P4P Top 10 Official Survey (Poll Closes October 27)

Greb beat tunney, who beat Dempsey.

So if i find a link between Fitzsimmons and Ray Robinson, does that change things?atsch

By the way he isnt just the first middleweight or light heavyweight to hold the undisputed world championship. He is the only one to! Ever!

How is there no reports about his skills. How much more skilfull can you get than knocking out first class heavyweights (even small ones) or even light heavyweights or middleweights cold, which such regularity? What other middleweights have exhibited that level of skill?

 

Maybe you should name the categories he doesnt touch them on? KOs, Longevity, ability to fight against larger fighters, number of fights, number of wins, quality of opposition relative to their time? I havent come across one yet.

I suppose he might not have as many prime losses as all of the above. Does that count?

 

1. Ray Robinson
2. Henry Armstrong
3. Harry Greb
4. Sam Langford
5. Ezzard Charles
6. Willie Pep
7. Muhammad Ali
8. Roberto Duran
9. Ray Leonard
10. Archie Moore

 

I think we differ on very basic terms here. Firstly, I don´t think skills improved. They got adepted to new rules. IMO there were three eras and one transition era. The pioneer era where the skills were mostly still bareknuckle skills with only few changes, the transition era inbetween with the invention of 15 rounds, bigger gloves and the invention of the mouthpiece, the classic era and then the modern era - see an earlier post of mine in this thread. Each era needed different skills with sometimes drastic and sometimes only subtile changes.
So, based on this, it just doesn´t make sense to compare Fitz to SRR. Another thing to be considered is that different styles need different skills. A swarmer needs different skills to a boxer and their skills are hard if not impossible to compare. Again comparing a boxer-puncher like SRR to a counterpuncher, or better like McGrain put it, "trapsmith", like Fitzsimmons makes not much sense.
Corbett was seen as far ahead of his time during his time. And again, he was a boxer. Fitz was not. Fitz was a trapsmith. He set traps and trusted his power enough to think he would then knock his opponent out. In the end, he set a trap, Corbett fell for it and he knocked him out. Considering his style, I´d call this skilled. He was very successful with this style and this leads me to believe that his skills in setting traps and finishing his opponent were very good.
In fact I think only Archie Moore was better, in comparison to his era, in that than Bob Fitzsimmons, in comparison to his era.

He fought from lw to hw and was very successful. Like Boilermaker said, there were points in time where he could be rightfully considered, or had as much claim as anyone on beeing, the best lw and ww in the world. That is truly marvelous. He was a great mw, hw and lhw, too, with great longevity.He hang in with bigger and better boxers and beat them, you ain´t doing this only with power. Look at Choinsky, despite having a comparable, freakish power he didn´t anywhere achieve the same. It was because Fitz was very skilled at what he was doing. Very skilled.

Btw. I disagree with including skill in any ranking. One because of the points I mentioned above and two because the perception for skills are always subjective and always depend on the style you prefer.

 

1. Ray Robinson
2. Ray Leonard
3. Roy Jones Jr
4. Pernell Whitaker
5. Tomas Hearns
6. Muhamed Ali
7. Carlos Monzon
8. Benny Leonard
9. Floyd Mayweather Jr
10. Julio Cesar Chavez

 

:huh

 

I will probably regret it in the morning but i am not a big fan of the oldies and thats just how i roll.

 

Tunney is much better than Corbett and the size difference is virtually the same. Greb was a regular success at HW and he didn't need to come back from behind to get a KO to beat Tunney like Bob did to KO Corbett. This has a lot about his power, but not his skills. Of course if I had any film of his opposition that would help. I don't think his achievement is as good as Armstrong beating Ambers, Ross, Garcia, etc to win the Featherweight, Lightweight, Welterweight, and ALMOST the MW title.

 

I think it's probably a degree of both. I do think boxing evolved, and there probably was a bit of adaptation happening to the rule set. I would say there was naturally both.

Even the way you describe Fitzsimmons doesn't really make him sound as special as the other legends I've mentioned. I know he set traps to set up his power because the guy was a monster puncher for any weight class. But he was handedly being out-boxed by Corbett until he landed his homerun in the 14th. I think there's a very grainy clip of this... the only thing I've seen from Bob if my memory serves me right. The idea of a style in and of it self that relies so heavily on merely setting up your big power shot to end a fight conveys a limited skill set or at least a lack of use of these skills regardless of era. I understand that with the smaller gloves and longer fights that this sort of strategy takes patience and is much more effective in this era because it truly only takes 1 shot. And as far as a strategy it's fine but the implication is that Bob doesn't have the skills to pull off a more apt strategy that would have him fight as a pressure fighter. I mean, when we describe him as a master of setting traps it's not like he's a Moore or Walcott. He just does not have their ability from what we know.

I don't remember him ever being the best lw or ww. It just says a lot about the time if this is true.

I don't think Choisnsky was as powerful and I don't think he was as good either.

It depends on the criteria. But even if it is not apart of your criteria it's hard to ignore. While Bob has incredible achievements his record doesn't seem as impressive. And the way he won some of these fights doesn't really impress. Boxing was just different then.

 

I don´t think so. People are not dumb. Boxing has been around for a long time and the way you can move is limited. Common sense should tell you that people who fought under certain rules for a while will adpet themselves as good to them as possible. It may need a while until the techniques are adjusted to the new rules and some rules may encourage new techniques - like bigger gloves => peek-a-boo defence - but that´s it.

Why should Fitz have fought with a different style? His style worked great for him, didn´t it? And why would he have been more skilled with another style? Sorry, I don´t get it. Yes, he needed 14 rounds to dispose of Corbett and Corbett was winning the fight until then but so what? Fitz knew it was only a matter of time until Corbett would fall for one of his traps and he could capitalize on that. It happened. Fitz won. You are also totally ignoring that Corbett was an awesome boxer. Ahead of his time, scientific, intelligent and very skilled. In the end all those things didn´t help him.
And why is it not like he is a Moore or Walcott? Why doesn´t he have the ability they had? He was as advanced as them - in the context of his era.

Ask Boilermaker he posted a bit about it in the past, sounded convincing. But see, you have your opinion and instead of beeing open minded you already look for a way to new facts fitting to it. No, it it would have been so it´s not because Fitz was that good, no then his era was that bad. Yeah ...

If I remember right Jeffries said Choinsky punched harder.

No, it does not depend on criteria. Skills are a subjective criteria, something you can not evaluate neutral and objectivly and nobody will evaluate the same. This has nothing to do with criteria.
There is probably a huge part of his record missing. He himself claimed to have more than three hundred fights.
Exactly. Boxing was different. That´s why you can´t compare Fitz to Moore without the context of their era. Fitz was skilled as Moore. In the context of their repsective era.

 

Basketball and football have evolved tremendously since the 1940's. Doesn't make people dumb. That's what happens in nearly every sport. Strategies, game-plans, plays, athletes all generally improve over time. With more time comes more knowledge. It's not as if Einstein is so much smarter than Newton... there just needs to be a standard set to raise the bar for their to be some form of evolution.

This all comes down to me not thinking that highly of the era. Obviously he wasn't unsuccessful, but we're going to round and round on this.

Not what I was saying. I think his style was suited toward his abilities which seem to be limited. Obviously it has to do partly with the era but did he have the speed and athletic ability to outpoint someone like Corbett? No... and yes I know he was smaller but he was no Greb apparently.

I'm not ignoring anything. And who says I can't analyze how wins occur? We don't just say A beats B and leave it at that. I'm not overly impressed with how Fitzimmons skills rate and how his performance sound. Maxim beat SRR but that's not all that matters. I tend to think more highly for SRR for doing what he was able to do before actually losing. How you dominate is an important aspect to how your legacy gets viewed, especially in an era like this.

Moore and Walcott could use their skills to lure you and out-box you. They didn't rely on merely small gloves and freakish power to win. This doesn't impress me as much as Armstrong, Langford, Greb, Robinson, etc. I don't understand why you can't accept that. Seems like you're arguing for the sake of arguing. Note, I rate Fitzimmons over Walcott obviously due to achievements. Don't confuse that.

What? I can hardly understand this. Of course I'm open-minded. Boxing wasn't as organized at that point if Fitzimmons is speculated as being the best LW & WW. He never proved that under a sanction title fight, so I'm not going to give him credit for something you could argue when someone else is also equally deserving of that claim. Boilermaker is the biggest Fitzimmons fan on the site of course he's going to boast about his achievements. I think Armstrong winning 3 titles at once is more impressive. He seems to be the only one to think Bob is a lock at #1 with his achievements. I've never come across that before by an historian or poster here. I'm obviously not the only one missing something with his perspective.

Choisnky drew with Jeffries. Briggs said Vitali hit harder than Foreman and Lewis. It's also easy to praise the opponent that makes you look better or tougher by saying "The guy who hit me more often hit harder." You're probably right, but Bob was obviously better.

You can't evaluate record and achievements entirely neutrally and objectively either, but we try. It's all important to interpretation as records and resumes of boxers generally just seem to be different, rather than better. You can't just evaluate that fighter A is worse or better and therefore his record is better because eras go through highs and lows and records don't tell the entire story. This is why we rely on film so much to help us percieve a fighter's ability. Even if that may be more open to interpretation.

Of course it depends on your criteria. You can't just say people can't have skills or H2H as their criteria because it's subjective. People find it to be important and do it all the time for their rankings. Don't be such dogmatic.

I can respect this. Maybe it has more to do with me not knowing how to deal with these types of fighters within this era. I still don't see quite the same appeal skills wise, even when analyzing skills within the context of the era. Had Fitzsimmons totally dominated Corbett maybe I'd feel differently. The way a non-puncher like Greb decisions Tunney while having a weight disadvantage is more impressive. Fitzimmons obviously had some great ability since he was such a great puncher.

 

Not really getting this story about Corbett being ahead of his time. There were fighters at lower weights who were as skillful or more so than Corbett. Boxing is not limited to heavyweights.

 

1. Sugar Ray Robinson
2. Henry Armstrong
3. Harry Greb
4. Sam Langford
5. Roberto Duran
6. Bob Fitzsimmons
7. Sugar Ray Leonard
8. Muhammad Ali
9. Willie Pep
10. Ezzard Charles

 

I think I'll revise my list a bit by adding 1920 as cut-off point. Not that Gans and Langford (and Fitz) weren't great, but since records often are very spotty, film very sparse and official ratings non-existant it gets too difficult including that era. So the new list reads:

1. Sugar Ray Robinson
2. Harry Greb
3. Henry Armstrong
4. Willie Pep
5. Ezzard Charles
6. Muhammad Ali
7. Benny Leonard
8. Roberto Duran
9. Jimmy McLarnin*
10. Joe Louis

*Don't know much about him aside from his record, really. But he gets in on the strength of his wins over Ambers, Canzoneri, Ross, Young Corbett and Benny Leonard. Until some very strong arguments surface that these wins by a former flyweight aren't really as great as they seem, he stays.