Floyd Mayweather takes swipe at Muhammad Ali while ranking greatest boxers

He beats those numbers.
FMJ Mayweather has 26 wins in world title fights, and unlike in Ali's case, those were consecutive.
FMJ is the most accurate puncher since the existence of CompuBox.

 

How many fights were undisputed championship fights? How many even had two belts of the 4/5 available on the line?

A title fight in the one belt era is the equivalent of 5 in today’s game. Maybe even 10 because of how many more weight classes there are now.

 

It's not Floyd's fault that there are more belts.
Plus FMJ never got his ass beat like Ali.

 

Not lineal world title fights, though. And that was the simple fact I stated (and you disputed): Ali has more wins for a lineal title and more wins against ranked opposition.

Nothing of what you write above relates to that.

 

The only time Ali was really beaten up is when he was 38 had on set parkinson's and was on thyroid pills.

 

If Muhammad Ali had not been stripped of his title or license in 1967 for not accepting the military draft in 1967, he may have surpassed Floyd in title fights. Ali lost 3 and a half years of fighting activity, I call what Ali did as brave, stand up against a very unjust political war just to satisfy a few politicians.

 

You must not have seen his first fight with Frazier, did you ?!

 

He lost the fight but he was still competitive.

 

And, significantly so.

 

Genuine question - Is there any Heavyweight contender, during Ali's career, that he is considered as having missed?

 

There was a poster here years ago that made a persistent case for Thad Spencer. But his brief stint in the Top 3 came after Ali was stripped and was ended by Ali's former sparring partner Ellis.

 

I'm pretty sure Machen was ranked during Ali's first reign. They may be others that congregated around the bottom of the top 10, but no-one important. At one year in the 70s IIRC, Ali held wins over everyone else in ring's top 10.

 

Machen was ranked in '64, but Ali didn’t defend that year because of suffering a hernia (Liston would have been his only defence anyhow, though).

 

The main criticism against Ali is for the rematches he didn’t give. But this was in '77 when he was already done for all internts and purposes.

Of course if Floyd is criticised for his fights after Pac...

 

Thanks guys - These^ read close to my own sense of Ali's domination.

At a glance, I'd suggest/concur that neither Spencer nor Machen could be considered as misses. Yes, Ali didn't meet them, but he was fighting better opponents, anyway. One would have to be extremely unforgiving to pursue these cases with any anger.

Machen's claim for contention is so brief in '64; following which it becomes clear that his meaningful career is over. Spencer looks an interesting one. Another case of great expectations, blowing up on impact with the wall of his peers. I can't really see a window for him against Ali, given his self-destructive timeline, converging with Ali's exile.

Overall and by my reckoning, Ali faced more than 30 Top-10 Ring-rated opponents - I think he went 29-5 with them, with three of the five losses coming in his last four bouts and more than half of his ring-rated opposition being Ring-rated Top-3. I'm prepared to be corrected on these numbers.

In any event, I strongly suspect that, despite Mayweather's fine-looking ledger, it trails notably behind that of Ali's.