Higher atg: jones or hoya

I think it has to be. It absolutely has to be. Otherwise, what is the point in even watching fights? We could all decide on rankings just from looking up fighters' records on boxrec.

One of the reasons why I rank Roy Jones higher at lightheavyweight than Dariusz Michalczewski is that Jones torched the exact same opposition much more impressively than Michalczewski. Whereas Michalczewski had to go to points with Virgil Hill, Jones knocked him clean out in 4 rounds in Virgil's very next fight. Should these two wins carry the exact same value, with no consideration whatsoever to the manner of victory, or the level of superiority shown and the level of ease with which one victory was achieved over the other?

If the answer to this is yes, then actually watching fights no longer has any merit or relevance when it comes to discussing the greatness of fighters or ranking them - and that can/should never be the case IMO.


Example:

Sven Ottke retired undefeated. Sven Ottke beat Charles Brewer twice, Thomas Tate twice, Glen Johnson, Silvio Branco, Anthony Mundine, Byron Mitchell and Robin Reid.

Ricardo Lopez retired undefeated. Ricardo Lopez beat Saman Sorjatorung, Rosendo Alvarez, Will Grigsby, and, er...


Now, if h2h and manner of victory were not acceptable criteria when ranking fighters' greatness, then Sven Ottke would be a greater fighter than Ricardo Lopez. He would rank higher, end of story.

BUT, it's only by actually watching the fights in these two careers that we realize: (1 - manner of victory) that Ottke didn't really win all of those fights but got gift hometown decisions, and very seldom looked like a great fighter, while Lopez was utterly brilliant and dominant on a regular basis, showing well-rounded skills and ATG combination punching technique, and (2 - h2h) the evidence on tape suggests that Ottke was a good smw but not a great one, who would probably have lost more than he won vs the best supermiddles there have been such as Jones, Toney, Calzaghe, Benn, Eubank, Ward/Froch etc, whereas Lopez was transcendent, was easily the best minimumweight ever, and unlike Ottke you'd have to favour him against most of the great fighters he could ever have faced, which would have occurred at light-fly against the likes of Gonzalez, Carbajal, Chang, Zapata, Yuh, Gushiken, etc. One guy fits in nicely with the greats in his weight range, one doesn't really.

Hope I've made my point understandable and not too dull here.

 

there was never a weight contract at all. ruiz said he wanted to be lighter to deal with jones' speed. please provide a link to prove your point. (there's not one)

 

the manner of victory and head to head ability may be linked but are different things. the former is important when assessing a fighter's greatness, as dominating an opponent (for example) is a type of achievement. after all, it is something that the fighter has achieved i.e. accomplished.

head to head ability may be somewhat based on actual performances but applying this ability, usually for fantasy match-ups, is little more than a speculative exercise.

regarding this thread, the manner of jones' victories was more impressive than de la hoya's, and that adds to his greatness. the fact that jones would be more likely to beat bob foster, than de la hoya is to beat kid gavilan, is a separate issue.

 

oh ok. i just thought i'd comment because it seemed like you had conflated the two concepts:

 

fair enough. i just thought it was an important distinction to draw, as the manner of victory is ordinarily considered an achievement, whereas head to head ability is not. quite interesting that you're not into the manner of victory, i can see where you're coming from. i don't tend to care about it too much, but i wouldn't exclude it altogether.

 

To me level of dominance is a massive factor in p4p discussions. It's almost as important as resume.

Jones' win resume is closer to Oscar's than Oscar's dominance is close to Roy's. Much closer. And therefore Roy is greater...

On the separate issue of H2H ability, Oscar probably has the kind of style that could trouble a prime Roy.... (assuming they were the same size).

 

Jones. DLH doesn´t make my Top50, Jones makes the Top40.

 

I knew that Ottke-Lopez comparison would throw a spanner in the works. Sorry dude!

 

jones, but hoya's my boy. if he had never gone above 147 people might rank him similarly.

 

I doubt that. IMO Oscar lost to Whitaker & Quartey by a point, and we all saw him lose convincingly to Mosley. Fair enough, he outboxed Tito, but all in all ODLH wasn't dominant at 147, not the way RJJ was vs B-Hop and Toney at his own best weights of 160 & 168. Although he was probably too big to stay at those weights, I liked Oscar best at 135 and 140. He really was a killer there, where there were no physical phenomenons like Tito and Mosley to deal with. Oscar vs Tszyu around the turn of the century would have been a titanic fight.