Fighters whose greatness may be overrated

Just curious, Foreman is top five based on?

 

Based on?

Achieving the greatest feat in sports history by rewinning the true worlds hwt championship 20 years after losing it. In the process proving he had the durability, determination, will to win of an ATG hwt champion.

Then add to it an Olympic gold medal, destroying undisputed worlds hwt champion Frazier and No 1 contender Norton in less than four rounds in total.

True worlds hwt champion twice.

Human force of nature.

Foreman would be a very tough fighter to beat aside from a select few.

 

Jimmy Young was not stylistically in any way like Larry Holmes...more specifically, he was not a "poor Holmes" at all. He was a defensive specialist, in the same vein as a Nicolino Locche, in that his metier was somewhat narrow, but he was excellent in that field, a genius in that field, if you will...again, his style didn't resemble Holmes in any way...not at all.
There were many things that Holmes could do better than Young, I grant you..he was more mobile..faster on his feet, had a better, faster, harder jab...because that was inherent to his style...and yet again, Young was a counterpuncher,...strictly a counterpuncher...he stayed in the pocket more than Holmes, because it was inherent to his style. He was no more a "poor Holmes" than Locche was a "poor Pacquiao" or a "poor De La Hoya"...get it? Totally different fighters, totally inappropriate comparisons and classifications...just like yours, likening Jimmy Young, to a fighter with a totally disparate style and classification.

 

Jimmy Young was not stylistically in any way like Larry Holmes...more specifically, he was not a "poor Holmes" at all. He was a defensive specialist, in the same vein as a Nicolino Locche, in that his metier was somewhat narrow, but he was excellent in that field, a genius in that field, if you will...again, his style didn't resemble Holmes in any way...not at all.
There were many things that Holmes could do better than Young, I grant you..he was more mobile..faster on his feet, had a better, faster, harder jab...because that was inherent to his style...and yet again, Young was a counterpuncher,...strictly a counterpuncher...he stayed in the pocket more than Holmes, because it was inherent to his style. He was no more a "poor Holmes" than Locche was a "poor Pacquiao" or a "poor De La Hoya"...get it? Totally different fighters, totally inappropriate comparisons and classifications...just like yours, likening Jimmy Young, to a fighter with a totally disparate style and classification.

 

Get a room, you two!

Actually, I must agree, Clint. JT is a really fair and rational poster who doesn't resort to trash talk, nor does he need to. He also seldom makes a point that he can't back up and is quick to give credit where due rather than seek to provoke. And yet, despite all these qualities, I read that he is an Aussie.

I can only assume he is expat.

 

So you believe Moore was a solid HW Championship win?

You must also feel like Frazier was at the top of his game when George beat him?

His second career was good in some respects, but how about the losses he took during that second stint, including those he was credited with wins that he didn't deserve. I also have Foreman in my top 10, I just don't have him at 5 is all. So I was just curious why is all. To each their own

 

Moore was the true worlds hwt champion. No other win would been more meaningful at that time.

Foreman utterly obliterated an undefeated true worlds hwt champion who at the time was considered unbeatable. He then totally obliterated top contender Ken Norton. Both bouts in total lasted less than four rounds. After that win Foreman was considered unbeatable.

His comeback to rewin the true worlds hwt championship twenty years later was the greatest achievement in all of sports history.

In total he proved himself as an ATG hwt champion deserving of very high all time status.

 

Well, Carpentier has a rather obviously inflated reputation.

Cerdan in contrast is not nearly that clear.

His statistical record is awesome with 111 victories in 115 fights. His first two losses were to ordinary fighters via DQ. Without knowing more, I wouldn't hold either of these "defeats" against him. His first clearly legit loss was at 32 to Cyril Delannoit in his opponent's home town, which he quickly reversed. How many fighters fight 14 years and over 100 bouts before clearly losing?

Cerdan then wins the title from Zale rather impressively, but loses in his first defense, at 33 to LaMotta in a fight in which he was injured and had to fight one-handed. Cerdan came into the LaMotta fight a 2 to 1 favorite. Red Smith had this comment after watching the fight--"It is difficult to believe LaMotta would have had a chance with a two-handed Cerdan."

The rematch might have clarified the picture, but there would be no rematch.

So we have a fighter with only two clear defeats, one quickly reversed, the other a fight he fights injured and has no chance to reverse.

I have sympathy for the position that perhaps he didn't do enough compared to some others to rate all that high at middle. On the other hand, many, if not most, of the other middleweight claimants had defeats far worse than any Cerdan suffered. Turpin, for example, was KO'd by Jean Stock, Tiberio Mitri, and Gordon Wallace.

So, the bottom line for me is that Cerdan is less overrated than a fighter with a terrific record (and who looks good on film) whose career was limited by WWII and truncated by early death and therefore comes off as at worst incomplete rather than overrated.

One of the problems with how many rated fighters he beat is that the ratings were done by Americans who didn't perhaps know that much about European fighters, and so few Europeans ever made the ratings in the 1930's and even more so the war torn 1940's. The performances of not only Cerdan, but Villemain, Dauthuille, Turpin, and Raadak, among others, show there was real talent in Europe in the middle divisions.

 

I agree with this but at the same time we do hear people in the media or general sporting public refer to Ali as the Greatest boxer of all time. He is overated in that sense. He has the strongest argument as the GOAT Heavyweight in my view.

 

Ali is undoubtedly the best hwt champion who ever lived. He proved this in the ring against top opposition and in process exhibited the ATG attributes of durability and will to win.

 

Bwahahaha! I get a bit short at times in here. There's only so much fool i can suffer. Thankfully they are the vast minority in here.

 

I think you can put up reasonable arguments for Foreman anywhere from about #3 to #8. For #3 you argue along the lines of the utterly unprecedented and pushing him down to #8 you might argue the second career was oh so lucky to fall how it did.

 

For every article saying that Cerdan MIGHT have beaten LaMotta (who also suffered a broken hand early on and just sucked it up and fought through it) without his injury there are two stating that he had no chance. Its just whether or not you are willing to look rather than believe the b.s. hype built up around Cerdan. I mean when you consider that you can count Cerdan's wins against top contenders on one hand, and that in some of those he looked ordinary at best, and that his lone marquee win of any value against Zale came against a guy who was totally shot and at that point totally protected and that he never even faced the cream of the middleweight crop of France much less the world then his glossy win/loss ratio rings kind of hollow and if that is what you rank him so highly on then Id say the foundation of your argument is built on quicksand.

You can argue that contemporaries like Raadik, Dauthille, and Villemain are indicative of the talent pool that Cerdan came from but in every one of those cases those guys came here to fight the best, not the other way around and more to the point each one of those had limited success at the highest level of the sport and the only one of those Cerdan faced was the least talented and most limited and that guy almost knocked Cerdan out.

And frankly, the argument that we cant accurately judge Cerdans competition and by extension Cerdan because those fights were on foreign soil is b.s. we have tons of footage on Cerdan dating at least to the early 40s and his competition was largely pedestrian. Remember, the USA had an incredibly weak boxing scene during the war years due to the depletion of talent to the armed forces and war industries. This was even more severe in Europe and North Africa where and when Cerdan fought the majority of his fights. Its no coincidence that when his competition increased his performances were less impressive.

 

Marciano
Sanchez
Mayweather
Tyson
Duran.