Look let's be realistic here. Wlad/Vitali/Lewis would dominate any era of HW boxing

Ha! Moron, you just need to stop, you're embarrassing yourself to anyone with half a brain. I say it your post falls under #5, (as it does once again), because #5 of my post deals completely with your statement. Your statement is without intelligence. I do think its cute that you were intimidated enough by me to look up some big words, its too bad you don't understand how to work those words into a cogent statement that is responsive to my thesis. Anyway, once again, you are a moron, dealt with in my thesis. I'll update for you (I'll try to use smaller words to keep from making you go to a dictionary and using words you don't understand in an inappropriate context).

 

Glover, the only ****** here is you and your braindead troll buddies. You need to be banned, because you are lowering the intelligence level of the debate by engaging in wordplay, instead of rational discourse, by engaging with cretins who are demonstrably wrong, and have been proven so repeatedly. Its clear you are actually stupid enough to not recognize this. Also, I'm not on your side. You clearly don't give Ali the respect he deserves for the great performances in his own era. You actually said he displayed no reflexes and got hit with everything by Chuvalo? Did you actually watch that fight or are you just getting that off a website? I've seen the fight and his reflexes were off the chart, he was dodging almost all Chuvalo's punches. Apart from ability to distinguish good discourse from bad, and numerous other things, a difference between us is I can appreciate great past performances, but observe the evolution. Ali was fighting as Vitali Klitschko does, uses his (then) great height, awesome reflexes to avoid blows, then wears down his opponent by swift strikes. The difference is 1. obviously VK is way taller 2. power and 3. VK usually counterpunches effectively right after the missed blow, while Ali just evades the blow and comes in for combos later. He's obviously an inferior HW to VK, but his performance should be respected.

 

The plain fact is, while morons like glover like to indulge in meaningless wordplay in online wars with even bigger imbeciles, this thread can be boiled down to the below thesis. Boxing threads need some more intelligence, instead of arguing over demonstrably moot points, a thread should show the concrete arguments for why the boxing world is round, not flat. This post has gone on many many pages, and similar ones have gone on for many more, but I have yet to see one, ONE argument, that effectively answers the top three issues above, nor one that does not effectively fall into one of the typical counterarguments I list, and explain the irrelevance of, below.

Old ATG's should be respected as great for many reasons, I have Ali and Louis #'s 1 and 2 respectively on my all time great list for these reasons. However, it is for pfp and in era accomplishments, and import to boxing and history they deserve those designations. Its wrong to say they could contend with modern HW's H2H for the below reasons.

1. Progress. It happens. When you look at all sports with a quantifiable result, today's athletes are blowing past the old ones. In sports as diverse as swimming, sprinting, and javelin throwing, among many others, the old records are being shattered. In all the innumerable sports out there, I'm not aware of a single record that wasn't set mid 80's or later, and usually in the 2000's. Even in nonquantifiable sports with quantifiable aspects (i.e. tennis's serving speed), the quantifiable aspects have increased. Those sports all have about as much relation to each other as they do to boxing, so it would defy all reason for boxing not to progress as all other sports have
2.Size and relation to progress. Per #1, it's likely (although not certain, per size limitations mentioned here), that even middleweights of today would easily defeat middleweights of 40 years ago. However, HW is even more pronounced, because the is no size limitation in HW boxing, as opposed to other classes. HW's have been getting dramatically larger, both taller and heavier, just like the athletes in the sports where quantifiable results are better. So, again, it makes no sense that the same process is happening in boxing as with sports where quantifiable results are getting better, but somehow the result isn't better as well
3. Statistical analysis of size on performance. Other websites document this. Old time greats fought much smaller boxers, generally, but when they did fight larger boxers they had less success. Ali's ko ratio against fighters who would be designated cruiserweight today was a very good rate, in the 70's. Against 200 and up it was 40ish percent, against 215 and up it was a featherfisted 33%. Frazier and even the renowned ko artist Shavers had similar numbers. Shavers ko ratio against 215 and up fighters was about the level of Chris Byrd. Shavers was a power only fighter, Byrd was power last fighter, to show how much performance has gotten better. Meanwhile, LL and the K's ko percentage again 215 boxers is 75% and higher. There is no reason to think Ali could have coped with the size and power of todays fighters and every reason to think he couldn't have.

Responses to these facts. Nostagliaists typically respond in one of 6 ways. I note the ways, and why they are irrelevant as counters to the above facts, below.
1 "Single examples", whether of a fight a modern fighter lost, or something a modern fighter did that (they say) Ali didn't do. Immature posters like sp and loudon love this, which is usually completely irrelevant. Any single example you can give, I can apply to Ali (look at the past thread posts here with sp and loudon). If you find one that I can't apply to Ali, good for you, then I'll give you a single example of dominance for WK (etc) that doesn't apply to Ali (Ali had to rely on biased judges to get him his many of his best wins, WK never did, etc). A couple in particular. sp went on about modern HW's not being "true" champs because they didn't defend their mandatories. The k's never failed to do that, and LL never ducked a mandatory (he chose Grant over Ruiz when Grant was uniformly regarded as the better fighter and VK over CB, when VK was regarded as LL's biggest threat in the division). I could point out that Ali was stripped of his WBA belt as well after the first Liston fight because he didn't fight who the WBA wanted him to, but either way its irrelevant because 1. Ali, LL and the K's have indisputably (to rational persons) been dominant champs for a long time beating the best and moreover 2. It really has nothing to do with the broad premise of why prior HW's could contend with modern HW's outlined above. Same thing with pointing out single defeats. All boxers (save Marciano, who I hope no one will say is the best h2h of all time) have defeats, but it is to opponents in their own era. So, pointing out their defeats is meaningless to the broader era argument. Ultimately, "single example's" are meaningless, and do nothing to contradict the broad picture painted by the logic and stats above. It is the context of the era that matters.
2. Prime. Ali was never beaten in his prime". This is circular logic, I can do the same thing with LL or the K's when I want. Primes occur at different times for different fighters, in part because "prime" is really just a sliding scale of different important attributes, some of which peak sooner and some later. For taller and heavier, harder hitting HW's the prime is usually mid thirties, because chin prime occurs later, hard punching lasts a long time, and properly utilizing your height uses a lot of experience and technique. That's why Foreman was able to be effective into his mid 40's, and LL and the K's were at their best mid to late 30's. Conversely, shorter, high octane fighters like Tyson broke down quickly.
3. "What's good for one sport isn't good for another". Basically the argument that boxing is a special flower that, alone of all sports, is immune to progress. Well, I'm open to learn why not. Just give me some statistical evidence or logical, comparative arguments. But I have yet to hear a real argument. NOTE: "Ali has way better footwork, and is just faster and better than ll and the k's that's a fact" is not evidence, it is an unsubstantiated opinion. Posters like sp love to say that is evidence, but its only repeating an item of faith. You can believe that Ali would be the K's and LL as an item of faith, there's nothing wrong with that. Just accept that all factual evidence and logic points to the contrary.
4. Smilies. When all else fails, nostagiaists love using smilies, (or insults, I include "na na you're stupid" in this category). This may make you feel better but it does nothing to contradict the facts above.
5. Denial. In this case the last stage of grief over ingrained opinions. Just stating "Ali would easily beat LL and the K's", with no other statements. This also includes things like blind statements of belief like "modern fighters haven't beat anyone". LL and the K's have beaten the top contenders numerous times. The records of the current era top contenders are generally better than the records of the past era top contenders. There is no reason to logically state the earlier contenders are better than current contenders, per main arguments #1-3 above. This also includes things like blind statements of belief like "you have no argument", or "I've proven this wrong", when your responses only fall into one of these categories. Again it may make you feel better, but it does nothing to change the above facts.
6. "Modern HW's are crap because (someone) says so". Thanks dblfl for reminding me of this. Hitler said monogamous marriage was good, and smoking and drinking was bad, does that mean we should cheat on our wives and smoke and drink? Using someone else's belief is not proof for or against any argument. Many boxing analysts recognize the top HW's of today would beat the top HW's of yesteryear, although many of them still rank old timers higher, just as I do, for non H2H reasons. Manny Stewart is a great example, who left modern HW's off his toplist, but noted that it didn't mean he though those old timers could have beaten the modern boxers. Other analysts/trainers do state old HW's would beat modern HW's. They do that to glorify their own past accomplishments, improve sales of things they market when US was more dominant, or otherwise out of delusion. Citing another's opinion is not an argument, you need to actually use facts and logic for that.

So, if these facts outrage you, please comment. I will repeat and or tweak the facts above and respond to any new arguments. By responding, you are helping keep this great topic at the forefront of the posts, and thus helping educate boxing fans. By keeping this thread at the top, you are helping detoxify fans of the self serving blather given by old trainers and commentators used to demean current boxers and laud old timers for all the wrong reasons.

 

How dumb can you honestly be?

You have to be the saddest person on this board and the "common response" as you keep saying, you only say that because its "convenient"

convenience; if you're willing to make assumptions of this kind then your evidence is only anecdotal

an·ec·do·tal

/ˌanikˈdōtl/
Adjective

• (of an account) Not necessarily true or reliable, because based on personal accounts rather than facts or research.

i.e "denial" "smiles"
and all the other dumb **** you've made up.

youre good at stringing sentences but you have little learnin elsewhere

 

sp, your stupidity explained in depth in prior post. See common reason #5 for why this fails as a rebuttal to broader point.

 

Are you that thick? or have you really fooled yourself of your intelligence. You've made up denial.

convenience; if you're willing to make assumptions of this kind then your evidence is only anecdotal

 

sp, your stupidity explained in depth in prior post. See common reason #5 for why this fails as a rebuttal to broader point.

 

Are you that thick? or have you really fooled yourself of your intelligence. You've made up denial because you have shown nothing conclusive in this debate.

convenience; if you're willing to make assumptions of this kind then your evidence is only anecdotal

 

sp, your stupidity is once again completely awesome, and explained in depth in prior post. See common reason #5 for why this fails as a rebuttal to broader point.

 

Are you that thick? or have you really fooled yourself of your intelligence. You've made up denial because you have shown nothing conclusive in this debate.

convenience; if you're willing to make assumptions of this kind then your evidence is only anecdotal

 

sp, your stupidity is once again completely awesome, and explained in depth in prior post. See common reason #5 for why this fails as a rebuttal to broader point.

 

Can you explain a little further how boxing has progressed?
Are you that thick? or have you really fooled yourself of your intelligence. You've made up denial because you have shown nothing conclusive in this debate.

convenience; if you're willing to make assumptions of this kind then your evidence is only anecdotal

 

Sure, go to #'s1-3 of my post, it says it all. You've yet to offer a single factual counterexample btw.

sp, your stupidity is once again completely awesome, and explained in depth in prior post. See common reason #5 for why this fails as a rebuttal to broader point.

 

Yea explain it in more depth.


btw the word is spelt nostalgists, not

might wanna change it.

 

Nobody's gonna convince anyone to change their opinion. :rofl