I put my money on Moore. It is interesting the A. J. Liebling wrote that he wouldn't expect the card of the 1923 Yankee Stadium heavyweight show--by name Willard, Johnson, Firpo, and McAuliffe--to last a total of 15 rounds with Moore. Interestingly, Fulton fought a preliminary fight on that card, but Liebling did not mention him by name. My take is that boxing has generally been improving over the years, and the contenders of the Marciano era were better than the contenders of the Dempsey era. My take off watching films from both eras. Fulton is one guy I haven't seen film of, of course.
I disagree .. if you take performance enhancing drugs out of the equation I see fighters getting worse .. much fewer fights, much less experience ... you do not improve that way .. after the 20's technique was there and before the 20' guys like Gans and Johnson were already exceptional ..
Fulton was stylistically good enough to keep Sam Langford off him so he must have had something .. Archie was just so crafty but by 1955 speed was not his greatest asset .. interesting fight .. maybe Moore lands something big late ..
Every once in a while, a heavyweight comes along who appears to have everything, then somebody punches him on the chin. Fred Fulton is very much such a case. If he is anything like what I think he was, then he would have had an excellent chance against Moore.
"much fewer fights, much less experience" this is true of Moore and the heavyweights of the fifties? I lot of you guys know more about the last thirty years or so, but the fighters of the fifties on the whole look better to me on film than the fighters of the twenties. Just my take.
The top heavyweights were certainly talented, but their big advantage is that they were much bigger on the average. I think in the lighter divisions the fifties would hold their own, but the eighties had a lot of top talent. But I think you would really be a better judge of this one than I. I was comparing the fifties with the twenties (or thirties), not with the future.