To be honest, I also thought Ezzard Charles was overrated, not to the extent of this poster, but definitely overrated. Since joining this forum last August I've learned a lot about Charles and while I'm not sure I think of him as a top ten ATG I definitely have him in my top 20. For me, Charles' prime ended with the consecutive losses to the better than average Nino Valdes and the high quality Harold Johnson. Including those losses he was 12-17 in his last 29 fights, a far cry from the 83-8-1 he was before that. His two losses to Marciano came a year after the aforementioned two losses and I believe he would had had a better than 50% chance to at least split with Rocky if not win both bouts if Marciano had been fighting a prime Cincinnati Cobra. By the way, Marciano is a fighter I do believe is overrated, great but overrated. However, that is a subject for another post.
G-string Jim (aka Party Boy, Gay Nineties Edition) is hard to beat. A real man’s man. Drew the colour line with unyielding conviction. Everyone loves a man of decision. As if Ezz could’ve ever hoped to compete with such a bellend, oops, I mean legend.
Lemme guess, you watched a few clips of his fights and looked at his record and saw that he had 25 Ls, therefore that automatically makes him 'overrated'? Come back when you actually do some research on the man. His resume speaks for itself and is also a prime example of why fighters today have nothing on the past generations that were more than willing to fight anyone and take more risks without having anything stacked in their favor.
When someone drops a nuke like this and then doesn't bother defending their opinion, it should be quite obvious what their motive was.
Mayweather beat Canelo, Pacquiao, De la Hoya, Juan, Mosley, Hatton etc. If you add them all up that’s 23 champions which is almost double the amount Charles faced.
Being an alphabet champion means nothing today. No names who’ve accomplished nothing are “champions”. Actually beating ranked contender is more of an accomplishment. I didn’t even count but I’d wager Charles is more then twice that of Mayweather and I’m a big Mayweather fan. Only a few of those names by the way make the Hall which is a better indicator of an accomplished fighter imo.
I think Charles may be overrated as a heavyweight, but pound for pound the Cincinnati Cobra is an all time great.
Charles looks pretty good on film to me. And his resume speaks for itself. I think he might be underrated