To clarify the question, how do you weigh a fighter's single best or most important win (or 2 or 3 I suppose) against a fighter who has dominated consistently against less impressive H2H competition? This thought occurred to me over in the general forum. (Forgive me for using such tired comparisons but I knew I'd be safer here from modern nuthuggery.) Pacquiao's best win, the way I see it, can be between Cotto, De La Hoya, and Barrera. Cotto is a solid win as a top weltwer-weight, despite the weight, his visible setback, and having no corner. DLH, despite the weight issue, had a big size advantage as Pacquiao moved up for the first time. His win against Barrera was close enough to his prime to be a contender as well. Now, most people rank DLH ahead of Barrera. If a prime DLH is greater than all of the three above, Shane Mosley's best win outdoes anyone Pacquiao ever fought. If one considers De La Hoya Floyd's best win, the same applies. If Mosley himself is considered Floyd's best win instead, then Cotto beat him in his best win by fighting a fresher Mosley two years prior. Obviously Pacquiao and Floyd have more consistent careers than either Shane or Miguel ,respectively. But do their title fights and weight-jumps outweigh the losing comparison between best wins against these fighters considered lesser in ranking? This occurs many times I'm sure, and I'd appreciate your thoughts on other examples in the sport's history. The debates among the Fab 4 come to mind. Can you think of examples where fighters considered lesser P4P than others have better single wins on their resumes?
This is a really interesting question. It's like the debate over whether James Toney or Joe Calzaghe has a better overall resume. Some people think Calzaghe's consistency beats Toney's inconsistency, others (including me) think Toney's numerous landmark wins over tougher competition beats Calzaghe's long-term dominance over softer competition. Ultimately, I think you need several big wins before your resume outstrips someone of greater consistency, ie- Buster Douglas possesses easily the greatest win of the 1990s, but his resume comes nowhere that of others 90s stars.
Right, I agree with you in terms of Toney/Calzaghe, and I think that the fighter considered to have the better win obviously can't have nothing to back it up. For most people they need to have at least decent resumes behind that big win or 2, and then the question becomes whether that win or couple of wins on top trump another's celebrated longevity or consistency.
Bump. I wanna hear what you guys think. It's been bugging the way I've ranked fighters now that I'm ambivalent.
A big win makes a lot of difference. But body of work is the most important thing imo. Considering the fractured state of the world champions at the moment I also feel we have to consider top contenders more than we might have done. For example during patterson's title spell, liston spent a decent amount of time as a top contender then trashed him twice when he got his shot. Is that so different to having two beltholders coexist for a while then one trashes the other twice? I think not. At the end of the day, the achievements in an era are what people get remembered for. The quality of the era isn't as important as is made out. For example almost everyone has holmes about holyfield even tho holyfield fought in a much better era. A champ really should beat top 5 contenders consistently, then some fellow greats as well as avenge or attempt to avenge any defeats. That's what I wanna see. Occasionally a great victory throws that out of the window and inflates a ranking, foreman over frazier, schmelling over louis etc
We are having this same discussion in a heavyweight thread. I think you have to look at the overall body of work. When discussing Holyfield and Lewis, Holyfield has some losses on his record, but when you compare who he fought to who Lewis fought you have to take that into consideration. As the case with James Toney and Calzahge, Toney has a loss to a prime Jones Jr. One can easily see Toney having a stellar undefeated record against Calzahges opposition too. The same cant be said for Joe if he faced Toney's, as would be the case with Lennox Lewis had he faced Holy's (in my opinion).
The problem is, in boxing we have facts and opinions and for some reason they are equally weighted - for example (just because a different poster brought it up) it is a fact that joe went unbeaten, it is an opinion he wouldn't have been had he fought toneys resume. I feel all we can do is judge boxers on what they did achieve, which then begs the question, is it better to dominate and unify the smw division, or is is it better to win titles from mw to cw whilst never unifying and losing a few times on the way? It's all about preference imo.
I think its a fact that Toney faced far better opposition over his career than Joe did. I think it is an opinion based on Joes performance against his opposition that he would probably not have stayed undefeated had he faced Toney's opposition, but its backed by some pretty solid arguements.
RJJ is an interesting one because while he wasn't facing top 5ers consistently, he has undeniably good wins over Hopkins, Toney, Griffin, Tarver 1, and even Ruiz.
When ranking fighters, who they beat is often what people look at. But when and how they beat them matters a lot too. Was the opponent in his prime or near prime? Was he young and on the way up, or old and on the way down? Was the match close, or was it a blow out? It seems like the best champions to me have very few defeats and are able to stay on top for years.
As solid as the argument may be, we'll just never know. The same way we can't just transport vitali klitschko to the era of james jeffries and say "he'd have dominated that era just as easily therefore he is just as great" I don't feel we can transport one fighter into the resume of another. Joe didn't face nunn, jones and barkley so we literally have zero clue as to how he would have fared had he faced them. All we can do is judge who did better considering the opponents they DID face. Atleast in my opinion anyways.
No youre right, but thats what were here to discuss. I always use the Foreman Morrison comparison. If those two never fought and we were discussing that as a fantasy matchup, I dont think one person on here would have chosen Morrison by unanimous decision. You never know thats what makes boxing so exciting. That being said, in the case of Calzahge, I followed his career closely and while I dont think he would have had the stellar record he has if he faced proper competition, he was a very good fighter and a lot of what happened in his career was the fault of his promoter who was making a killing keeping him in the UK fighting no namers. The same thing was happneing with Ricky Hatton, only Hatton wanted to test his skills against the best in the division and see where he stood historically.