The ' Who did he beat' question

Well, if a guy loses he probably wasn’t at his best so maybe we shouldn’t consider results?

Tim was good but he was often not at his best. So his baseline is lower. If he chose not to train to peak condition or sleep-walked through fights or allowed outside distractions to take away his focus … that’s a failure as a fighter. That’s part of his DNA, part of his resume and part of what should be considered in assessing him.

 

Men can have off days and win, but it doesn't get mentioned, because it doesn't count- But when they lose because of something similar, it also doesn't count?
You can clearly see differences between Witherspoon against Page and against Thomas, if those differences don't matter to you, then I can't help you.

 

We still will take it into account, but we must consider both the cause and the effect. You can't just stop the story at "He won" or "He lost". We wouldn't learn all this context it it wasn't important, "Why should I learn about these fighters when I can just look at Boxrec?"

 

I don't really know what world you live in, but in the real world we are just not judged on our best days. We can't turn in crap results at work two days of the week and just say it doesn't reflect our best level. And that goes much more so for those performing at something at a world level.

And again, you mean to say that all these inconsistent 80's fighters were at their best when Withespoon beat them? It was that magical?

Btw, Norton said that he lost his will to do his best after he felt he was robbed in Ali 3. So should none of his losses after that really matter? Including the one against Holmes?

I will clarify things a bit for you:

1. Not being in shape is a **** all excuse when it comes to greatness. A huuuuge part fo greatness is having discipline and turning up and pulling it out even when it isn't your day.

2. If you're not talking greatness as such, but just Witherspoon on his best day compared to Norton on his best day, well then you still have the issue I've gone over a couple of times already. Namely that inconsistency was the name of game in those days, not only for Witherspoon.

How do you know he didn't earn his wins because of his opponents inconsistency just as much as his own inconsistency cost him his losses? Holmes looked sharper and better against Norton than the jaded, nearing his mid 30's version Witherspoon met. And the jaded nearing his mid 30's Norton didn't look as good against Holmes as he did against Ali five years earlier. And Page and Tubbs were all over the place with how they performed and both around their heaviest at that point (Tubbs 15 lbs heavier than the when he won the title in his previos fight). Etc, etc.

Was Tubbs at his best despite those extra 15 lbs? Page despite the 12lbs he put on since his win over Snipes the previous year?

Conversely Witherspoon was slim and looked in shape when he lost to Thomas. Did he look as good as he when he beat, say, Page? Probably not, but you very, very rarely look as good when you lose as you win. But more than not the opponent has something to do with that.

 

I never said to simply judge men based off of their best performances and best performances alone, in the post above replying to Saintpat I clearly stated that we must take into consideration both the cause and effect for any of these wins or losses.

And no, I don't mean to say that all these men were at their best when facing Witherspoon, but it's not like he beat every man when they were faded- Men like Tillis clearly had better nights, but if you go back and look through any man's record closely, you can easily see which men were performing at or close to their best, and which men who were off.

And no, it shouldn't mean that all of his losses shouldn't matter, but it should be taken into account, it should also be taken into account that Norton was already starting to slide at that point, he had a hard fought fight with Young that I believe he lost, in which he should've been able to win if he was at the top of his game, and his showings past that point other than against Ali weren't exactly the best. You should also be able to see that I already stated that Norton was on a decline on his way to Holmes, and the whole reason THIS argument started is that I said Witherspoon was better than Norton, prime for prime, so this whole tangent about losses doesn't matter.

I was NEVER talking about greatness, and inconsistencies do not matter in fantasy fights where we can put a man against another man, Witherspoon would've never had a chance to fight Norton in his prime while he also was in his prime, so why does inconsistency matter at all? If we are talking about a hypothetical fight between two men at their best, then they are at their best- No further questions needed.

Rewind back to what Catchweight said, in regards to me asking why he thought a past best it Norton was Holmes' best win when he faced much better opposition-

To which I said this-

And you said this-

I don't know when you forgot what we were arguing about, but let me remind you.

 

I think there’s a big difference in someone outside their physical prime losing fights — check Ezzard Charles, Matthew Saad Muhammad, even Ray Robinson in their declining years — and a guy who is still in his physical prime simply not being in shape.

Now of course we need to use common sense. Ken Norton and Joe Frazier beat Muhammad Ali. But I’m not going to give Larry Holmes or Trevor Berbick big credit for beating a shell of Ali.

But if we’re going to play the ‘Tim Witherspoon couldn’t be arsed to train so we’re not going to count that one against him’ game, don’t we also need to research the situation with each of his opponents to see if they were in peak shape and had enough time to prepare before we give him credit for those wins?

I mean he beat Tony Tubbs, but Tony weighed 244 … 15 pounds more than when he beat Greg Page for a title in his previous fight. So let’s scratch that win off Tim’s ledger, right? If we’re going to give him a pass when he didn’t train or discipline himself, we should also give his opponents passes if they weren’t at their best to be fair.

Are we going to say ‘Tim beat Bonecrusher, but we’re not going to count his loss because Tim was mad at Don King’? Do we know if maybe Smith had some issues going into that fight that might mitigate his loss and thus discredit Tim’s win? If we don’t know that, we should put that result in limbo until we look into it.

To me, we can’t just say ‘Tim was great when he was great, so what if he was average a lot of the time because he didn’t train’ and just shrug, put a lot of asterisks by his losses and wish them away. Him not training properly, not being focused mentally, is part of what made him who he was as a fighter … which is, at best, a pretty inconsistent performer. He should be assessed as an inconsistent guy and thus to be be rated lower than a higher achiever who managed to find time to go to the gym and focus on his career to be at (or at least close to) his best for most of his career (or at least most of his career before he was physically past it, if that’s the case i.e. Matthew Saad Muhammad cited above).

Different kettle of fish, of course, if we do fantasy matchups where the usually unspoken default is ‘best version of each,’ or if it’s specified versions like ‘Tokyo Douglas vs. Tyson of Berbick.’ That’s assessing only a particular version of a guy, not how he was on the whole.

So I’ll go with Ken Norton over Tim Witherspoon. He had the best win and you could argue for him to be 2-1, 2-0-1 or even 3-0 vs. Ali. Tim has nothing like that on his ledger. His best is ‘you could make an argument he beat Holmes narrowly once’ so either 1-0, 0-1 or 0-0-1 vs the best fighter he fought. And Ken, while he did have a whiskers problem against elite punchers, was by far more consistent than Tim over time.

 

Prime for me are the years of ones physical prime. Withespoon was in his physical prime both against Smith and Thomas. He probably wasn't as focussed and tuned in as he should have been for Smith, but still prime. It wasn't age that got him, it was just lack of focus.

And he was not only in his prime age against Thomas but slim and looked in shape. Did he look as good as he when he beat, say, Page? Probably not, but you very, very rarely look as good when you lose as when you win. But more often than not the opponent has something to do with that.

And for the third time do you mean to say that inconsistency was something that magically only happened to him in an era full of inconsistent HWs?

Was Tubbs at his best despite being 15 lbs heavier than when he won the title in his previous fight (an added weight the commentators also note and of course see as a problem for him)? Most likely not. Was Page despite the 12 lbs he put on since his win over Snipes the previous year? And those were fairly close fights.

 

We still count the losses, we still count the wins, but they should be taken into consideration as much as the context behind them is, I never spoke on "giving passes" to certain men's losses, but rather taking everything into account. You can see me reinforce this statement above when I was responding to Bokaj and talking about Tillis.

Yes, Tim was quite inconsistent against the men of his time, you can put some asterisks over his wins and his losses, and maybe you will want to rate him under than Ken Norton because of it, but I think it's clear who was better when assessing them at their best. Keep in mind that Witherspoon had better quality wins than Norton did, without some of the same advantages that he did.

 

Then prime for you isn't prime for me. Prime is a fighter at their upmost best, or else you wouldn't have to clarify when someone was at their physical prime or at their overall prime. Best is best.

And no, I don't mean that inconsistency is something that only happened to him, I told you that Tillis had better nights, and the same can apply for most men from that time period. As I said to Saintpat, we have to consider the cause and effect for every man in every fight.

No, likely not. But a win is almost always a win unless it's a robbery outright, the only reason that I stated anything about the Thomas fight or Smith fight is because of the asterisks that come with them. Holmes beat Witherspoon while the latter was at his best and the former wasn't, Frank Bruno was at his best against an out of shape Witherspoon, but got the tide turned on him in the 7th and ended up losing, we have to take into account EVERYTHING when talking about a fight.

 

Then I think you define prime different from almost everyone else here.

And by your definition Witherspoon's two best name wins (Page and Tubbs) probably weren't "prime", i e at their upmost best. While I think Witherspoon was prime even by your definition against Thomas.

So even by that it's Norton for me.

 

Take it as you will.

 

The best win argument seems silly because people can only fight their contemporaries. Obviously Witherspoon can't fight Ali since they didn't share an era plus Ali was out of shape for fight 1 and faded for fight 3.

 

Considering most rate Ali as the best heavyweight of all time, what’s Tim’s best win that you think compares?

 

He was contemporary with Larry Holmes and lost. He was contemporary with Lennox Lewis, Riddick Bowe and Mike Tyson and fought none of them.

 

What you seem to call prime is what I (and I gather most others) call peak.

Peak is usually a single fight or very short period when a fighter is at his absolute height.

Prime is a much longer period of when a fighter is in his best years — usually ealry to mid-20s to later 20s, in some cases it starts earlier or ends later and in a few cases it comes really late (like Joe Walcott, if he can actually even be said to have a prime).

We quibble over terms.