The ' Who did he beat' question

If great wins equated with greatness than Corrie Sanders, Lamon Brewster, and Buster Douglas would be greats And the guys that beat these guys presumably would have to be great as well.
So Rahman is great for beating Lews
Maskaev is great for beating Rahman
Sanders is great for beating Maskaev and all the guys who beat Sanders are great as well.

Witherspoon has the better depth to his resume and his legend isn't based on being a bad matchup for one particular opponent. Also since you think a loss 15 fights in is now relevant the horrendous loss to Garcia would obviously be devastating legacy wise and presumably kicks him out of the top 40 at least.

 

TOP Opponents, Win or Lose well, is often all that is needed to determine a fighters capacity and of course, stepping up a division or two and likewise questionable decisions. there are Loads of great & capable fighters out there.

 

I have no idea what you’re talking about.

If great wins don’t enhance someone’s resume, then what does? Why is Muhammad Ali great if not because of who he beat?

How do you determine Tim Witherspoon has greater depth on his resume if who he beat doesn’t matter, lol?

Also, Norton did avenge that loss to Garcia, who is a lot better than Bigfoot Martin (Tim’s worst loss).

 

No, it wasn't 60's Ali, but he still beat contenders fairly easy around that time without being in great shape. And he certainly was in shape in the rematch and Norton still ran him close in a very tough fight, showing that the first wasn't a fluke. He did better against an in shape Ali than what both Frazier and Foreman would do in coming fights. That's not bad at all.

I won't linger on this, but you're just badly overestimating Witherspoon and his victories. Good fighter, though.

 

Revisiting Witherspoon-Thomas (very good fight, btw) it's just astounding to see the difference in Thomas's body compared to when he faced Tyson less than three years later. It aged so much. I think he was clean of heroin at this point, but maybe the old days caught up with him. Or he just switched to coke and booze.

 

Resume depth generally trumps top wins. Muhammad Ali is great because he beat more than 18 guys ranked in the top 10. You can debate how good they were but along with Joe Louis he beat more top contenders than any other heavyweight.

With Norton we have the Ali win and not much else and the version of Ali he beat was out of shape in fight 1 and past prime in fight 3. Fight 2 was the best version of Ali he faced.

 

Agree Holmes is an ATG, of course I would like to have seen him fight Dokes, Page, Coetzee, Thomas etc ....but for for crying out he had 20 defenses and ruled for 7 yrs that's almost 3 defenses a yr. The problem that fans have IMO isn't Holmes reign its that it followed Ali and any act that follows Ali will seem boring and lame, Holmes was no showman he wasn't a good talker he was a no frills businessman in comparison. As far as his challengers the 80's was a very good era with a lot of good heavyweights. And for awhile after he stopped Cooney who was BTW a lot better than given credit for Holmes was seemingly unbeatable...