Calling his first fights with Bivins and Marshall the biggest fights of his LHW run is what's absurd here. Not the 3 wins over the greatest and longest reigning lineal Light Heayvweight champion in history, who is also Boxing's KO king. Not the 2 destructive KO's over Marshall, which came as early as round 2 and round 6. Not his 2 back to back wins over future LHW champion Joey Maxim. Not his easy decision victory over Bivins. Not him literally killing a man. But the 2 fights where he conveniently lost, the ones where he had a severe back injury (resulting in 8 of the 11 KDs) and a 10 lb disadvantage in before even properly settling as a proper Light Heavyweight.
Not to mention that those were his among first fights at 175, and he hadn't even been to the military yet, which is where he grew into his frame.
The former was part of a tournament for duration champ the latter was a duration title fight. Theres nothing radical with elevating those matches stakes above strictly non title bouts.
So is Charles' 3 round point win over a nobody like Al Barlow his greatest win at LHW because it wasn't strictly a non title bout ? Over Moore, Bivins, Maxim and Marshall ? All of them being Hall of Famers and 3 of them being P4P ATGs ? No, that is ridiculous. A big fight is a big fight because of the opponent in front of you, not because of any certain title on the line. It's even more absurd that you ignore Charles' severe injury to make the Marshall loss seem more important than it is.
Not even close to being true. Maxim wasn't ranked by the time Charles moved up, because Charles beat him twice as a middleweight. Anton Christofordis was a middleweight when Charles beat him. And the other is Mose Brown, who was ranked for all of 15 minutes, and guess what, Charles was still a middleweight.
It is true look at the Ring rankings from the previous years. I'm not going to go over it right now but it was true.
This logic is sound. That defense doesn't really fly when you're saying hes the GOAT or a top 5 of all time though. What other fighter would get named the GOAT for not being champ and performing bad in their 2 title fights because they faced comparable competition in some of their non title bouts?
https://boxrec.com/wiki/index.php/The_Ring_Magazine's_Annual_Ratings I'm calling your bluff. I know I'm right on this one I remember making a post about it a few weeks ago. Heres the top 10ers Charles had beaten or drawn who got that prior to Charles fighting Bivins and Marshall Marty Simmons Teddy Yarosz Christophordis Overlin Booker Beckwith Mose Brown
The "duration title" was a marketing tool used by promoters to sell fights while the actual titles were frozen during the war years. There wasn't even consensus as to a single "duration champ" as multiple promoters (i.e.: Mike Jacobs, Larry Atkins) staged their own separate tournaments to decide a "champ." Charles had wins that gave him no less of a standing @175 as Bivins had when he beat Charles years earlier, i.e.: "Light heavyweight boxer Ezzard Charles of Cincinnati knocked out heavyweight Jimmy Bivins in the fourth of a scheduled ten-round fight on Monday. The victory placed Charles in line for the match with the light heavy title-holder Gus Lesnevich."
But he beat them as a middleweight; which is my point. There's no way to call Charles a light heavyweight yet, thus making his fights with Marshall and Bivins two of his first fights there. Charles didn't even weigh above 170 until 1946. And how is this half of the top 10? Which year?
Many people here also see Greb as a GOAT worthy Light Heavyweight. Who guess what, never won a real title just like Charles, and performed with mixed results in his supposed ''title bouts''.
How can we ever know? Generations seperate them.. & the sport isn't even the same anymore. It's hilarious how people get so intense about these things and think they know all the answers & dismiss modern fighters. It's just speculation there'll never be an outcome.