Ring magazine is officially lost it

Also, I think, @janitor, that the McLean/Cribb discussion isn't easy to table if you want to continue the era vs era argument.

Mostly because of what it's being used to prove.

I'm basically saying that your decision to throw up your hands and abandon discussions of era quality as unknowable is wonky. Cribb and McLean illustrate that. If your standards don't allow you to distinguish between the quality of Cribb's era, Ali's era, Sullivan's era, and McLean's seedy underworld boxing scene, it needs recalibration.

Let me use a metaphor. The problem isn't the particular scenery that we're looking at. If we change eras -- change scenery -- the problem will remain. It's the colored goggles you're wearing that present the problem. At least from where I'm standing, that's what it seems like.

What's good evidence of era quality, to a fair degree of probability? That's the issue, IMO, that these discussions are continually getting wrecked on in this thread.

 

I will add, though, @janitor, that leaving aside my attempts at banter and humor for a moment, I've always found you knowledgeable and scrupulously polite. (Except to the occasional jerks whom you've deservedly backhanded before continuing on with your business.)

 

Okie dokie

 

The quality of eras obviously varies as does the amount of info we have from different eras.

But it's no easy thing to evaluate.

People tend to be pretty selective about how they apply criteria.

If you've got old or undersized fighters doing well in am era they like, it proves how good those fighters are. If it's an era they don't like, it proves how bad it is.

I think Cribb's era was almost certainly better than McLean's scene, or the 1870s, and weaker than modern boxing or the 1930s. How it compares to Sullivan's era, or Broughton's era, is much trickier though.

 

You are kidding???
Who's running that show??

 

I clarify my starting point for the question.

We know very reliably how good Ali was, and probably fairly reliably how good McLean was.

We know that Ali was the best Queensbury boxer in the world.

I am not an expert on McLean et al, frankly because I never thought that they were very relevant, so others may know better I.

However it is probably fair to say that McLean would not even have made a decent sparring partner for Ali under Queensbury rules.

We don't know with any sort of reliability how good Cribb was, or how good his era was, but it is probably fair to say that he was the best fighter in the world at some point.

Taking that as our starting point, all that we can do is try to constrain it down, and try to find the answer that is the best fit for the very limited evidence.

 

It's true that Cribb was the best fighter in the world in his time.

The only point I'm making is that Cribb's world and McLean/Ali's world were very different places. Either we know enough about the differences between them to render some sort of judgment, or we don't.