Joe Frazier :Which Are The Modern Day Giants He Chops Down?

Very true. But McCall and Rahman both took him down with right hands. Not lefts. And both of those guys packed a lot more weight behind their shots than Frazier had. Also, I think complacency might have something to do with those defeats. And let’s not forget Lewis was 35 when he fought Rahman and when he fought McCall didn’t have steward in his corner

 

At most he could beat Wilder n AJ as I'm not sure if they hit harder than Foreman and you had to really try to decapitate Frazier to beat him or go thru hell possibly ending yer prime to do so. Keep in mind, only Foreman n Ali succeeded so that just shows how top notch Frazier was. I question if they could dig that deep against one of the gutsiest fighters ever. Usyk he can beat too imho but I'm skeptical about him vs Lewis n Klitschkos.

 

FOTC Frazier was not, on that particular night in history, The Greatest Pugilist Ever Born of a Woman, and some kind of unbeatable, indestructible, unstoppable monolith of destruction. It was his greatest night, and again I think he's absolutely an ATG, but IMO the constant awestruck references to FOTC Frazier are another example of him being put on an overly high pedestal around this place. (You can be an ATG in any sport and still be on a little too high a pedestal, IMO. The concepts are not an oxymoron.)

 

FOTC Frazier, the guy whose seemingly endless enmity against Ali would be transferred to whomever he was fighting, would have beaten ANYONE today or before imo. He would have beaten Foreman and Liston, too.

That said, I don't think the Frazier after the first Ali fight would have beaten anyone today besides probably Ruiz and Joshua. I'm not even certain the post-FOTC Joe beats 90s Foreman.

And I don't care if that's an unpopular opinion.

 

Frazier gets beaten by every giant heavy at the top. It doesn't matter if its FOTC or not. To put it simply he is at TOO much of a disadvantage. On average they are easily 20-30 lbs+ bigger than him, have greater reach, greater height and are more versatile with their skills. Frazier has a good dodge rate but as Ali and Foreman showed, he can still be tagged with a good jab on the way in by aiming low to negate that and Fraziers good chin would land him in more trouble here considering he's up against some really hard hitters who have decent skill.

What are the odds guys with iron-like jabs & uppercuts such as Wlad or Lewis won't discover a pattern to Fraziers approach and proceed to then pick him apart on the way in after a few rounds? Maybe they'll take a beating too, but I bet they would bring Frazier down on the way in before Frazier would bring them down with landing flush left hooks.

 

Why not?

 

We get it! You've said that in virtually every post here. You think Frazier's overrated even though "you would never in 100 million years call Joe Frazier overrated".

 

I plead guilty and will own it!

I just flared at seeing "FOTC Frazier" for the 999,999th time like nobody has ever been that good in the history of the sport. I get that Joe was at his peak that night, too, but c'mon ...

 

Following up, Swagdelfadeel, again you can be an ATG and be somewhat overrated. If I may bring up another sport, Roberto Clemente was one of the greatest baseball players ever born of a woman. But IMO he's overrated by people who consistently put him at the very top of the peak or on Mount Rushmore among players, because of the flair with which he played that drew eyes to him, because he about single-handedly won a World Series when the world stopped for that series and because of the way he went out, trying to help his fellow man. But IMO Frank Robinson was better and Al Kaline was his absolute equal in everything including throwing.

 

I would say he has a shot at beating Wlad, AJ, Wilder, Grant, Joyce, Valuev, Briggs, and Lewis. Fury and Vitali would be all wrong for him.

 

I'm going to be neutral here. I really don't post on threads from fighters from different era's Joe was from the 60's and 70's, and a great fighter no doubt. But when he beat Ali, he weighed 206 I think? Against Lewis and the Klitschko's,Fury, Wilder, even Joshua, these guys are so damn big, and athletic. It's one thing to beat big guys like Buster Mathis or Joe Bugner, who were big but didn't have the power or overall athletics of the guys today. I really don't see him doing well in the 21st century, he's just too small.

 

Frazier wouldn't be able to beat the top guys imo. I've watched his fights against Buster Mathis and Joe Bugner. Those guys were relatively big and skillful and I think they'd be able to compete in the modern era, although I'm not sure how successful they'd be. Joe had a hard time breaking those guys down and it would be even tougher with today's heavyweights.

 

Frazier is too slick for Vitali and would win a UD. Chisora really was a poor man's Frazier and Vitali had trouble there

 

This. Once we get past the Robert Helenius level giants, it gets dicey for Joe. It's hard for me to use statistics to convince myself I like his defensive style when matched up vs. a real hitter. I know about his "bob/weave percentages" and how they were exquisite I saw in some video, and how he did have a decent overhand right on occasion, but it doesn't convince me because I saw him get peppered/beaten badly and not use his right hand. He was a brute force fighter in a lot of ways and used his mentality to break you. Probably more effective against the men of his period and before. Would be hard imagining him in there with Riddick Bowe, would be a hellish beating.

 

Bugner and Mathis were probably as good as the sort of big men, who make up most of the top ten in the rankings of the 21st century years.

I don't see their size being an issue, outside of the very best of them.