Boxing News ranks the 100 greatest fighters

you going to discredit Michelzewski beating Hill years after Hearns fought Hill. Hearns fought Hill when Hill was undefeated and 10 title defenses. Hill beat Maske,Tate,Czyz,Stewart and 20 other title defenses. And Barkley? Anyone has the achilles. You cannot say Ali was not great and say Hell Ali was beaten by Norton or Hell Junior Jones beat Barrera! Hearns fought them all and deserves high marks, regardless of him being my favorite fighter. He is my favorite fighter because he did fight the best and his record against the fab 3 and Benitez is 2-2-1. Not bad. Leonards is 5-1 and Durans is 1-5 Hagler is 2-1

 

I know the back story on it. I know Leonard was a conniving *****. It's fun to play contrarian to all the irrational, emotional hate people give SRL on here. The point still stands regardless. Realistically, SRL shouldnt of been able to beat Hagler when he did fight him and fittingly, few gave him a chance.

I never stated Hearns was greater than Hagler, only put forth an argument for him being absolutely on par at the very least.

 

Hearns compared to Hagler? Honestly I see Hearns has an edge. H2H Hagler fought well and defended his title, but I dont see him competing with a welterweight or 154 pound Thomas Hearns!!!! Tommy Hearns fought Cuevas for his fight title and Benitez for his second and Hill for his 175 pound belt. That alone puts him over Hagler!!!!! And lets not talk about knocking out Duran at 154 when Duran had just beaten Moore and won that title there. What puts Hagler in the history books is the Hearns fight because he beat a great guy and dominantly but I don't think beating that guy puts him over him. Hearns fought everyone!!!! The barkley fights dont factor in my mind much!!! Tommy had a bad year in 1988 ad******g to aging but he adjusted and kept wining. Hagler had a bad fight with Ray and quit boxing!! Tommy fought for years more after Hagler and won 3 more world titles!!!

 

This comes off a helluva lot stronger than I put it. WTF, the man Has A Case. :conf

 

These kind of lists are always hard to pull off and make the majority happy. For me it's impossible to rank fighters from different eras, especially if little or no quality footage exists. I guess we are stuck taking the historians word for it, but i'd much rather just compare modern 1943-present against each other as there is much better evidence available than just boxrecs and fables.

 

good post. Many of the guys doing these types of list never saw a fight with those guys in it..

 

Cervantes and Benitez above Hopkins? De La Hoya 40 places below Floyd? Hmm..I guess we'll all have our qualms about ranking, but this one seems fairly complete.

 

On the Hagler/Hearns discussion :

I like Thomas Hearns, but although he deserves credit for spanning several divisions, he never dominated any division he fought in, he was only the #1 man in one division (154 pounds) which was quite a weak "junior" division.

His most impressive win against a bigger man was actually the Dennis Andries fight, because I'm sure Hearns' "173 pounds" was bogus for that fight (I guess he was 165 or less).
By the time he fought Virgil Hill he was actually a light-heavy anyway.

His results and performance in the middleweight division was not great.

Hagler dominated a decent middleweight division for several years. He wasn't a big middleweight so he shouldn't be expected to move up 15 pounds to fight a BIG great light-heavyweight like Michael Spinks.
There were lots of guys fighting at middleweight who were big enough to be light-heavy, or super-middle, in those days anyway.

 

EMILE GRIFFITH is one of my all-time 'least favourite' fighters, boring as hell to watch.

But as two-time welterweight champion, and middleweight champion, and such a good career and level of opposition, I would have expected him to get some sort of rating.
Is he on the list at all ?

 

Nope

 

No Griffith and, even worse, no Rodriguez.

 

Aaron Pryor isn't even the greatest black American from the 1980s with a neat microphone afro, big mustache and cocaine habit named PRYOR !


Of all the ratings, I think he is the most inflated on that list.

 

that's amazing. i just made the wife watch his sunset strip special last night

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True classic. :good

There'll never be another. There are some pretty good imitators, but he's still top of the tree, imo.

 

when they did the 100 best stand ups of all time, george carlin came in second.

he said something to the effect of: it was always richard pryor with the rest of us competing for second place