That´s why I think Sonny Liston is overrated

Logical argument? Sorry to upset your homo-erotic worship of Marciano by daring to compare Listons competition to the immortal grandads Marciano struggled against :rofl

You don't like to look at the top contenders in detail that Liston dessimated that I listed because it proves your worthless arguments fruitless.

Lets be honest you only made this thread after everyone picked Liston to KO Marciano in a fantasy thread

 

I have three main criterion for my top 10.

• Achievement (amount of years at top, amount of defences, general record, Louis scores biggest here).
• Quality of Opposition (Speaks for itself, Ali scores biggest)
• Head-to-head (conjecture of course, but your great big un generally beats your great little un and that's all there is to it, Demspey, Marciano would lose some points here).

 

Combined with 2&3 would have to be with how they beat there opponents.

 

Of course.

 

Looking at the lists,I don't think wins over Willard and Carnera are strong arguments.History more or less has shown them to be big strong men with courage but not fighters.Charles and Walcott,probably were beginning to lose something by the time Rocky got to them.

 

These are pretty much the same criterion that I use as well, minus of course the head to head. I'm not big on rating fighters based on fantasy matchups. I fully agree that accomplishments, longevity, title defenses, records, competition, and also, how a champion impacted his era are huge factors when rating champions.

I think that most people agree that Ali and Louis were the biggest in most of these categories. Both men had a profound effect on the sport, that defined boxing in a way that no other champion had ever done. Louis's dominance over nearly 12 years, was phenomenal. Ali's wins over some of the greatest talent ever and his ability to rebound from losses or a long layoff was tremendous. I have always had Ali at #1 on my all time list, with Louis at #2.

 

Yeah, I agree. the head-to-head comes into play usually when I can't separate two fighters, e.g last time I did one Lewis and Marciano were ranked about the same: Rock unbeaten but not at the top that long; but Lewis many successful title defences but lost a couple. On their best night Lewis wins pretty convincingly. So, he'd come higher.

 

Agreed,

however I don't think that we necessarily even have to create a fantasy matchup between Lewis and Marciano to deem Lennox as the better fighter. It's well documented that Lewis clearly fought the longer list of rated opponents, plus a lot more good fighters in the prime phases of their careers.


This is the way I would judge that one.

 

Charles was coming off an impressive knockout of Satterfield, who would knockout Williams and beat Valdes over the next year of so. I don't know if he was exactly "shot".
Also, many feel his loss to Harold Johnson was a poor decision.

 

Charles was going back, but of those five defeats, the majority of the press thought he won three (4th Walcott, Layne, Johnson) and Valdes walked away from a rematch, the winner to get Marciano. If Charles was "shot", why didn't Valdes jump at this match?