Then that prety much explains the list. It gives a high weighting to historical importance rather than resume or head to head.
how can a list be good or bad? you either agree or disagree. its either popular or unpopular. its up to the guy who he wants on his list.
It's a very defensible list. I wouldn't put Johnson so high, but it's defensible. This content is protected (I usually have him #2 or #3). The only guy whose absence strikes me as difficult (not impossible) to justify is Jeffries.
I googled "John J. Sullivan", as I'd never heard of him. Looks like he's a restaurant owner in Connecticut.
John Sully at # 3 is INSANE!:silly The names are cool for the most part, but the order is mixed up...:deal MR.BILL:hat
Sullivan shouldn't even belong in the top 10 though. How are we supposed to judge him with NO FOOTAGE? It doesn't make any sense.
You judge him try judging him for what he actually achieved and did, instead of what you think he might do or how pretty he looks to you. In reality it is the only way to judge someone, really. For the record, John L has more KOs within the first 4 rounds of a fight than any other fighter and by an awful long way. His KO Percentage, in his prime, is better than any other fighter in history. He was never beaten in his prime. In fact, he was only ever beaten once, when past his prime, an alcoholic and even then it took 15 rounds. And as another poster so proudly points out of Vitali, I am pretty sure that John L Sullivan was never behind on points in a fight (save for Corbett). You can rate John L Sullivan wherever you feel like, including no 1. His only weakness is that his prime was short because although he held the title for 7 years, he was not the same fighter for the last few years of this reign, because like every other fighter who found the successes outside the sport, he let his condition and desire wane. In reality though, unlike most he continued to win until his very last fight, even though he wasnt as good as he used to be, and towards the end, he even had only the one decent arm to hit with. I am fairly sure that there isnt a single heavyweight who lived, that could have went through John Ls schedule and do what he did.
While I wish we had lots and lots of good quality footage for every fighter, the facts are that : 1) we don't; 2) that we don't have footage of a fighter has no bearing on whether or not he/she was a great fighter, or how great they were. So if we are going to do ALLTIME lists, we're just going to have to deal with the fact that, for many boxers, we don't have the sort of footage we'd like to have.
Sullivan at his peak was probably more dominant than any heavyweight champion who came after him. Everybody was either fighting to survive of getting anihilated quickly. Louis probably had more problems with the bum of the month club.
