All Classic Posters, Please Give Me Your Opinion...

Yes.

This is not entirely a bad thing.

A contemporary fighter is held up to a high standard and expected to prove himself relative to the already proven greats of the past.

Incidentaly if you look at the thread discussing Hopkins all time ranking, you will see that I amongst others am arguing for him to be ranked aboved Carlos Monzon and Marvin Hagler.

 

Resume is the big factor when people rank fighters, and excellent older fighters with hundreds of fights are almost guaranteed to have better resumes than excellent modern fighters that have 40/50/60 etc.

It's very difficult to rate fighters from totally different eras against each other, so you'll see plenty that give too much credit to old fighters and plenty that give to much to modern fighters, and some that try to balance it out and go by what they were compared to the fighters of their own era (even this is difficult, as some fighters fought in "better" eras than others and what not).


Ranking Greatness is entirely subjective and I don't think there will ever be a set way of going about it (as it should be), but I do agree with nearly all you said in the opening post. After nearly everyone has had Robinson, Langford, Armstrong, Greb, Duran, Charles, Ali, Pep, etc in their top 10 for decades upon decades, everyone else gets used to it being that way and it becomes almost blasphemous to have one of them outside the top 10-15, meaning it will just get harder and harder for newer fighters to rank in the top 10 or 15.

For the record on the other topic in this thread so far, I still rate Monzon clearly above Hopkins (purely on resume, as Hopkins at his best is overall slightly more impressive IMO), but now Hopkins is clearly (although it's still close) above Hagler on my list.

 

why you shouldnt rank guys before they retire is that you need to see what there competition does afterwards. a win is an investment. if the people they beat improve or win some fight later in there careers it helps your claim.

pavlik might be shot or just not as good as we thought for all we know.


greatness as pacfan is so incredibly pretencious and subjective. when you put people on pedastols then it's a hard blow and breaks alot of traditions to move them about. to have robinson #1 fighter ever is just general concensus to have harry greb infornt means your taking a stand or somthing.


the pound 4 pound list will prolly be the same one in 40 years time.

 

I think there's some favouring of old timers here. The fact that many have at most only one fighter (usually Duran) from the last 50 years in their top 5 testifies to this. ´Cause I don't see any reason why past champions were better.

Probably, there's a bit too much emphasis put on number of wins instead of their quality. Duran and Ali (and perhaps even Monzon, Whitaker and SRL) have reasonable claims to a place in the top 5 IMO. To clarify: I don't mean that all of them should be there, but there's at least some case to make for most of them.

 

No one contributing to a boxing forum such as this will reinvent the wheel. Before many of us were born, top all-time lists existed as a general consensus of the best fighters in history.

New stars should be properly weighed against these elite luminaries record-wise and in relative abilities and thus ranked.

It is of course a subjective exercise, but that is part of the fun of being a fan.

A key difference is now general consensus for the future is being shaped by input from average fans all over the world via the Internet, whereas before writers and other elect in high places held sway virtually unchallenged.

Many young followers of the sport tend to underestimate the past because it comes to us merely in grainy black-and-white and yellowed clippings.

Many old-timers tend to disregard the present because heroes from youth become untouchable icons.

The truth lies somewhere in the middle and I believe it can be attained.

One important difference I see is old-timers fought much more often, which counts for much: practice makes perfect in any endeavor. Sugar Ray Robinson went 85-0 as an amateur, turned pro at age 19 and captured the welter crown only after 75 fights. He defended the title over 5 years and went on to win the middleweight crown 5 different times, racking up a record of 175-19 (105 KOs).

The byword of the time was that fighters fought, taking the bitter with the sweet. For three decades now, careful marketing of a fighter's career has been given priority.

Ray Leonard was a great fighter, but his record pales in comparison to the original Sugar Ray's, especially when considering his very calculated challenges for crowns: a one-fight comeback controversial victory over a slipping Hagler; a two-division-titles-in-one-fight win over Lalonde. His record is 36-3-1.

A modern great's record will usually thus seem lesser compared to an old-timer's. Today a loss on the record is avoided at all costs, as are "tune-ups".
As in Tommy Gunn's case, the itch for a fight for the title comes on as soon as a prospect starts winning. Welterweight champion Robinson's decision to face a fighter as great as Kid Gavilan in a simple nontitle bout would be unthinkable today.

All this said, because of his record and excellent relative abilities, Hopkins is securely among my all-time 20 pound-for-pound greatest fighters.

 

I don´t do lists anymore and so this can´t happen anymore. :tong Seriously, I think both happens. There are enough guys out there who would pick Jones or Toney or Wlad abve every past fighter and then there are guys who think that today´s fighters are crap and past fighters were better. And then there are guys who only recognize the fighters of their own era as great, best example the 80s.

 

I personally don't go by the status quo and am happy to argue the following:

Roy Jones is a great case for P4P GOAT
Mayweather is better than Henry Armstrong
Dito Duran is better than Armstrong
Hopkins is better than Hagler

 

I rank guys based on there resume and with fighters fighting far less now then they used to it is difficult to have a resume on par with some of the previous greats. For example I don't rate Mayweather ahead of Canzoneri because Tony's resume is better but head to head is a different thing. I don't rate Tony higher because he fought in the 30's it just because he fought more ATG which is expected considering he has so many more fights.

 

Nice one, but be prepared to get crucified by some others. It's stupid to have Hopkins at #40 and Hagler at #20. Clearly there isn't 20 places between them.

 

Armstrong is a good example of how old timers is given more slack. His achievment of being champion in three weight classes simultanously is unprecendented in boxing history IMO, but he had many losses before and after and still finds his way into many top 5's and even some top 3's.

On the other hand, much of Jones' achievements is discarded because of a couple of losses he had after taking a HW belt. Even though he performed extremely well and achieved great things before those losses and have some credible wins after, they're still enough to keep him out of most top 10's and even top 20's. For me that's a double standard.

The modern fighters come under much more intense scrutiny, I would say. I see no chance that anyone during the modern era would even be considered for nr. 1 p4p if they were missing fighters like Charley Burley and others on their record.

That's all this talk about SRL and RJJ choosing their opponents too carefully, and at the same time Tunney is highly regarded. A man who chose to avoid an entire race! I love the knowledge and intelligent tone on this forum, but the bias towards "oldies" bugs me somewhat.

 

I think most of us here know enough about the fightgame to take all of the above mentioned factors into consideration. Rating fighters on these all time lists is entirely subjective. You just can't do everyone justice on an all time 10 list. There's been a lot more than 10 great fighters so someone elses favourite is always going to be left out. Maybe we use the word "great" too freely.
In a top 10 list the law of averages might say 1 fighter from each decade. From there you might have to take into consideration that there were a lot more active fighters 50 to 100 years ago so there is more chance of there being more "great" fighters, more poor fighters as well. Automatically that would lower the 1 per decade for the last 50 years. Going by all that it's not surprising that there might be more old-timers on the lists.