No, imo. A younger, fresher Charles might conceivably have beaten Rocky, but Rocky only just s****es in my ten. What on earth is wrong with word s c r a p e s?atsch
Sure, it's easy to see why Marciano ranks ahead of him. But with Marciano being ranked so high by many (and that's commonly accepted as valid), Charles can squeeze in to the top 10. Well, you could probably convince me that Langford's TOP FIVE.
Exactly. If you have Marciano in the bottom of top 10 then it's less pressing to accept the possibility of Charles in the top 10. :good
Well, all those factors in as well. Dempsey's legacy suffers by him not beating what's generally seen as the outstanding contender of his day, even though the Ring didn't have rankings back then. Same for Jeffries and to a certain extent Johnson. Holmes, who beat a ****load of ranked opponents, loses from the fact that he didn't beat Page and Thomas. Louis and Ali are so clearly ahead of the rest of the pack just because they faced the most ranked opponents (over a very long period) and doesn't lack the name of any major contender.
He would've been named the greatest boxer of all time by many... And no one could've thought that average supermiddleweight Danny Green KO's him in 1 round.
To be more explicit, Marciano remains unpegged - nobody ever proved his level. Charles had his level proven by Walcott, especially, and Ray probably. With certain kind of eyes it's possible to see Walcott above Charles (not me), it's very close between them. What i'm saying is that Charles was pegged by guys who belong clearly outside the ten or something like it. Wills too? Or is he similarly drawn into the ten by Langford's possible presence in the five, like with Rocky and Charles (As you see it).
Well, he could be. But it's kind of a reverse thing, or an inexact comparison, because Wills mostly beat a faded Langford (and faded versions of Langford's peers), whereas Marciano is the one feasted on the re-treads in this case.
I always point out when someone says "faded" that a) Wills was green as grass when he first got in with Langford - in fact, he had slightly less experience (by Boxrec!) than Demspey did when he turned Langford down. I think this is not insignificant. Secondly, when Wills first turned Langford over, Sam was still getting really good results. So while I think it is fair to say that Langford wasn't at his best when their rivalry started, Wills certainly wasn't at his!
Unforgiven, this is what I would expect a ten that included Charles to look like based upon this thread, something like this: 1 - Louis 2 - Ali 3 - Mariano 4 - Holmes 5 - Langford 6 - Frazier 7 - Holmes 8 - Charles 9 - Wills 10 - Walcott
Your rationale and placing of Charles makes perfect sense to me.:good TBH I think Wills is a bit overated imo.
Ehhhh....naw. I wouldn't rank him that high normally. I would see him as almost inarguably above Charles I'd have him at 7,8 or 9 myself, I was just trying to think of a fighter that fit the Charles mould. Holmes beat a great number of contender types, suffered an inconvenient "pegging" when arguably just past (heavyweight) prime and failed miserably to set the world on fire in his own era. But you could replace him with whoever for the purposes of that exercise which was basically just seeing what those guys looked like on paper.