Jack johnson is the best heavy weight ever...

Jack Johnson was dropped by middleweight Stanley Ketchel :rofl

but he's still in the Top 10 ATG heavies

 

Louis
Ali
Johnson
Holmes
Lewis
Foreman
Marciano
Frazier
Holyfield
Tyson

I'm pretty comfortable with that

 

who is that bum? never heard about him!

 

Well, for perspective Jesse Owens' winning long jump from 1936 would have made the final at every Olympics since then, despite the significant disadvantages of a cinder track and shitty spikes.

Some athletic events have seen significant evolution, whereas some haven't. Boxing may fall into either category, but the sweeping generalisation that no athlete from the early part of the 20th Century could compete in modern times, is far too crude and simplistic.

 

I find it hard to believe that a sport like running in a perfectly straight line for a 100 meters the athletes have evolved, but not in a sport like boxing. Seems there is much more to be improved upon in a sport like boxing compared to running for 10 seconds or so.

 

he straight up toyed with the top HW's of his time.

 

If you rank him over Ali or Louis you are a majorleague fartknocker.

 

Depends on which way you look at it.

With the 100m, there are relatively few variables, which means that you can isolate the individual components that lead to success a lot easier. For example, if you have a **** start, you can spend hundreds of hours working on it, knowing that everything else being equal there will be a significantly improved 100m time at the end of it.

With boxing, there are far more variables leading to victory, and therefore it is harder to get a noticeable improvement by isolating one area. The ability to put it all together is also extremely important in boxing, rather than improving one particular area or attribute.

There is much more in boxing that can be improved on, but other than the obvious improvements in athleticism, I don't see where the equivalent improvements have come from in resiliency, mental toughness, ringcraft etc.

So much about boxing is about timing and distance, which is perfected by fights and sparring with live opponents. If we can assume that modern fighters are faster and stronger due to advances in technology, we can also assume that old-time fighters are better in these areas for the simple reason that they fought and sparred a lot more.

Boxing also relies far more heavily on intangibles than most sports, such as the ability to relax under intense pressure and compete with physical and mental fatigue. Compare 70s Foreman to 90s Foreman. 70s Foreman was obviously a far superior athlete, but 90s Foreman had much better effective stamina in the ring. This wasn't through advances in technology, it was due to Foreman himself having far better in-ring composure.

 

He's my number 3.

Everythign after whipping jeffries is appalling though.

H2H, any guys that are not super heavyweights would have a hard night with him.

can't be arsed doing a few predictions so I'm just gonna throw out my two most controversial ones

Johnson wins on points against both Foreman and Vitali.

 

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Thats a well thought out post, but I think when there is money involved which there is vast amounts of in boxing humans are very good at figuring out how to do things better. Like you say there is a lot of variables that can be improved and millions of dollers at stake. If these trainers and boxers have not figured out how to box better in the last 80 years I would be very surpised.

 

Top 10 easy. RIP. Jack was the first real great.

Ali #1

:bbb

louis was abit of an uncle tom - unlike Jack