Its your list my dude as long as the criteria is consistent then you can make whatever list you want. Now people won't agree with it but why does that matter its your list not theirs?
Usyk is currently very hot, people are as excited about him as they will ever be. I think it's unlikely he usurps Ali But the other thing is that he is active, and Ali isn't - I'm not sure how long Usyk would have to carry on and remain unbeaten to overhaul Ali's wild lead but it'd be a while that's for sure.
True, but on an American broadcaster through an American promoter. You would not say Lennox Lewis rising up in such a US-centric industry just adds to the legacy of LL? I don't think his success takes away from how very American boxing was at the time, but other than playing around with nationalism I don't have any interest in a real argument or debate about it. It's cool if you do bro. LL is a great champ to put up as GOAT either way.
Virtually nobody gets into Boxing nowadays. They all go into other ventures and sports. Boxing was bigger and had a bigger talent pool back then, USA is big enough to cover for the handful of ukranians doing boxing today. The number of young people in the 60s, 70s, and 80s was much bigger also. It was the second sport in USA and MUCH bigger everywhere.. Boxing is not big in not one country today, not in a single one. Non mexicans like to think it´s big in Mexico, but it´s not that big there either.. MMA is surpassing Boxing in Mexico btw. I would go as far as to say MMA is now more popular in Argentina than Boxing.
There's more active boxers today then were were in the 60s, 70s and 80s btw and number of amateurs in the US has been going up as well with over 46,000 registered amateur boxers in the U.S. in 2024, up from 2023 which was 38,587. So maybe you don't actually know what you're talking about?
The idea that boxing was a US only sport is absurd considering that Bugner and Cooper were British and Mildinberger was German. The USSR and other Eastern European countries had a strong amateur system, and yet Ali, Frazier and Foreman still took home gold and beat those guys. So even if the Soviets and other Communist fighters were able to go pro, they likely would have lost to the Americans. It is true that boxing his more geographically distributed now compared to then. It is also true that sports outside of boxing have more money in them now than compared to 50 years ago. Hence, while there may be more amateur boxers today, the more outstanding athletic talents are more likely to go into other sports than they would in boxing back then. Usyk is great. ATG. I have cheered for him for a long time. I am even ok with people counting his cruiserweight wins at heavyweight. But he does not have the resume of a top 5 ATG heavyweight. Top 10, maybe. If you want to rank him top 3, its your list and i won't argue with you. I can agree to disagree.
Great post. It seems boxing doesn't hold nearly as large a spot in the public mind as it did in the days of yore. 47% of American tvs were tuned into Ali-Spinks ll which rivals Supet Bowl ratings. And two billion people around the world watched it.That was nearly one out of every two people alive at the time.
... ... ... Once upon a time swords were a weapon for war and industrially proliferated across the planet. Swords even became fashion statements. Today swords are far less popular as a weapon or just for dress, however, there were more swords produced in this year than the entire time frame when swords were common on the battlefield. Mainstream popularity and the raw numbers are two different things. Also, to disregard the allowance of the rest of the world into boxing, largely through the work of bodies that didn't exist prior to the late 80s, as a "handful of ukranians" is pretty ... I dunno, case-in-point? Thanks for proving how head-in-ass Americans are? I'm just giving you some biz bro Japan produced a top ten rated HW for the first time during the twenty-teens, right around the same time China was adding HW to the world scene for the first time, not long after New Zealand got it's first ever HW champion which of course is coming off the heels of the first baltic contenders which are not too far removed from the first slavic champions.
Boxing was banned in China until Muhammad Ali asked Dengxioping to remove the ban. He wasnt the only reason but his meeting with Deng was a powerful catalyst. Oh, you Brits are okay in my book.
I don't think it's outrageous to have Ali at #3, but I believe two HWs above him should be Joe Louis and Lennox Lewis.
I´m not american. Take a look at this. https://boxrec.com/wiki/index.php/The_Ring_Magazine's_Annual_Ratings:_1970 How many americans you see in there ? This thing about today being a worldwide sport is largely a myth. The difference is that today... well, the US is out of the game... they left Boxing, american kids don´t wanna be boxers anymore, if they are into fighting they get into MMA. And it´s not like other countries haven´t seen better days either, I mean, look at Mexico. In a normal era Canelo would have been only one out of 3 or 4 great mexican stars. Boxing is in terminal shape, sadly, and it has only himself to blame. I wanted to get back into watching boxing in weekends, but every weekend it seems like there is nothing going on.