Dempsey, Liston, Holyfield, Frazier.

well, I wish the dempsey v wills fight had of happened if only so we could be saying "at least jack got round to beating willards #1 contender even if he was over the hill". Then we would be saying "poor wills, would have had more of a chance aganst willard in 1915". it would have been like when ali got round to defending against folley -pattersons old #1. right guy wrong time.

 

carpentier was getting the hype, it was the biggest fight out there. nobody knew how good he was until he fought jack. A lot of people came to see it because they thought it was a big showdown. yes he should have fought greb but he wasnt knocking out heavyweights. carpentier knocked out all the european heavyweights - being world champion is an international title after all.

Try picking on Liston then, his resume is far easier to pick apart. beating harris was his one unique win before facing patterson since all of his best wins were against fighters recently KOd by other fighters including patterson! quit on a stool then flunked the rematch. dempsey almost won his title back after the sharkey fight.

 

With such infallible logic you do realize that Rocky Marciano never beat a "unique" fighter either? After all, Moore, Walcott, Louis and Charles had already been KO'd so it was no real feat to do it again. Not to mention Dempsey's top wins having been already slapped around by this unheralded middleweight Harry Greb. He did "almost" win his title back, much like Mike Tyson "almost" beat Buster Douglas, but he did not quite get the job done. He then went onto retire at an "ancient" 32.

 

agreed. a wills v willard fight should have happened also.

 

what has this got to do with marciano? those fighters marciano fought had not been knocked out for years. they had compiled winning runs, 100% records against elite fighters going into marciano fights. Its not like they had been "found out", outside of floyd, Listons best victims were only 50-50 at world level. most like valdes, besmanoff, whithurst, king had no more than a 20-80 chance at beating any rated fighter when they fought liston.

 

He retired in 1927. I wouldn't say he was smashing through anybody until he was 22-23 years of age. 1918 was his breakthrough year.

 

This is the kind of stuff I'm talking about. You are making it up as you go along. Zora Folley by the way had not been legitimately knocked out once when he fought Sonny Liston, unless you count a broken rib and a broken jaw over 5 years previous as KO losses.

Big fan of Charles and Walcott but they hardly had 100% records going into their fights with Marciano.

 

whats being made up? charles had scored explosive wins over two rated fighters in back to back fights before fighting marciano. If you check zora folleys record against rated fighters going in against Liston he was only 1-1-1 over the last two years, cockell had a better ratio. Archie Moore was on a 40-odd win streak and was 5-0 (a 100% record) against the rated heavyweights he met including the current #1 and #2.

bringing marciano into this is a bad comparison.

 

Liston
Frazier

Holyfield



Dempsey

 

Better fighter, better reign, would annihilate Jack head to head, etc. :yep