pound for pound RJJ is the best EVER

That there is pure video game analysis. These things are decided in the detials, but you totally missed my point.

Fighters improve - vastly - with top line experience. I don't pick fighters to beat Jones at 160 because they "did more" or "achieved more" but beause being matched at the highest level makes fighters better, inevitably.

Nobody was talking about how Hopkins "always takes away his opponents best weapon" in 1995. He learned that and people started saying it around 2002. He got better with championship experience.

Jones did too.

And so did the men you are picking Jones over because he "looks unbeatable".

 

Doesn't matter! Iron Chin Jones would probably let Foster land, just for a joke.

 

No, we are so often wrong on the boards because the "easy" pick, faster, stronger, bigger, is so often wrong due to intangibles. Jones looks great to you so you'd pick him.

I'll stick my neck out. There are NO fighters, in the HISTORY of boxing in ANY weight division outside of heavy, with twenty odd fights, two or three of them at the top level, who will beat consistantly great, primed competition from the absolute roof of their division.

It just doesn't happen like that in the fight game.

 

Mostly I agree with you.

But we're not talking here about predicting the outcomes of fights, we're talking about the very best fighters in history who achieved the most during their absolute primes fighting a guy with 23/24 fights under his belt, the first 15/16 of which were rather famously, glorified sparring sessions put on by an overprotective/jealous father.

He looked great because he was extraordinarliy athletic. He was fast and he hit hard. Of course he looked great. But he new very, very little of the sport of proffesional boxing.

Now let's put him in with the version of Monzon that kicked the **** out of Griffith the second time. ****ing 79-3. Campaigning at the highest level for years. In his 8th unified title defence. Absolutley perfected his art.

Monzon doesn't look as flash. But he'd win.

 

Probably not though. Guys came into the ring very dry so it doesn't mean they wouldn't re-hydrate if they were fighting under moder rules, I don't think. Sugar was 5'11 which is still pretty tall for a welter, he'd just weigh more by fight time.

Think about Cotto. Under old rules he would have hopped up onto the scales, hit 147, got into the ring. Under modern rules, he hops up onto the scales, hits 147, goes home and rehydrates up to 155 plus.

Old-rule fighters under modern rules would do exactly the same thing, often. There were guys that fought at their comfortable weight, but many of them had to live that weight (after all, if you're weighting 148 you're in with the MW's).