Better resume/greater fighter: Floyd Mayweather or Barney Ross

Your whole argument boils down to treating glorified sparring sessions as real fights.
Greb’s 1919 run? It wasn’t 45 real wins. He had 9 official victories. The other 36 were no-decision bouts, basically exhibitions where both guys agreed to fight, entertain the crowd, and get paid, with no winner unless somebody got knocked out. Since Greb didn’t have serious KO power, most of those were just long sparring matches for a paycheck.

You’re leaning on newspaper opinions like they’re gospel, but reporters back then were inconsistent, biased, easily swayed by crowds and even got straight-up forged by managers, as you yourself admitted with Brennan.
The Levinsky draw shows exactly how shaky those newspaper "results" were.

And you still can't produce a single real fight video where we can actually see Greb work at top level. Meanwhile, I can watch Floyd fight world champions across five continents, under strict rules, drug testing, weigh-ins, and global HD broadcast frame by frame, with judges scoring every round.

That's the real difference. You’re building Greb’s whole legacy off scribbled secondhand opinions about glorified sparring sessions.
I'm judging Floyd off real footage, real opponents, real pressure, and real victories.

Oldheads like you glorify the past without even understanding the context you're worshipping. Then you pretend it’s fair to compare that wild west nonsense to the fully evolved modern sport. Reading old clippings isn’t greatness. Glorifying exhibitions isn't history. And sparring sessions aren’t world-class wins. Simple as that.

 

Awful contribution.. but you're wrong anyway because i would.

 

Floyd didn't fight in a tougher era. Not even close. Mayweather had 50 fights in 20 years, Greb had that in 1. That's a helluva lot tougher to do, and no amount of PEDs and mental gymnastics is changing that.

The world population difference is a minor factor. A more important one is the number of active fighters, as they are the talent pool in question. The numbers of pro boxers today vs then is hard to actually get a grip of, but from what I've been able to find, the difference is quite small. Using this, I've found the average number of fighters between 1950 & 1959 / 2000 & 2009.
- The average number of pro fighters per year between 2000 & 2009 is 15,931.
- The average number of pro fighters per year from 1950 to 1959 is 9,893.9.

That's not a big difference at all, and given the massive difference in information of eras, it's probably even closer. Then with the segmentation of the sport thanks to alphabet bodies, the amount of weight divisions, and the globalization/decentralisation of the sport, it makes the talent pool Mayweather specifically had to face smaller. Not bigger.

So deeper competition is a myth. So is the tougher era.

I'm not buying sharper technique. Maybe Mayweather specifically has 'sharper technique', but he's a top 10 fighter ever. A huge exception. The difference in 'sharpness' is not technical, it's physical, and mostly a product of having longer to train/peak for fights and PEDs. If you disagree with this, I'd love to know why you think technique is sharper now.

Please, what makes today's sports science better?

I know these were probably just throwaway examples, but they're awful.

Heart-Rate Monitors: You know you can tell when your heart rate is up without a monitor, right? Athletes today use heart monitors to test for improvements, not to actually improve them. It's a very minor thing, which doesn't actually matter because it's inarguable old school boxers had better cardio.

Altitude Training: do you think mountains are a modern invention? Did it take humans nearly 300,000 to run uphill? Tons of boxers trained in the Catskill Mountains at Kutsher's, Grossinger's or at Hotel Evans. Just to name a few in the 50s who trained at high altitude would be: Patterson, Liston, Marciano, Robinson and occasionally Charles.

Cryotherapy: this is hilarious, of course fighters had ice baths and cold showers. In fact, before the 20s, they would only have had cold showers.

Precise Diets: this has to be code for PEDs because old school diets are definitely better on the whole. There has been next to no advancement in nutrition outside of the very niche uses of supplements for creatine and zinc, and food overall has gotten a lot less nutritious, full of more bull**** and is generally less healthy. Especially in America.

What? What do data study (which has been done for thousands of years) and slow motion film (something that's been around since like 1905, and was definitely used in boxing in the 50s) make specifically Floyd's or more broadly modern fighter's defence sharper?


Numbers for the earlier averages:

2000 - 2009: (13077 + 13999 + 14782 + 14880 + 15608 + 16413 + 16949 + 17456 + 17774 + 18374) ÷ 10: 15,931.2

1950 - 1959: (12233 + 10549 + 10548 + 9962 + 10250 + 9518 + 9041 +
9117 + 9037 + 8684) ÷ 10: 9,893.9

 

I am enjoying reading this discussion. Just a reminder of why I don't do P4P rankings though

 

Lol at concluding that a 60% difference isn't much. Nevermind that the am system is being totally ignored and didn't exist in the same form back then.

 

Enjoying the discussion too, as long as someone doesn't diss Durán i'm happy wit it

 

You must be special, mate. A 60% difference isn't a lot compared to the world population increase of 320%. Never mind that the numbers from the 50s are almost certainly far more inaccurate and missing much more fighters.

And also, the amateur system in the eastern world hasn't changed as much as you seem to think.

 

Minor point: It doesn't make Floyd better that he fought with "strict drug testing," since (1) it's possible to cheat drug tests, and more importantly, (2) Greb had a much better way to keep drugs out: PEDs literally hadn't been invented.

Unless you want to mention stuff like strychnine and old fashioned painkillers, which aren't exactly the top-shelf choice today for boxing PEDs.

 

Ross was a Chicago am, with 2 fights listed on Boxrec.

Mayweather was a world level am with about 90 fights.

Ross got his title shot in his 49th fight and had almost exclusively fought nobodies until that point. Floyd got his in 18 fights.

I'm sure it's nothing.

 

No judges, no winners, no official score that’s what no-decision fights were. Serious or not, they were exhibitions unless someone got KO’d that's not opinion, that's fact.
Quoting Tunney’s feelings doesn’t change it. I’m dealing with results, you're dealing with memories. There’s a huge difference between official victories and "trust me, it was a real fight bro."

And saying Floyd’s fights were sparring sessions is a joke. Gatti, Baldomir, Guerrero, whatever you think of them, fought for real world titles, under full sanctioning, real judges, and global cameras watching their every move. Greb fought the same guys six times in no-decision scraps to get paid. Not the same pressure, not the same stakes.

Greb's legacy is built on newspaper clippings and assumptions. Floyd’s legacy is filmed, scored, and verified under the toughest standards boxing’s ever had that's the difference.

 

Again, you must be special mate. What relevance does this have to the stats? And you did manage to read where I said eastern amateurs?

 

Throwing numbers around doesn’t change reality. Greb fought in an era with no strict weight rules, no 10-point must system, no global scouting, and no real video proof. Floyd fought under full worldwide scrutiny where every mistake could be replayed in HD, and every opponent came from a global talent pool.
Greb fighting "50 times in a year" isn’t toughness, it’s proof guys didn’t peak properly, fought half-trained, and stayed active for paychecks, not prestige. Most of those were no-decision bouts with no official winner unless someone got KO’d. If we counted Floyd’s private sparring sessions the way you’re counting Greb’s exhibitions(which is what they pretty much were), he probably "fought" 50 times a year too but obviously we only count official fights for a reason.

And pretending sports science isn’t a big deal is pure fantasy. Modern fighters track heart rates, optimize glycogen loads, manipulate recovery windows, and break down opponents frame-by-frame with HD footage, not "run a few hills and call it a day."
It’s the difference between running a marathon with a plan... and just running until you pass out.

Mountains existed in 1920, sure but periodized altitude camps didn’t.
Cold water existed too but real recovery science didn’t. Old-timers trained tough. Modern fighters train tough and smart.

Today’s athletes don’t guess if they’re improving they measure it. Old-timers were gritty, but their technique and preparation were way sloppier you can literally see it whenever real footage exists.

Floyd dominated under the offical, toughest, most exposed conditions boxing’s ever had.
Greb fought in the fog of myths, no-decisions, and hometown newspaper write-ups, that's the difference.

 

PEDs absolutely existed in Greb’s era, coke, opiates, strychnine, amphetamines, they just weren't regulated or tested. Guys fought drunk, doped, concussed, nobody cared.
Floyd at least had to pass blood/urine protocols, randoms, and fought under global scrutiny. Greb’s era was the wild west.

 

Yet he still acted with more decency than Floyd who was jailed for being a woman beater .. & imagine thinking IV Floyd was clean anyway LMAO.. do you earn commission or something?