Heavyweight Champions - The Overrated and The Underrated

I think Big George gets underrated by some.

 

Obviously this is just "in general" as they can all be overrated by people too:

Underrated:
Holyfield
Holmes
Tyson
Schmeling
Walcott
Tunney
Frazier
Dempsey

 

Carnera underrated? Really?

 

Definitly, he wasn't an unskilled giant who relied of gift decisions but he had quite something going for him. His size, his strength, good technique, a good jab, decent power, use of his size, toughness, heart. Carnera would be atop contender in every era.

 

Underrated, overrated, it depends on who's doing the rating...

Ring magazine rated Holyfield #3 heavyweight of all time a few years back. I think that's overrating him majorly. I've always had trouble with his lack of consistency.

Lewis may be overrated. Or not. When I think of his losses to McCall & Rahman I think, "Larry Holmes GOT UP." That said, how many fighters have avenged their all of their losses with stoppages or kayos and have retired at the right time?

Tyson is underrated nowdays. He was a monster in his day. I put his post-Lewis career in the same category I put Ali's post-Spinks career & Frazier vs. Cummings - Fights that shouldn't have happened and shouldn't affect their respective legacies.

I think Liston is underrated on this thread. Discounting the Marty Marshall fluke, the man only lost to Ali, the top 1 or 2 heavyweight of all time, and was caught by a one-punch KO by Leotis Martin in a fight he was winning. Like Tyson, he steamrolled the division in his day. Too bad he didn't have more fights with contenders post-Ali. Liston-Quarry would've been interesting.

Foreman is overrated. While his second career accomplishments were extraordinary, he managed that career extremely well and avoided most risks. Yet he still lost to Tommy Morrison, pulled out a squeaker against Schultz, and went 12 with Savarese (who a late-career Tyson took out in seconds).

James J. Jefferies is underrated these days. He took on everyone and beat them all, save Jack Johnson years too late.

Ali & Louis are the 1 & 2 (or 2 & 1) heavyweights of all time. After that the next ten or so positions are up for grabs.

 

Not sure Marciano is over rated, there is a arguement at this time, if Marciano can make it out of the first 2 rounds vs Frank Bruno.

Getting underated imo.

 

bingo. But personally I think he often doesn't get a fair shake from his many detractors. They see a "glass chin". Me, I often think but for two punches Lewis may have had an undefeated career. That said, those two punches count, the question is by how much?

 

edit

 

As to the question of the thread. I think before someone can seriously rate a fighter it would be nice to read a bio of them and where there's heads were at when they fought and what their eras were like. Today I've only read the bios of Jack Johnson and Dempsey.

That aside my impression if who's over-rated and under-rated depends on how they're rated.

For example:

If someone has these fighters in their top 5, I think they're over-rated

Tyson
Marciano
Johnson
Jeffries ( I know he gets rated highly but he only fought something like 19 fights)
Foreman


If someone doesn't have Holyfield in the top 10 then I think he'd be under-rated

But in general, I think most fighters get a pretty fair assessment on this site, with the possible exception of Lewis who seems get evaluated on inconsistent criteria by some. For example you can say 2 KO's equals shaky chin. Shaky chin compared to who? Tyson had a great chin but was down far more times than Lewis. Foreman too was down more than Lewis (hell I think he may have been down more than Lewis in the Lyle fight alone) and had a great chin. Detractors will then say "ya but the difference is Lewis never got up" While that's somewhat debatable (he was up against McCall, but I personally think the stoppage was good), what about not going down in the first place, doesn't that count for something? If you're only down twice, that itself says something about either your chin or your ability to avoid getting hit.

Holyfield also gets a bit of a bad rap considering he's basically a cruiserweight, fighting in some cases Superheavyweights.

 

I can see that but remember five or more times he went 20-25 rounds.

 

Ya but they weren't the energy expending type rounds two busy fighters would fight today. Combinations were rarely thrown and certainly not at a Tyson type pace. Basically it was a significantly different sport back then, when if someone got knocked down, the other fighter could hoover over him and not allow he to either stand or get his wits back.

To put in perspective, it would be virtually impossible for a Foreman-Lyle or a Bowe-Holyfield fight to go the same distance as the Willard-Johnson fight. One of them would collapse from sheer exhaustion if they don't collapse from the accumulated punches landed first.

 

Good photo. I do n't want to nitpick,but the guy in the picture with Frazier looks more like Michael Spinks rather than Mike Tyson:good

 

Underrated: Ezzard Charles (8 title defenses against a decent caliber of opposition, two stern challenges against Marciano, some decent wins against top fighters that occurred well after his prime).

Tommy Burns was mentioned already, but deserves to be mentioned once more, methinks.

 

Ezzard Charles is a good suggestion. He held 3 wins over Archie Moore and before killing an opponent in the ring he was a very hard puncher. By the time he reached the Heavies he had become more of a boxer and suffered from being in the shadow of Louis and the tepid level of opposition available at the time. The fact he also lost to another underrated, relatively colourless champ in Walcott did him no favours either. In a way he was defined by his first loss to Marciano than by his championship reign.

I think a lot of people forget that Tyson was a very adept boxer as well as a puncher in the early days. He out boxed Tony Tucker and generally was the smaller man in an era of big guys. I always thought in his prime he could have taken Lewis. Lewis was iced by both Rahman and McCall in the early rounds and hardly set the world on fire against a smaller Holyfield and looked awful against Bruno. I don't see Lewis beating Holmes and actually think he may have had problems with some of the better 80's heavies like Greg Page or Pinklon Thomas.

I think the 80's guys as fighters were underrated, terrible champions but good skills. Witherspoon, Page, Thomas, even Tony Tubbs for christ sake (see his fight against Bowe). I think everyone was so disgusted by their lack of discipline and the whole alphabet soup that they have been written out of history. It is also worth remembering that Tyson was at his peak for a short time before the whole media circus got to him, in a way we will never be able to seperate the Tyson myth from Tyson the fighter as they were so linked but I think he is top ten.

Others -

Underated:

Witherspoon (ruined by Don King, through away fight with Smith due to probloems with King)
Corbett and Tunney (their scientific approach to boxing is inspiring)
Bowe (almost a replica of the classic fat 80's fighter downward spiral but a lot more balls)
Sharkey (very clever fighter with some very good wins)

Overated
Michael Spinks (beat a fat unmotivated Holmes barely and was crushed by Tyson, should be judged as a light heavy)
Patterson (who did he beat for gods sake? Good middleweight though)
Johansson (well thought of in Europe as he hammered a generation of UK fighters but pretty one dimensional)