Sanders resume vs Ken Norton resume

I don't think Corrie Sanders resume is as good as Ken Norton's, but it is very similar, and very underrated. First, both have an early career ko loss to an unrespected opponent (they are both equal to this point). However, the big items on their resumes are their work against 2 ATG's. Both defeated a dominant ATG that they were big underdogs too. I give a slight edge to Sanders here, because Ali avenged the defeat (albeit by close disputed decision results), and because the initial win was a close, disputed decision result, while Sanders had a dominant unavenged tko victory over Wlad (really the only true punch induced tko victory of Wlads career, since his other tko losses were from gassing out). Both then went on to give another dominant ATG one of the closest fights of their career. I'd call this about even, because while the Norton Holmes fight was much closer than the Sanders VK fight, Holmes had a number of close calls over the course of his championship run, and Vitali has never had remotely as close a match since then in his championship run.

The big difference is when you get lower on their resume, in that Norton fought a lot more top 15-20 HW's than Sanders. The only one Sanders fought (arguably, you could make an argument for Cooper, De Leon, a couple others being in top 20) was Rahman. He lost by tko in an incredibly exciting, close fight. Norton fought 8 top 20's, by my count. However, Norton did quite poorly against them considering his above accomplishments. He lost 3 and drew 1, so he only beat half of them, and was absolutely destroyed a few times. His record overall was 42, 7, 1. Sanders was 42, 4 and 0. Its reasonable to think his record against 7 other top 20 HW's would have been no worse than 4,2,1, like Norton. Obviously we'll never know for sure, and the fact is Norton did face those top contenders, and that's the main reason I rank him #24 all time and Sanders #34 all time. Point is, Sanders seems not to get as much respect as he deserves on the forums, when if you look closely at the main part of their resume's, they are remarkably similar.

 

Thanks Chitown and martin, for intelligent comments. Money, your an idiot and Nonito, I've noticed you're completely braindead from prior posts, good to see nothings changed. So, way to not get the point at all and failing to respond to the arguments in my post in your counter. Sanders win over WK more decisive than Norton's win over Ali, and Ali avenged himself. Norton was entertaining in the other Ali fights' but he lost. Any way you slice it his main claims to fame are Ali and Holmes, just as Sanders is WK and VK. We can argue about which is more impressive, but its clearly comparable. The only edge is that Norton fought more top contenders than Sanders, but he did fairly badly in those matches, so its a minimal edge. Clearly, 20 years from now, Sanders and Norton should be listed fairly close to each other on the ATG list.

 

Then you can really say the same thing about Norton, who was barely a top 15 guy of his era when gauging the rest of his record against top guys, if not for his "big night" against Ali, and disregarding his competitive losses like you do for Sanders. Fact is, Sanders was a clear top 20 guy of the moment when he got his title shot against Wlad, he'd beaten a ton of lesser competition, a bunch of top 30-40 guys, and was just untested against tougher competition except his war with Rahman, which could have gone either way. He was a huge underdog (so was Norton against Ali), but a close look at his record didn't justify that. As far as what he did after that, he gave Vitali the closest win of his career. Every other fight VK's had he's never been in trouble and has completely dominated. Like I said, Sander's win and competitive loss against two different ATG's make him a top 40 ATG HW, and certainly put him in Norton's league. If, as the other commentators said, his career hadn't been so mismanaged, he likely would have had a better record against top contenders than Norton's and would have the superior resume. As it is though, the big things are almost identical to Norton, and put him near to Norton's resume.

 

Good comment, I agree.

 

Jab, I'm disappointed, while its clear you don't like modern fighters, you seem more open to rational arguments than the pure modern fighter haters. Its a very close resume, Ali is a bigger name on the resume than WK (because of in era accomplishments, not by H2H standards), but we're talking about two dominant ATG HW's in the top 12, and Ali the win was less impressive and avenged. The lack of other top 10 fighter issue is why I have Norton slightly above Sanders, but really, considering his accomplishments, Norton had a poor record against other top 20 fighters and it's likely Sanders would have had a better record had he fought them, which likely didn't happen for reasons ably noted by Chitown.