Alexis Arguello: Where P4P?

Haha, of course I too am enjoying the discussion. Hope it doesn’t come off otherwise. I respect you and your contributions to this community.

And I hope to heck you pull through and choose the right dosage. Also, that your insurance covers it — medical bills can be ridiculous. I’ve heard of people who can heal through crystals and meditation (rather than medication), so if the experimental drug fails I’ll help you track down one of these. Or we can try to find the faith healer who fixed Evander’s heart so he could beat up Tyson!

There is, of course, no right or wrong here. In part, we differ because you hold your surgeon in higher regard than do I (no offense to him intended) — he is surely a learned boxing historian/expert, but I think relative to other posters here he’s far from in rarefied air … he’s among them, not above them. And his knowledge of earlier eras doesn’t mean his ranking/consideration/opinion of more recent fighters is not lesser than some whose knowledge is more centered there. Which is to say a man who knows everything there is to know about the first 10 presidents of the U.S. doesn’t necessarily know more about all the ones who came since … even ones who were presidents when he was alive.

I, for instance, know far more about boxing in the 1960s-80s than I do 2010s-date, even though I still watch current fighters … I just don’t know as much about a Bud Crawford or Canelo as I do about Leonard or Holmes … so if I say Larry was a greater heavyweight than Anthony Joshua, I say so admittedly knowing more about Holmes than AJ.

All is good between us. I said before that the list you tout is a fine one, I just don’t see it as being the Holy Grail of lists. Doesn’t mean you’re not right, of course … but when I think of it, a man with your brain condition could be suffering from all sorts of delusions.

 

And it was a disadvantage when his opponent got inside, which SRL did enough times to stop him.

 

Yet he gave Hagler a reasonable fight and beat Barkley, fresh of a KO of Hearns!!!!!!! He wasn't too small to do all that, hey.

 

You called him a weight bully, he was fighting people his own weight, do you understand that?

Why don't you explain to me why hundreds of fighters, notably tall for their division, did little to nothing in the big scheme of boxing? These "weight bullies" had all the advantages sewn up, what happened there?

 

Haha, all good mate.

You're correct, the regard in which we hold McGrain's knowledge of boxing history relative to others is the source of our difference of opinion.

I think it's greater than the average knowledge of those 24 x posters and I'm extremely confident I'm right in that regard.

 

Nah, Bobby Chacon did take advantage of Alexis's reach still,and it's not even mentioned Arguello sucks against small movers, he's fighting fair,he had the reach and they got the moves!

 

I agree about him not that small to fight Marvin and Iran,but for Tommy, he's probably still too small...it would roughly take atleast Leonard sized fighter to beat Tommy.

 

He actually started at 119 pounds when he was a teenager. He even stopped Ernesto Marcel at 130.

 

Forgot to mention that sry,but his peak did start at lightweight,until he grew up to be more of a light/normal welterweight

 

I've contributed to a few of those lists by Rumsfeld, and for the most part the rankings are sound. There are, however, some outlier ranking anomalies wildly skewed by fanboys or by voters ignorant of some of the more obscure fighters.

McGrain's list is far and away the best list I've read. I grant it this lofty status due to the incredibly well researched reasonings he gives in according each fighter their slot. My disagreements on a fighter's status on that list are very minor, a difference of opinion of a few spots at most on the list.

While in theory the collective wisdom of the many often trumps the wisdom of the one (Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? ), for most things there is a diminishing return to this reasoning as the subject matter becomes increasingly esoteric. Was Napoleon's Six Days Campaign superior to his campaigns of Austerlitz or Ulm? Was Nathan Bedford Forrest the best Civil War general? Should the battles of Silarus and Herdonia be held in the same regard as Trebia and Trasimene?

I could ask 25 amateur historians their opinions on these topics, but I'd rather take the practically unrivaled expertise of a subject matter savant who painstakingly explains his methodology and is not above tweaking his work when exposed to reasoned counterarguments.

 

You and I see it the same HB.