Nobody ever said being a trail blazer was gonna be easy. I doubt Johnson was fearful of any of those guys. That wasn't the reason.

 

Three Italian-Americans come to mind, all of which are in the hall of fame (sorry, Italian-Americans, I love you but!)
Rocky Graziano, Ray Mancini and Arturo Gatti.

Well, Gatti was Italian-Canadian, but isn't Canada in North America??

 

I wouldn't classify any of them as ATGs though.

 

Exactly..that's my point lol