If Fury achieves his targets, where does he rank?

Usyk cleaning up leaves him in higher regard overall, than Fury doing the same.

 

Let's imagine that Fury goes on to beat Usyk and AJ, twice. He has to be ranked as top-10 HW of all time then. BUT

His performance vs Ngannou was beyond awful. Not a single TOP-10 or TOP-20 HW in history had such an awful performance while holding HW title.

Floyd Patterson is sometimes criticized for defending his title vs Pete Rademacher and being knocked down. But though Rademacher was his pro debut, he had great amateur career and Olympic gold medal. And (besides KD) Patterson dominated him, dropped multiple times and knocked out.

Ali vs Spinks - Spinks at least already had 7 pro fights and great amateur career with Olympic gold as well. He was skilled and experienced boxer (he lacked pro experience but had more than enough world class opponents as an amateur).

Now imagine that somewhere in 1976 after knocking out Richard Dunn Muhammad Ali declines the fight against Ken Norton and fights in a non-title fight some well-known martial artist with zero pro boxing experience and zero amateur boxing fights. Fight is completely under boxing rules. After that he has to fight Norton.

Ali looks very vulnerable in that fight, gets knocked down, fights dirty but is unable not only to stop his opponent (complete boxing novice) - he fails to get even unquestionable points win. He barely gets the judges' decision, gets cut badly and postphones his fight vs Norton. Instead in the very next fight this martial artist faces Ken Norton and gets brutally knocked out cold in 1-2 rounds.

Can you imagine this? That's how bad Fury's performance vs Ngannou looks and therefore it SHOULD affect Fury's historical ranking.

 

There’s absolutely zero rationale for a list including Liston Dempsey Charles and Wlad to exclude Fury assuming he achieves what he says. The only way I could think of reasonably even excluding him from a top 10 is if you don’t value film much so include the likes of Langford, Johnson, Wills, Jeffries or Jeanette.

All of those ‘asterisks’ that you’ve put over Fury- you can put various asterisks over plenty of the fighters you’ve listed- Lewis, Marciano, Foreman, Holmes, Johnson, Dempsey, Tyson, Liston etc. Atleast just rate the wins fairly- AJ, Usyk and Wlad are all ‘elite’ wins no matter what kind of silliness you want to try and say to completely devalue them and Wilder is a ‘good’ win no matter how overrated he was or is.

 

If Usyk retires undefeated in 2024 he is going to be an incredibly divisive figure among historians because of how short his career at HW was. Some will have him in the GOAT discussion others will have him closer to the bottom of the HW champ list. And there really won't be any way for either side to win that argument.

 

May as well try and rank how rich I will be when I win the lottery tonight as it has the same odds of happening.

Bear in mind I haven’t even bought a ticket

 

After the fight with the MMA fighter.. I dont rank him at all and will never take him seriously again...especially after how easily Joshua dusted that dude..

 

He's been a lock for the top ten, and I have a feeling if this happened, retrospectively he'd be viewed as the best HW in the world from beating Wald until after this scenario which puts him at the top for about 11 years.

It would strengthen his claim that he was lineal the whole time with 14 successful defences.

He'd have beaten the best of his era.

If he was to then beat Hrgovic, and Hrgovic went on to unify himself you'd probably be able to push Fury to top 5.

He hasn't fought enough quality opponents to be much higher than that imo.

 

There is Fredddy. There absolutely is rationale for coming up with a list that is different from how you feel it should be.

It very much depends on what criteria the list maker feels are important and how such criteria should be weighted.

That might well be the only way YOU could think of, but these lists are subjective opinions, and other posters might use different criteria than the 'eye-test.

This is true.

However, after all the resumes are considered and the asterisks are taken into account, a poster could still rank the boxers differently from how you view them.

Leaving aside that he hasn't beaten either of these guys, and going with the hypothetical scenario under discussion, these would be elite wins, and probably his best.

I did not devalue these wins. I pointed out that these were his best wins, and I added some context.

I said it was a decent win. That's because Wilder was undefeated at the time.

But undefeated as he was, Wilder didn't have any very good wins, much less great wins.




The thread starter is putting out a hypothetical that includes four fights.


If we were to add those to the four I stated as he four best, then yes, he would have a decent resume, still arguably not top ten, but pretty decent.


But those four that the thread starter mentions, constitute HALF of the eight fights that would place him up there.


And it’s a little premature to start wondering where he would be after he completed the second half of his top eight fights, a task he has not even begun yet, and has postponed beginning at least twice now.

 

Fair enough but like I said it’s just a hypothetical about if he beats Usyk and AJ twice. I don’t think he actually will

 

But just out of interest you think Patterson Williams Folley Machen and DeJohn are a better set of 5 wins than Wlad Usyk AJ Wilder and… I don’t know wallin or whyte maybe(lol)?

 

I can’t find a place for him in any of those lists, I can’t help but question how many flights he was doping in.
This is the opinion I have of any other fighter or athlete who has been caught cheating.
Once someone has broken my trust in them, I question and doubt them in every way.
Imagine a situation where Fury and his cousin consumed enough un castrated wild to show the level of nandrolone in their tests.
They calculated that it would take them one a week between them.
But it would have to be guts, intestines and all the other innards.
This would be a ridiculous part of an elite athlete in camp.
So for me he shouldn’t get anywhere near a list of top fighters in any era never mind all time.
Drug cheat and nothing more

 

The question only pertained to Fury. Stop trying to use what aboutism to defend his senior citizen hunting career.

 

Hard to say, Freddie.

At this point, it's just way too hypothetical given that four of those five fights that might some day be on Fury's resume (Usyk X2, AJ X2) have not happened yet, and possibly never will.

Let's revisit this question in the ACTUAL rather than the HYPOTHETICAL after Fury has retired.

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Roids have been around since the 50's man... Just because a fighter wasn't caught cheating doesn't mean they weren't cheating. Look at Evan Fields AKA Evander Holyfield... Mike Tyson was likely on some roids too. He admitted he used a fake pp full of someone else's pee to pass drug tests. And don't fall for people saying it was just for marijuana... If they believe that's the only reason, that's on them

 

A win against Wlad is better than any win Mike Tyson had. A win against Usyk would be better than any win Mike Tyson had. A win against AJ would arguably be better than any win Mike Tyson had. And yet supposedly Mike is number 8 despite the guy saying that Fury wouldn't even be top 15 if we assume he accomplishes what he said he wants to (Usyk x2, AJ x2).