Intellectual Dishonesty

............This is the Classic Forum; everything here looks better in black and white.



It's tough to say, in all seriousness. Boxing historians are like baseball historians. They may not have much video of Shoeless Joe Jackson, but everyone kept insisting he had such a sweet swing, it's simply taken for granted as part of the handbook they give you when you sign up as a fan of the sport.

About all one can do is compare records and results and see whether or not he was dominant in his time. That makes a great fighter, regardless of how many fights we've seen.

 

Rating fighters from different eras against each other in "all-time rankings" is silly anyway, nevermind anything else.

 

What is the rationale of giving a more modern fighter the higher accolades simply for fighting in the era of color TV and videotape?

Obviously uneven data makes for uncertain results. All one can do is attempt to be fair and balanced based on what he has to go on.

 

I pretty much agree. Top 10 rankings for me are kind of trite. In anyone's top 10 list, it's the usual suspects 95% of the time, arranged in slightly different orders.

As for intellectual dishonesty...I don't think that it's the case here, most of the time. Okay, now and then someone may play devil's advocate, but I think many here are well educated in fighters from yesteryear, and besides we all have our subjective views on different eras and fighters.
I think a more pertinent question is why some people talk about fighters they know nothing or very little about, in an effort to sound clued up.

 

Inadequate information is no more a rationale for ranking an old time fighter under a modern fighter than for ranking them over a modern fighter.

While head to head matchups will always be subjective, actual acomplishments in the ring are not and on this criteria the old timers generaly have it.

 

Great first line !!!

 

I will be honest with you here.

If I found a film of Harry Greb tomorrow and he looked like he couldnt find his flies without help I would still consider him to be the best middleweight of all time based on what he did.

you cant take what a man had proved in the ring away from him and however unorthodox his style he must have made it work for him.

 

I have noticed your recent disillusionment with fantasy fights and all-time rankings, which in themselves I don't think are such bad things.

The problem is when we make these discussions a kind of virtual slugfest, as if we have to "win" something, in the process often branching off into the nonsense you mention.

Pitting the greats against each other is so natural (the reason for King Kong vs. Godzilla); of course, we will never get to the absolute truth, but it's a useful tool in pinning down our knowledge and ring visions.

As for the thread topic, I am old enough to remember a time when it was a given that guys like Jack Johnson, James Jeffries, Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, were among the very greatest fighters of all time. Near his final retirment, Ali was not automatically considered the greatest at all, but a newcomer to be thrown into the mix of greats. I remember reading a magazine at the time in which someone, comparing the greats, said that Ali had terrible trouble with brawlers like Frazier and Norton, neither of whom could be compared to Marciano.

My point is as soon as men who saw the old-time greats died off, their standing began to lose sturdiness due to lack of clear, full-color footage, and it becomes easy for new generations to, to their own detriment, write off old-timers as basically romanticized bums.

If Jack Johnson was for almost a century considered one of the greatest fighters ever to lace up the gloves, that gives me pause about casually watching the fuzzy Johnson vs. Moran bout and hastily concluding Johnson was a bum.

In fact, I have been pleasantly surprised as I watch that old footage over and over and, suddenly, before my very eyes, I begin to see nuances that show me the mark of a great fighter. It it thus that I have come to greatly respect every one of the old-timers I have taken the time to analyze and have found none to be a bum that I could envision as being embarrassed by any modern Joe Blow.

Intellectual dishonesty is a two-way street; of course, Nat Fleischer was enamored of the past and practically considered any modern great a bum, resisting placing Ali and Frazier in his top ten that did include Corbett and Schmeling. Whether this is dishonesty or simple human bias is open to interpretation. The truth is somewhere in the middle and it's fun, worthwhile and instructional to try to get to it!

 

We fight Fitz's rules bare knucked and to the end.:yep ..He spent his prime as middleweight bare knuckled champ.
Corbett was beating him, till careless, like Corbett was beating Jeffereis for 22 rounds.
No one here makes a big deal about Ali and his low hands....but make a big deal about the old timers.....

Sure the old timers are over rated.
How many new timers can go 25 or 45 rounds?. You'd tend to rest your arms a bit, and carry them low....IMO.

20 and 30 years ago, Liston was a bum, now he's an all time great. Odd that.

Rating is subjunctive, in 1950 Dempsey was rated higher than Joe Louis, yet Tunney becasue he was not a brawler and could and did get caught with Shakespeare was underated by the same folks.

A Joe Gans can not be under rated, he did that 45 round fight suffering from TB...Just think how that fight would have gone had he not been dying from TB. He could if he wanted fight off a handkerchief.

Take the epitone of modern style Sugar Ray Robinson, vs a low armed Basillo....is that not the old timers vs the new.:hi:
I think that is worth a thought or two.

 

Maybe we old timers just think its fun to do mythical match ups?
I dont consider myself either dishonest or an intellectual,psychologically inadequate,because I like old fighters? Guess I better check myself in for therapy!

 

But how would you know "what he did" is that great without seeing the fighters he fought?(yeah i know his achievemnts are ridiculous as is his record, no matter who he was fights, im just saying...)

This is why i dont even rate the people, is it unfair? Maybe, but i dont think so..Why would i rate someone ive never seen fight? Than itd be unfair to the people i have seen.. I say theyre great and what not, but you wont find them in my top 10 list...Also my top 10 lists chancge every time i make them cause theyre off the top of the dome, and im usually not thinking of people i havent seen..

Nothing against old fighters either, its not my fault i havent seen them!