A List of ATG(?) HvyWts: Missing Any One? Any Impostors?

you could make a case for removing Dempsey and Tunney but i wouldnt

what about Wlad Klit

 

Wills and Langford should be in.

Tunney is a question mark for me. ATG LHW of course, but can he be considered ATG HW for a handful of fights? Coin flip.

Wlad is close, but should let his career finish. Taking out Haye and Povetkin would cinch it (it's as good as one can do these days).

 

Seems about right to me.

 

What about Jim Corbett?

Possibly Fitzsimmons also. If you are including Wills and Langford then you definitely need Peter Jackson. Maybe Baer, Schmelling and Sharkey would go close. I dont think Vlad is in yet, but if he is then Ken Norton must go extremely close, as would his brother Vitali.

Incidently, if you take away Joe Frazier, and Evander Holyfield, i think that you have pretty much covered the fighters who could legitimately be considered the greatest heavyweight of all time.

 

I LIKE BOTH "K" BROS! However, I like Vitali better........:bbb

MR.BILL

 

you forgot balboa, drago and creed jj lol!

 

Possibly Ezzard Charles, He had a very good Heavyweight career. fought some of the best of his era.

 

I would remove Gene Tunney from your list, and consider adding Walcott, Charles, Langford, Patterson (1st tier) Bowe, Norton (2nd tier)

 

Sullivan is very interesting. If you look at his record of fights, he fought four rounders with gloves and fought thousands of exhibitions against the best fighters around (admittedly many were local talents and maybe even barely at golden gloves level, we just dont know.) But even if they were dreadful, he knocked out all but one of these opponents in 4 rounds! Sometimes multiple opponents in the same night.

Now even at their very best, surely you would expect that if Tyson, Liston, Baer, Louis or anybody else had fought this many fights, then at least one person would struggle to clinch their way through to a 4 round draw when they had an off night. In fact, if you look at good fighters records, nearly everybody is taken 4 rounds or more by at least one below average fighter. This is all without even thinking about the possibility of self sustaining injuries (Tyson proved with mitch green that hed have not been defending often in a bare knuckles LPR match). While i tend to think that John L may not have necessarilly fought the strongest competition ever, I dont think there is a person in history who could have come close to doing what he did (time machine or not).

 

The list has nothing but ring legends on it. Perhaps Bob Fitzsimmons and Sam Langford belong as they beat some great fighters.

I'm not sure if Sullivan belongs or not in terms of accomplishments, but he's sure up there as a legend.

 

Harry Wills should definately be there. Probably Ezzard Charles aswell, perhaps Sam Langford. Floyd Patterson has a case to be on the list, same with Jersey Joe Walcott.

It depends how many you are limiting the list to, but I think all 5 of those guys deserve a place on a list of ATG heavyweights.

 

Cut the following: John L Sullivan, James J Jeffries, Jack Dempsey,
Rocky Marciano.

I'm on the fence about Tunney and Lewis. Tunney was an all-time great light heavyweight, but I don't know about heavyweight. I think he would have beaten Dempsey any day of the week, so.... There's something about Lewis. I don't know. He probably should be up there in the all-time great list. But he looked awful against Klitschko and was devastated against Rahman in a way that really makes one wonder.