Rate Patterson's wins over Cooper and Machen.

Folley got knocked out by Alejandro Lavorante when Patterson was champ.

That pretty much debunks everything. You don't get dropped four times and stopped by Lavorante and have any claim to being the best of an era.

Lavorante wasn't very good. Roy Harris beat him. A 48-year-old Archie Moore beat him unconscious. And a journeyman basically beat Alejandro to death in 1962 when he was 27 years old.

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/6G4AAOSwxOlervqn/s-l1600.webp

If not Patterson, Ingemar Johansson certainly has a better claim to being the "third best" between Marciano and Frazier (Ali and Liston being the top two) than Folley does.