Rocky Marciano... who did he NOT face?

I'm not sure where Cooney would have been ranked. DP said #2 so you'd be correct. Holmes record is is crazily short of top 5 fighters for someone that reigned so long, it's inarguable. Obviously there's a problem with #1's as well. Everyone has to make their own mind how different factors affect things. Long reigns are a helluva lot easier missing a lot of the best fighters. Wilder is a gold standard as well.

 

High. He draws in loads of people from the extreme ends of the spectrum.

 

It's something I've never been able to get my head around. I don't want to sound like a Holmes hater (I actually like the bloke) but it's absolutely insane to me, his lack of top five fighters, and complete absence of number one contenders is glossed over when ranking him. Combine this with the fact that he flat out admitted to ducking his most deserving contenders in the second half of his reign, disqualifies him from the number 3 spot.

 

A trans woman lol yes ...

 

True,too bad most of the dudes he could've fought to give more substance for his greatness were mostly blown up by Moore, Charles or Walcott.

 

In fairness to Holmes, as WBC champion he was working off the WBC ratings, which make his record look a lot better. Cooney was #1, Shavers was #1, Jones was #2, Spinks was #2, Ocasio was #3, Evangelista was #3, Berbick was #5.

Certainly it diminishes his legacy that he never became undisputed champion, but it takes two to make a unification bout. There was no WBA champion who strung together defences in a way that would have generated real anticipation for a showdown.

 

True enough but apart from mandatory defenses you can defend against anyone as long as they are inside the 10. Pushing into the IBF reign things got quite grim. Thomas strung a couple of good title bouts together of Holmes relinquished WBC title and he was certainly wanting to tango.

 

Well, that's true. By the end Holmes was openly taking easy defences in an attempt to make it to 50-0 before retirement. Mind you, most long title reigns tail off towards the end. Ali was pretty much treading water after 76, Louis made just two defences, both against the same man, in his last two and a half years as champion, Dempsey took the last three years off, and Johnson went into semi-retirement after the Jeffries fight.

 

True. The amazing thing about Louis and Ali is how many top 10 and top 5 guys they fought. It's absurd. With Ali you can put up a some top 10 lists from around his prime and he's probably fought almost all of them if not all. It's incredible. It's easy to see why, resume wise, so many have daylight between those two and "the rest".

 

Interesting discussion. Got me thinking.

I currently have Holmes listed at #3 - above Lewis (#4)

Holmes, to the best of my knowledge, has nineteen bouts against Ring-Rated opponents, going 15-4-0 in those fights.

Of the nineteen, there were nine against Top-5'ers. That means a slight majority of ten bouts were against those at the lower end of the Top-10.

If we demarcate Holmes' first and second career stages at the Spinks rematch/Tyson comeback stage, Holmes goes 4-1-0 against Top-5'ers in his first stage and then 1-3-0 against Top-5'ers in his second stage career. 5-4-0 overall.

This also means that during Holmes first stage career, two-thirds of his Ring-Rated opponents were outside the Top-5.


Lewis conducted his career in a single stage, during which he had eighteen bouts against Ring-Rated opponents, with more than half of those being Top-5 (Lewis went 9-1 against Top-5'ers). Lewis also never suffered a loss to an unranked opponent.


Yeah - that there's the beginning of some food for thought.

 

There's so much involved in the resume rating game isn't there. There can be surprises both ways and at other times expectations are accurate.

 

I'm not sure TBH I do remember My_Dinner_with_Conteh told me Weaver was ranked at the time maybe 7 or 8 ?

 

Absolutely.

Me not being big on list-building, in general, I do find the exercise a kind of gift that keeps on giving, in terms of angles and insights on the careers of all-time great boxers.

I now need to contemplate the positions of Holmes and Lewis in my Top-10 - which seems both peculiar and yet valid at the same time...

 

There's a little bit of confusion around Weaver's rating in '79.

I'm fairly confident (but prepared to be corrected) that when The Ring did their 'To Be The Best...' series, which listed the Top-100 boxers in terms of their Ring-Rated ledgers, Holmes was included but did not list Weaver as one of Holmes' Ring-Rated opponents. I believe this to be the case, because I used their list to double-check my records, where applicable, and Weaver remains unrated in my record of Holmes.

On the other hand, there was a reporter (Dave Anderson - in a syndicated article for the NY Times News Service - Tue, May 29, 1979) who reported that The Ring Magazine had given Weaver a Ranking of #8. The problem is the rationale for the ranking does not make sense, i.e. Weaver stopping Stan Ward, who had been out of the universally recognized ratings for over a year by then.

At the same time, there are reports confirming that the only reason Holmes was getting away with taking the Weaver fight was because of Weaver's WBC Rating which - incidentally - was #8 (mentioned in an article by Steve Sneddon, Nevada State Journal - Sun, Mar 25, 1979), and is confirmed in the WBC listings for April 1979.

I do wonder whether Anderson had confused Weaver's WBC ranking with a Ring Rating. It would be good to get this confirmed one way or the other.

 

According to this article he was ranked 10th by the Ring. As you say, it seems possible that Anderson confused the Ring ratings with the WBC ratings.

https://ibb.co/ysj6y1S