I bet If there was some way to go back in time and get all the greatest fighters from each era & each weight class in their prime... and have a tournament for each weight class.... the winner of each class would be someone that we never really anticipated winning for that class... just my opinion... some greats are sorely over rated and some other all time guys are sorely under rated as well.... anyways thoughts ? comments ?
I agree to a certain extent. Being great in your own era certainly doesn't guarantee that you will be good head-to-head against boxers from other eras. Styles make fights, as the case may be. To listen to a lot of the posters around here, Rocky Marciano would drop decisions to just about any halfway decent heavyweight from 1920-1948 and 1960 to today.
Absolutely. Favourites lose all the time in all sports. As they say, "that's why they play the games". That's what I find so humorous about people's stances on such things - everyone's so damn sure about their assessments and analysis, yet some ridiculous % of the time, things just don't go as expected. And in any sort of single-knockout tournament, the luck of the draw is huge. Frazier draws Forman, he's finished; if he draws Ali, he has a reasonable chance and possibly alters the entire tournament. That's why we play the games.
Roy Jones Jr. beats all at 168 - 175 in his prime. He's the only one I'm sure about winning at their own weight through out the years. This doesnt make him the P4P best of all time, but I cant confidently pick any one else to dominant his weight division with as much certainty. 147 lbs would be up to 3 men - Ray Robinson, Ray Leonard, and Felix Trinidad.
