Is Ezzard Charles a great heavyweight?

It's better than both, but he has losses Marciano doesn't.

 

I agree with this and I have Charles one spot higher than Dempsey (but a bit lower than Rocky).

 

An extremely good heavyweight imo. And on his best day, could perhaps beat a lot of the champs before him.

 

I veer between 12 and 13 for him, either one place above or below Sonny Liston. And Liston at his best was probably a "great" heavyweight.

 

I would rate Charles VERY high just on his skills. But he also had many good wins at heavyweight. He is a fairly underrated champ having had 8 successful title defenses in about 3 years, so he was pretty active like johnthomas1 said. But he continued to beat many good fighters after he lost the title. I would say Charles is not terribly underrated in the way that he did not have one of the greatest title reigns ever, but would rank him higher (personally) as a heavyweight champ than say Foreman, Dempsey, Baer, Patterson, or Liston, none of whom had very long title reigns.

 

I like your distinction in rating him highly as a heavyweight champion for his aggressiveness in defending his title often as opposed to rating him as an all-time great heavyweight. He rates very high as "a true champion" even if his title run was relatively short and the division weak at the time.

 

I agree. He was effective and he was a winner. Not a spectacular performer as a Heavyweight..
I would call him great.

 

Charles doesn't come off too badly. He was active and he got the job done mostly, it was just a fairly weak era. Rocky has the big names, more than half his title fights were against #1 contenders, and he usually KO'd them, so I'd say he has the best of the three. Dempsey's reign was a bit of a joke IMO...

 

But Charles also lost two fights to Walcott, who Rocky KO'd both times. And a lot of his defences were against guys like Gus Lesnevich, Pat Valentino, Nick Barone etc. And he lost to Rocky twice as well. I don't think their HW resumes are worlds apart, but I'd give Rocky the edge.

 

That's a pretty odd argument.

By your logic, Muhammad Ali wasn't a great heavyweight because he and most of the guys he beat were cruiserweights by modern standards.

Heavyweights are getting progressively bigger over time.

 

This. Don’t know what else anybody can ask for in a great heavyweight. Charles was always a very active fighter and fought top competition regularly. He beat a lot of very good fighters and could fight any style.

They definitely don’t make many fighters like him anymore. I can only think of a handful a heavyweights that came after Charles that would literally fight anybody like Charles did in his day.

 

Yes without a doubt. Way past his his prime he nearly bested Marciano . If he pulled it off his greatness would not even be up for debate