The Unpopular Opinion Thread

Dwight Braxton would destroy Harold Johnson in a top-notch matchup.

 

Ruslan Chagaev would have beaten every heavyweight champ pre-Liston.

 

Even Marciano?! :scaredas:

 

the rumble in the jungle was overated .

 

Ali Frazier 2 is vastly underated.

 

Mosley and DLH were just decent fighters at 154.A good few levels of decline having set in from their lower-weight exploits.

 

Horacio Acavallo was a better fighter than Pascual Perez.....
Sugar Ray Leonard is higher than Ali in my top 10 p4p list of all time.....
Kid Chocolate is greater than Kid Gavilan.....

 

Seems like pretty reasonable opinion to me.

 

Damn right, but there is a sizeable amount that still think they were genuinely very good to elite at that point in their careers.

I see fighters that would be hard pressed to beat other decent guys like Luigi Minchillo or Milt McCrory at the weight.

LMAO at the idea DLH could outbox someone like Jackson

 

Well he did outboxed Vargas himself - that gives any fighter a great deal of credibility


Actually Jackson wasn't that bad at boxing, certainly not some Echols-type guy like some see him.

 

Not sure he even managed that against Vargas.Just slowly imposed himself on a damaged Vargas that didn't pace himself well and was soft chinned enough to end up getting caught and stopped.

I'll give Oscar credit there though.Vargas being ruined by Tito or not, it was a good hard fought 154 win, but that's about the pinnacle of what i expect he could achieve there.

 

Although I can't say that I believe all of these things with absolute faith, I strongly suspect that they are true:


Ali would have been a much better fighter with a well-qualified modern strength & conditioning coach.

Jim Corbett was an amazing technician, and his goofy-looking style makes more sense under his own rules than Joe Louis's, Gene Tunney's, or Larry Holmes'.

Jack Johnson's technique was awful by modern standards.

The size of an era's talent pool (along with a few other social factors) play a large role in determining fighters' quality. Film is often misleading.

Both Mayweather and Pacquiao are annoying.

Dempsey wasn't talentless by today's standards, necessarily.

Harry Greb never existed.

Jeffries would win the UFC heavyweight championship if he fought today.

Ketchel might beat Hagler with a sufficiently lenient late 19th century ref.

Bob Fitzsimmons' style wasn't as stupid as it looked.

At least one of the middleweights or supermiddleweights in the past 50 years could have fought a competitive fight against the heavyweight champion from his era.

Jimmy Young was roughly as good as Jersey Joe Walcott.

Max Baer was actually a very skilled fighter. He was just ridiculously unorthodox (like Hamed).

Boxing technique is largely subjective.

Riddick Bowe is overrated.

Both Tyson and Lennox Lewis might have been better fighters than either Ali or Louis. (Might.) Each has a good claim to being the GOAT head to head.

Billy Edwards doesn't look goofy on film either.

We shouldn't look at America of the 1920s - 40s as a modern country. It's a third world country, with many of the features you see in modern third world boxing (poor nutrition, tough desperate fighters, smaller size, better work ethic, etc.).

Jeffries and Johnson were roughly on the same level as fighters. Johnson was not the first coming of Ali and Floyd Mayweather rolled into one.

The importance of the color line in judging fighters' abilities (not greatness) is overstated. People seem to think that if you don't like a racist fighter (with good reason), you can't admit he fought pretty well.

Liston never impressed me.

Foreman had worse technique than any heavyweight champion who came after him and most who came before. Nevertheless, he'd walk through the current division. (Probably).

Cooney was never very good.

Ali's success in the mid- to late 70s shows the division's weakness.

Shavers wasn't the hardest puncher ever. Possibly not top 5.

Holyfield was basically a better Jerry Quarry on steroids. Frazier would beat him for this reason.

If Marciano looked like a miniature Shavers, people would rate him higher. (And no, I'm not referring to race. Marciano just didn't look very champion-ly.)

Sub-welterweight fighters from the first half of the 20th century are probably better than their successors.

Jirov's lack of success as a heavyweight doesn't bode well for Marciano's modern chances.

People draw too much from Foreman vs. Frazier.

Schmeling is at least as good as Frazier, and arguably better.

James J. Braddock's story is boring.

Tyson would obliterate Tunney, and we all know it.

Carnera might beat Marciano.

Jack Sharkey (when he was "on") was one of the greatest heavyweight slicksters ever to live.

Young Stribling is very fun to watch.

Hank Armstrong is the greatest fighter of all time.

 

:fire:fire:fire


What a dumb hater. :-(

 

I basically said he'd destroy everybody today despite a lack of technical skill.

I'm clearly a bigger Foreman fanatic than you are.