Are Charles & Walcott equal

This. Walcott was a much better heavyweight, but P4P Charles had the better career as a fighter.

 

I certainly wouldnt say it's deeper nor better... Walcott beat Harold... Maxim... Layne... Bivens... Ray just to name some. Frankly, likely beating Joe Louis is better than anything Charles did at HW

 

Except for Ezz actually beating Joe Louis.

 

Walcott didn't beat Layne.

Charles did though.

 

Which would look really good for Ezz if Walcott didn't fight the clearly better version of Louis. Maybe knocking down this better version 2x means something?

 

I have trouble calling Walcott better than Charles. They split two fights, Charles won the first two, and Walcott the last two. That's a good indication, they were pretty evenly matched. I think Charles was closer to his prime in the first two fights. Walcott seemed to hold a plateau longer. By the time of the last two fights, Ezzard had already started a downhill slide, and at a faster rate than Walcott. Charles was more of an over-blown light heavyweight while Walcott had been a solid heavyweight since 1936. Charles had always been an over-achiever, always moving up in weight (mostly because Lesnevich was avoiding him at light heavy) and I think that caught up with him. If I was to be pushed, I think the 1949-'50 Charles might have defeated any version of Walcott eight out of 10 times. But, I'm not going there. The 2-2 split tells me they are even.

An interesting topic would be how the Charles who defeated Louis would do against Marciano.