Is Wlad the best all-time-heavyweight? NO OPINION, just PURE RECORD ANALYSIS

They aren't cruisers. They are their era's HW's. If you don't like the rules, do not compare them.

Did you just call Jersey Joe Walcott a bum? From your response to other posters, I can see that you haven't seen much of these fighters are simply going off their records. How can you judge quality of opposition if you don't know who's who? All records are not equal. Valuev has less losses than Foreman, but he didn't face the same opposition.

This is your agenda. Thank you.

 

@KG

1) I still believe that fighting 15 rounders will increase the ratio of KOs after the 12th round. Haven't checked it though, but more fighters would be more receptible for TKOs due to fatique.

2) How can you rate cruiserweight fights on par with Heavyweight fights, even if they were called HW back in the day. CW is a total different ballpark. If it is a bigger accomplishment to win at 199- against a HW classed fighter of today is semantics. To goto extremes, if they called Flyweight for HW back in the day, the settings would also change; a fight is not a fight, so to speak.

3) But he fought on the premise of one that weighed below 200 pounds. For better and worse. Speed vs power. Mobility vs lack of the same.

4) I agree with you here. And back in the day, fighters were more likely to face people, which had bum-like records. Whether they were or not is hard to decide by looking at stats only.

 

You ask for NO OPINIONS but throw your opinions of what a bum is around like you have the lock on truth.

 

No, again, you're ignoring the fact that these are actual people with functioning brains in the ring- being behind with three rounds left IS NOT the same as being behind at what you know to be the end of the scheduled route! By your logic, if I won a two-mile race, but was behind after the first mile, then provided the ability to "check up" on who was ahead after the first mile, it would be "fair" for you to go back, retroactively change it into a mile race and say I lost! This is a patently ridiculous method of operation, particularly since my first mile would be MUCH SLOWER than a mile would have been had I known that all I was running was a mile! In high school, my fastest-ever two-mile race was about a 10:10, and the first mile was just under five minutes flat; my faster MILE race was a 4:36! That's because I was not a wind-up toy who just did the same thing when the gun was fired off, but in fact I paced myself appropriately when I knew I had to go a whole nother mile after the first mile was done.
It would be EQUALLY RIDICULOUS, mind you, to transform the race into a mile race and say that I won a pretend mile race over another guy because I beat him over two miles. In fact, there are plenty of guys out there who can beat me over a mile but can't over two miles or vice versa. Certainly at the very least, neither who ran the first mile faster NOR who won the two-mile race overall is even close to being a seriously reliable indicator of who WOULD HAVE WON if the race were only a mile. The conversion you're using here is neither logical nor practically applicable.

No, absolutely not. You think Ray Leonard wasn't banking on having three rounds left after the 12th against Tommy Hearns? It was absolutely a part of his fight strategy to break Hearns down in the championship stages of the fight. If there are three fewer rounds in the schedule, you will fight a faster pace, since you don't have to conserve yourself for a substantially longer distance, you will apportion your offensive output differently, since you are aware of and are banking on a given number of rounds, etc.
Wladimir probably would have KO'd Peter in the next three rounds had the officials suddenly decided at the end of their match to disregard the rules and make them fight to 15, but that says nothing about what Wlad and Peter would do in an actual 15-round fight. They would both have trained differently, paced themselves differently and fought different strategies had they known they were scheduled to go 15 in their fight with one another.
The difference here is that YOU'RE "converting" things to show a hypothetical of what a fighter "WOULD" have done in a given scenario (and a hypothetical which is not at all trustworthy or equal)- an action which creates a deep subjectivity- while I am comparing what fighters ACTUALLY DID- an objective fact. If one man and another his opponent signed a contract to fight a 15-round fight, trained to fight a 15-round fight, and climbed into the ring with the intention of fighting a 15-round fight, and that man knocked his opponent out within the 15-round limit, then he won by knockout in as real and as objective a sense as there is. The ONLY real objective way to count their knockouts is to count their knockouts.

You see, your logic absolutely doesn't hold up here. It DOES NOT reflect any objective reality to give Ross Purrity a "UD" win in a fight where he was being shut out and knocked out an exhausted opponent in the 11th round, and would not be representative of his theoretical performance in a 10-round fight. He won in a 12-ROUND CONTEST, and a 15-round contest and a 12-round contest or a 12-round contest and a 10-round contest are oil and water; you can't mix them together and pretend they're a match.

You see, these records simply CAN'T be made comparable on a one-to-one scale the way you're purporting to do.

But your method of historical revisionism doesn't AT ALL lend credibility to the claim that Louis or Dempsey wouldn't be able to beat Klitschko; it just ASSUMES it. Dempsey and Louis both utterly dominated the "non-bum" heavyweights they fought, going by your own standard. By my count, Louis is 14-0 with 12 knockouts against heavyweights weighing over 200 pounds with better than three wins for every loss. Dempsey is 5-0 with 4 knockouts against "non-bum heavyweights" if one uses the same standards (note that I disagree with both of those standards, but am using them for the sake of argument). There is no clear indication here that they are incapable of beating anyone. Wlad Klitsckho has more total wins against opponents matching your standards, but that demonstrates only that he has fought generally bigger opponents, not that he is better against them; in fact, he's the one with a LOSS to a fighter you yourself would define as a "bum heavyweight."

 

1) It very well may. But when you are in a fight, you fight based on the point of the fight and the way the fight is going. Old era fighters fought based on these rules. If the rules were changed, the strategy would change. It's not fair to penalize them because the rules were different. They don't have the opportunity to change the rules and fight differently anymore than Modern era HW's do now.

2) It's not semantics at all. They were sanctioned HW fights. Again, they cannot change the rules. So in an objective analysis, removing their HW fights penalizes them and doesn't allow them equal footing. Whether or not it is harder to beat a 200+ pound fighter or beat a 190 plus fighter is subjective. That's an entirely different subject. If he wanted to be subjective, then he should have said so. He is fighting tooth and nail to prove it is objective, which it is clearly not. He will have to (from his POV) penalize one era one way or another. Extreme cases exist, but this also doesn't include Marciano, Charles, Joe Louis, etc. And even subjectively, you are not going to convince me that beating Charles at 195 is less impressive than beating Joe Mesi at 230.

3) Yes, and it's subjective to say that he could not be successful based on this in this era. He also fought within the rules of his time. It is about whether or not this is OBJECTIVE or not. It isn't. Again, you have to penalize on era for fighting within its rules or another era. The fact of the matter is, it's not objective because of this.

 

1) Agreed, but I can understand his reasoning doing it. The rules changed, strategy likewise. The number of rounds were decreased for a very good reason; to avoid damage on fighters, and therefore it would be unfair to credit the old era more by allowing KOs beyond the 12th round, imho.

2) Apparantly he finds the CW tag to be unfair comparison, and I can understand the reasons why, as pointed out in my third point. (speed vs power, Mobility vs lack of the same). Furthermore, you can't just take it as a negative thing to remove the "CW" fights - some back in the day lost due to completely unfair weight differences. Others vice versa, like Dempsey vs Jess Willard.

3) It can never be objective, when he created the rules. One can agree with his settings, or like most - find them unreasonable. At least its an attempt to create some common ground in the rules. Most feel, like you, that it's the old era that is hurt by the comparisons due to his rules. I find it that it does both, as explained.

 

1) But the inverse is unfair as well. Now you are taking away KO's that happened after 12 when the fighter may have pressed for a KO if they knew that they only had 12 rounds to do so.

2) Yes, but they fought within the rules. The 200+ weight class has only been in effect 4 years. He is erasing centuries worth of fights because he doesn't agree. I won't argue whether or not there is an advantage in fighting a 195 fighter as opposed to 220 (obviously it depends on the fighter). What I am saying is that the rules he set forth only affect one side of the equation, therefore creating an imbalance.

3) I get what you're saying. But the crux of this debate is this, at least on my side. He is claiming this to be objective. It isn't. The rules are based on subjective reasoning.

If he wants to argue this in a subjective manner, then I will be happy to. That is a different ball game.

 

1) Leaving it as it is, or changing it to find some common ground will both be unfair. So he changed it from one unfair comparison to another. I find his a bit less unfair, due to:

1a) Less KOs caused by reason of fatique.
1b) The mentality of fighting a 12 rounder will make more people able to bit their lip and struggle through the last rounds to make the 12. Making 15 is harder on the mind - for both, but especially the loser of the fight.

2) Okay, maybe he should let the CW vs CW stand, and let CW vs HW(by our measures) go. Would that be more fair?

3) We agree on this one. It can never be objective, when one person dictate the rules from his own reasoning. The only thing objective is the stats he gets from his subjective rule settings. He states that he finds statistics to be easier - not more truthful.

 

Objectively, none of it can be fair. One side is going to be penalized no matter what. That has been my point the entire time, outside other points which a merely subjective.

He may have stated stats are easier, I honestly don't remember. But his argument since hasn't been based on that. He has placed value on his system and said that it proves something. He has placed value on his individual rules as well, claiming that it proves quality of opposition. This is why I have been active in this thread, whereas lately, I rarely post at all.

 

Since we agree that it will be unfair no matter what, which one would you find to be the most fair of the two comparisons? Same goes for the CW vs HW restrictions.

He has set some rules, and have argued for the reasons why. If he did them invertedly(setting up rules, where WK would look best) then it is crap, however, I feel that he set up some rules, where he found that the old era had advantages, ie alot of bums on their record, which is very correct, especially the further you go down in history.

I really don't like to compare eras, nor do I claim that someone of an old era were the best, just because they beat 11 WCs or HOFs, when I know they held less class than most WCs of today. They fought on a different premise, as we agree, and therefore can NEVER be truely compared.

I go by the premise that sports evolve, and competition hardens, which is fact. Of course there were "superbeings" back in the day, ie sprinter Jesse Owen, but records are being beaten each year, due to evolution of the sports and the knowhow of nutrition etc, and therefore claim that most modern boxers would beat the ones of yesteryears. However, that doesn't mean they are more talented of today. The differences in skills have just lessened, imho.

I hope you will be more active, as I find you to be one of the very finest posters on ESB. Both in terms of debating and knowledge.

 

:nut :rofl

 

No he's not.