Heavyweight champs who could have beaten their era's gold, silver, and bronze medalists in sequence?

Funny you highlight 1960, 64 and 88 as all three of those could have done just that, specifically Tyson and Liston who probably would have destroyed those olympians in a round, 64 is tricky cause that was the year Frazier won gold, 60 is ironic cause that`s the year Ali won gold, but he was a light heavy then so wouldn`t have fought Liston.

 

None. Amateur and pro boxing are like night and day. Ali himself years into his reign admitted that even for himself beating the current Gold medalist on his own turf and under his own rules would be difficult.

To be a great pro fighter you have to unlearn certain habits you pickup in the amateurs, but the reverse is also true, since many styles that are great in professional boxing would be completely ineffective in the amateurs just due to the different ruleset.

 

lol! world champs are fare better than olympians and Ali was far better as heavyweight champ than when he turned pro just after winning gold at the olympics, olympic boxing often isn`t that good, it`s a mixed bag and those winners that were good go on to improve as pros.

 

Didn't Ali do something like this with some Soviet boxers?

 

Joe Louis would seem to be an obvious one here except the 1940 and ‘44 Summer Games were canceled due to WWII. He won the title in 1937 so too late for ‘36.

BUT … he was champion in 1948 (losing to Ezzard Charles in ‘50) and I like his chances of sparking out gold medalist Rafael Iglesias (Argentina), silver medalist Gunnar Nilsson (Sweden) and bronze winner John Arthur (South Africa).

Amateur boxing back then more resembled pro boxing than more modern amateur boxing with the try-to-get-a-point style, headgears and such.

Iglesias went 0-1 as a pro, losing his only bout by KO. Gunnar was a pedestrian 12-4-2 in the pro ranks and it looks like Arthur went 33-8 and lost to all the name fighters he ever faced: Don Cockell, Willie Pastrano and George Chuvalo (all by decision), so presumably he’s the biggest challenge of the bunch.

Even an older Joe probably handles those three.

 

I get what you're trying to do. Couple things:

* There were two Bronze Medalists at the Olympics. Both boxers who lost in the semifinal round earned a bronze. So, the pro champion would have to beat four boxers, not three, most years.

* In 1984, the Olympic introduced the Super Heavyweight division. So would the pro champ have to beat the Heavyweight Olympian medalists or the Super Heavyweight medalists after 1984?

* The were a lot of rule changes in the Olympics over the years. No headgear. Headgear. Normal scoring (like the pros). The dreaded computer scoring. The scoring where three of the five judges had a to click a clicker within a second of each other. Three-round bouts with three-minute rounds got changed to four, two-minute rounds for a time. The rule the one year where, if one fighter went up by 15 clicks, the fight was stopped and deemed a TKO.

Olympic boxing got really screwed up for a while. But it righted itself more this past Olympics.

Just pointing some things out. Interesting idea.

 

Just scanning things, I believe most professional heavyweight champions would've been able to handle it.

There are a couple years that are questionable, though, primarily because beating three or four guys in ONE NIGHT would be difficult the years there were a good group of medalists.

* Could Joe Frazier in 1972 (when he was fighting Ron Stander and Terry Daniels) beat Teofilo Stevenson over three rounds? The Frazier-Stander fight was basically even after three.

* Could 1992 Evander Holyfield (coming off the unimpressive Bert Cooper and Larry Holmes fights) beat Felix Savon, David Izon and David Tua in consecutive three-round bouts on the same night that year?

* Could 1996 George Foreman (whose last fight was Axel Shulz a year before ... and just before he went 12 with Crawford Grimsley) win three-round decisions Wlad Klitschko, Alexei Lezin, Paea Wolfgramm and Duncan Dokiwari (the super heavyweights) the same night? Could he even beat Felix Savon, David Defiagbon, Luan Krasniqi and Nate Jones (the heavyweights) on the same night?

Those champs seemed to be the most vulnerable to a points loss over the shorter three-round distance.

 

Which year was that?

 

So he beat the 1976 or 1980 olympic medalists in one night?