Completely swap the era's of young and byrd; how successful would they be?

I was saying you could probably stretch Young's relevance as a contender to 3 years at best: Shavers II-Norton.

Byrd's 2000-2004 is still a solid 4 years. Stretching you could argue 98-2006.

Going by Ring, Young was top 10 75-78.

Byrd was top 10 98-2006 (save 99)

No matter how you cut it, Byrd fought at a higher level for much much longer.

 

Young was a Ring top 10 fighter 75-78.

Byrd was a Ring top 10 fighter 98-2006.

Regardless of how one defines prime, that fact is very telling as to who had the more longetivity as a fighter.

 

I think those were his prime years.

I feel the Tua fight is the apex of this time line with slight variables inbetween. He got humbled by the Ike loss of course but was already an excellent fighter. I don't think he fell off the wagon completely until after the second Wlad loss. Povetkin is the first time he really didnt look himself.

 

In contrast to Young, this was a fighter who went from nothing special to really good only to nose dive.

Byrd was good, got better, aged but stayed good, than nose dived.

 

To be fair that may have also been the very best and most confident Golota performance I've seen and Oquendo's style was just an awful match up for Byrd. So I'm not completey sure there is a significant variance in Byrd from 2000-2006 beyond just his style not working as well against others and other isolated factors. Perhaps losing some speed but still generally remaining much quicker than his opponents.

But yeah, completely fair assemesent there.

 

Two fighters about as similar as you can get. Each could do what the other could. The way I see it though,is that Jimmy could do everything just that little bit better than Chris could. I doubt whether Chris would have beaten the '77 George Foreman.

 

These comments are most interesting.

Is this just a stigma road block people have trouble finding their way around? They are as similar as you can get until the name Foreman gets mentioned.

At the time, people had trouble accepting Young had a shot against Foreman too until it happened before their eyes.

 

Good point,but I was talking in a retrospective sense.

 

I'm sure they could both stink out each other's eras just as much as they did in their own.

 

Young's era was stronger on competition though.

 

Here's the ranked fighters they actually fought in this time:

Earne Shaversx2
Ron Lyle
George Foreman
sliding Ali
Ken Norton
Ossie Ocasio
Gerry Cooney
Micahel Dokes

Ibeabuchi
Vitali Klitschko
Wladimir Klitschkox2
David Tua
sliding Holyfield
Fres Oquendo
Andrew Golota
Alexander Povetkin

Looks comparable to me...if not a slight nudge to Byrd.

Heck, Byrd was beating solid fringe guys like Jimmy Thunder while Young was losing to fighters like Roy Williams and Randy Neumann.

 

Fixed. :thumbsup