Is Dempsey the No.1 h2h Heavyweight

Well yeah, if you take one of the very best fighters ever to live they're going to do rather well moving up through the weights. But even then, it's basically impossible to imagine Manny losing to the featherweight version of Jeff Horn. The huge size of Horn relative to Manny's "natural" (modern) weight, however far removed he is from it represents a difference.

But I'll cut this short. Do you think a large reach, height and weight advantage in general conforms an advantage of any sort in ring?

 

I think we're agreeing violently here, I wouldn't necessarily either, but there's a bit more.

I was just listening to David Haye speak there and he was talking about the "wear on his body", how difficult he found it, even sparring for heavyweight boxing. Just another expression of what i've been talking about here - how hard it is in terms of physical pressure. I'd pick Louis to beat an awful lot of these big guys, most of them, all of them maybe "in the lab" but I think a 200lb guy fighting 250lb guys would drop off to one degree or another.

Second, the future. Let's say for arguments sake that there will be another 200 years of gloved boxing. That will equal to 15-22 more greats. Most or all of them or more will be very big heavyweights I'd bet. Will Louis and Ali still be the GOATs h2h when we have 30 candidates who are huge and three who are 215lbs or below? They will look pretty antiquated pretty quickly, and the further you travel from the lab towards reality the more they do now IMO. Not saying they're not the best h2h right now, it's a valid position, but it's opposable and will become much more so.

 

He did, aye, but I think he'll be footnote if he doesn't do something pretty special before he packs up, personally.