Is Carl Froch amongst the top ten SMW fighters of all time?

Actually, Toney is at his best against the pressure type fighters like Barkley, Williams or Jirov.

 

He's definitely top 10 and I think he's top 5 comfortably too.

He went from being a guy who I thought was just a British hype job on Sky Sports to being a fighter who I grew to have massive respect for because he barely took a soft fight from his first title fight against Jean Pascal to the end of his career.

Just check out the last 12 fights of his career (from the point he made the step up to world class level):

(W) Jean Pascal
(W) Jermain Taylor
(W) Andre Dirrell
(L) Mikkel Kessler
(W) Arthur Abraham
(W) Glenn Johnson
(L) Andre Ward
(W) Lucien Bute
(W) Yusuf Mack
(W) Mikkel Kessler
(W) George Groves
(W) George Groves

That's 10-2 (with one of those defeats avenged) against genuine world class opposition (all but one opponent past or future world champions). He took three fighters' unbeaten records (Pascal, Dirrell and Bute) too.

Calling him an over achiever sounds like a backhanded compliment but he truly was in the sense that his record at the top level against more naturally talented fighters than him was outstanding and is a justifiable tag when you consider he was an underdog in a fair few of those fights as well.

What he lacked in style and natural ability (in relative terms) he more than made up for in determination and will to win. He won on those virtues plenty of times against fighters he should have probably lost to (Taylor, Dirrell).

Overall, I'd put him at no. 3 after only Calzaghe and Ward. He earned it.

 

Froch wouldn't win more than 2 rounds against Calzaghe.

On topic, yes he's easily in the SMW top 10 of all time.

 

do not underestimate Carl

 

I think he wouldn't win the first two rounds. But at some point he lands, he smirks and Joe takes the bait.

 

I guess if you create a system in your head where the top fighters in a division don’t count in that division you can make any half-decent fighter top 10.

If you want to talk about someone being in the top 10 super middleweights of all time and relegate Roy Jones Jr and others out of the division, I don’t see the point of your exercise: “Well sure those guys could all beat him, but I choose not to recognize that they fought at this weight and did so at a championship level so ... abracadabra they’re gone.”

Two things can be true: RJJ can be an all-time light heavyweight AND an all-time super middleweight.

Again, I don’t even see the point here.

 

Roy was at his peak at SMW.

You can’t have a list without him on it.

 

I agree that Toney should be in the top 5. But you cannot have him that high if you’ve excluded Roy Jones.

It makes no sense to do that. Because Toney can only be rated that highly on a H2H basis. And if you’re rating on a H2H basis, then Roy also has to be there.

In terms of just accomplishments/resume, Toney can’t be rated that high.

I think he had less fights at the weight than what Roy did.

Like Roy, he only spent 2 years there.

His best SMW wins were against:

DeWitt
Barkley
Thornton
Littles
Williams

Roy’s best SMW wins were against:

Malinga
Sosa
Toney
Thornton
Paz
Lucas

 

Andre Dirrell was robbed in my opinion.

You could also add Frankie Liles to the list.

 

You’d have picked Hopkins and a faded Leonard over Roy at SMW?

 

Roy was the greatest SMW of all time.

I don’t care about the stats. And you can’t omit Roy from the list whilst you have Toney at number 4, when he only had as many fights at the weight as what Roy did, and he spent the same amount of time there.

 

You don't need to see the point mate.

I rank RJJ as a LHW, this thread is about SMWs.

Tell you what, you make a top 11 including RJJ and I'll be able to do the rest

 

You do a top 11 list including RJJ if you want, I'll do the rest.

 

So basically you want to arbitrarily eliminate people who are better than Froch to get him in there and you want us to give you names under your arbitrary ‘rules’ to validate your opinion.

Here’s mine: Froch is not in the top 10 of fighters who have competed in the 160.000001 to 168-pound range.

Wouldn’t it be easier to say something like ‘among the 20th to 100th-ranked super middleweights, do you think Froch is near the top 10?’