By 2025 what will an ATG heavyweight list look like??

At the rate that boxing is diminishing in popularity, I doubt that it will even matter. The glory days are long gone have been steadily declining since the early 80's. I was at a neighborhood party this past Sunday. I chatted with some of the husbands, who were watching replays of MMA fights on TV. Nearly all of the men there were once boxing fans, but lost interest back in the 90's. They basically agreed that the action in MMA is superior and hardly as watered down as a contact sport as boxing has become. Most of them didn't even know who Wladimir Klitschko was, and for the few who did, they basically had no interest in him.

Boxers today are grossly over paid and produce little for the money. The few remaining fans who are loyal are punished by having to pay exorbidant fees just to watch a fight at home on TV. Christ, it costs me less money to go to a baseball game in person than it does to sit on my sofa and watch a pay per view event, that quite often puts me to sleep. I no longer pay for these events. I'm smart enough to know that it will be replayed a week later for nothing more than the basic cable fees that I already pay.

Boxing is dead, and will continue to die. I never thought I'd live to see the day where golf would surpass boxing in popularity, but sadly, that day is here.

 

Really just depends who is writing the list.

Your average young fan will likely include Lewis, Holyfield, Tyson, one or both of the Klitschko brothers in their top ten, and possibly Bowe or whoever happens to be dominating the division in that period (Haye, perhaps?)

I don't think the list of knowledgable boxing fans will change at all. When you look back at some of the more informed heavyweight lists, i.e., Eddie Futch, Bert Sugar, etc etc., it's a good indicator of who deserves to be where.

 

I am a member of IBRO and I am 21. by 2025 I will be 38 and I can gaurantee you I will be one of those boxing historians keeping those old timer legends alive, and you better damm well bet on that......cause I won't ever give up, and I will make sure vitali is known to the younger generation as an overated unproven fraud who lost the 2 biggest fights of his career.

 

Boxers definately going up:

Lewis (beat every man he faced in possibly the toughest ever era, not being AMerican maybe 1 of the biggest things against him in rankings and he may be continually penalised for this)
Holyfield (best resume ever ignoring the prime of the fighters)
Bowe (probably will get a little overrated)

Boxers in the balance:

Wlad (if he has a long reign he could crap the top15, if he gets ko'd or even beat in the next 2 years he may not crack the top25, if he reigns for another 5 years it will look mighty impressive, not being AMerican maybe 1 of the biggest things against him in rankings and he may be continually penalised for this)
Vitali - an impressive comeback beating 2-3 top 5 opponents, could see him cracking the top25, dont see it happening
Haye/Povetkin/Solis - could become a big names, Povetkin will probably be smashed by Wladdy though, Solis will probably be another fat cuban, Haye has a chance of beign something special if he can concentrate on his skills, work on his inside work and not get too power crazy

Mendoza thinks Ezzard Charles, Joe Walcott, Floyd Patterson, Jack Johnson, Gene Tunney, Rocky Marciano and Joe Frazier will go down because he doesn't like most of them. They will not go down much. Head to head they maybe less likely to be successful because they dont have the same steroid/supplements/training advanatages of today but for their time their greatness is unquestionable

Size may come round about, 1 of the most successful HWs of recent time in Chris Byrd is fighting at 175, proving smaller HWs can succeed in todays game.

 

:good


notice how mendoza did not include jack dempsey? because he is a big fan of dempsey

 

May I ask you a question. Do you consider just any college gridiron football team of the last few years better than the Army team of 1944-1946 or the Oklahoma team which won 47 straight from 1953 to 1957? The largest player on those two teams was probably under 230 lbs. They would have no chance at competing today. Do you therefore consider a team that is nowhere near as outstanding as those teams were in their time better teams automatically. And if you do, why study the history of college football at all? as you already have arrived at your answers regardless of what history would tell you.

We certainly don't need historians to tell us who is bigger. A height and weight chart can do that.

My bottom line--a fighter only fights in his own time and in the conditions of his own time. Greatness is how one does against others of his own time--the only fair measurement. I would consider Tom Cribb great because he beat the best of his time and was the best of his time. If an ordinary heavyweight of today, with modern nutrition and steroids, etc, could handle him, that does not make that modern heavyweight anything more than ordinary. If a heavyweight has to claim greatness via superiority over the much smaller heavyweights of a distant past, it only proves he was never great to begin with or he would have proven it in his own time against the best of his time.

 

I simply can't see Joe Frazier's legacy diminishing in 20 years, or even 100 for that matter. His triliogy with Muhammad Ali will be remembered for as long as boxing continues to exist on the planet. The man was a priceless credit to the sport of boxing and a bench mark figure to the game. No matter how big, strong, scary, or inflated fighters may be in years to come, it should have nothing to do with diminishing the memory of great fighters or their accomplishments from earlier periods. It would be like saying that just because the Autobahn was created in the 20th century, that we should naturally forget that the Romans created the first roads on the basis that new infrastructure is superior.

.......Flawed logic.........

 

Jack Johnson will be ranked about no 50 then !

 

Lewis is already ranked in the top five by about half of the fans on this forum. I don't think he's going to move into a consensus top three or something, so I disagree about him. Wlad will probably go up in ranking, since he will likely still be accomplishing things for a while yet and looks set to be the dominant figure of this era.

Those guys might drop in the sense that other great champions may emerge to usurp them, but I don't think their legends/reputations/positive appraisals will fade away.

I expect Foreman's standing to improve somewhat over the next couple decades.

Agreed.

 

Frazier's legacy as a great fighter is sealed and will never be forgotten because he fought and beat the consensus #1 or #2. At best there will be two fighters to come between now and 2025 that can push him down the list.

 

I dont see how anyone could think by 2025 marcianos legacy will go down, considering it has been going up and its 2008. I think people are starting to realize holmes avoided many of his top contenders in the 1980s and his legacy will go down.