Recently I made a George Foreman vs Anthony Joshua thread in which I picked AJ as the winner. A lot of people disagreed with my pick. I look at historical greatness different than who would win in an actual fight. I'm not of the school of thought that we have to wait until a fighters career is over to judge whether or not he can beat a fighter judged as an ATG. Tyson, for example had a very front loaded career. All of his best work was done at the beginning of his career. In 1988, if you came to the conclusion that Tyson would have beaten a proven ATG in Muhammad Ali I would have no problem with it if you could defend the position based on what we had already seen of Tyson, how his style would match up, what opponent did Ali fight most like Tyson and how Ali did against him etc. I don't think one had to wait until 2005 when Tyson retired to make a judgement on how Tyson would do vs Ali or any other proven ATG. If you made a judgement in 1967 that Muhammad Ali would have beaten a proven ATG in Jack Dempsey, I think thst by 1967, enough information was there about Ali to make a defensible position. I don't think that one would have to wait until after 1981 to judge if Ali could have taken Dempsey. I think a boxing fan in 1967 would be perfectly reasonable in thinking Ali wouldn't just be utterly steamrolled and trampled by Dempsey and that perhaps he could beat Dempsey. But in 1967 you likely couldn't justify putting him above Dempsey historically and especially in 1988 you couldn't justify putting Tyson over Ali historically. Just because historically one fighter may be lower on the totem pole doesn't mean that H2H the historically higher ranked fighter wins. Disclaimer: For the purpose of this thread I'm taking no position if Tyson would beat Ali or if Ali would beat Dempsey. Those examples were made to illustrate a point.
In 1988, if you came to the conclusion that Tyson would have beaten a proven ATG in Muhammad Ali I would have no problem with it if you could defend the position based on what we had already seen of Tyson, how his style would match up, what opponent did Ali fight most like Tyson and how Ali did against him etc. I don't think one had to wait until 2005 when Tyson retired to make a judgement on how Tyson would do vs Ali or any other proven ATG. If you made a judgement in 1967 that Muhammad Ali would have beaten a proven ATG in Jack Dempsey, I think thst by 1967, enough information was there about Ali to make a defensible position. I don't think that one would have to wait until after 1981 to judge if Ali could have taken Dempsey. I think a boxing fan in 1967 would be perfectly reasonable in thinking Ali wouldn't just be utterly steamrolled and trampled by Dempsey and that perhaps he could beat Dempsey. Your position has some merit, but ultimately I can't fully agree. Sometimes qualities are revealed later on along the downside of a fighter' s career that answer questions unanswerable during a fighters prime. A good example is the knock on Wladimir Klitchko was he had a glass chin and fought a boring hyper defensive style to protect it. In his last fight at 41, against a prime Olympic Gold medalist with an Adonis physique in his home country, Wlad put on perhaps the best performance of his life. It took the last round of a 69 fight and two decade long career to put to bed the notion his chin was glass and he couldn't be effective without his jab & clutch routine. We didn't know how great Ali's chin and recuperative powers were in 67. We didn't know Tyson's difficulty in facing adversity would be a chink in his armor in 88. We didn't know Roy Jones Jr had a Ming Dynasty vase for a chin in 2003. So while I understand the gist of what you are saying, I think in many cases you have to wait long after a fighter's prime to gauge his full measure.
