Time - What Fighters Have Lost The Most...

A few toughts:

Untill the middle of the 20th century Joe Walcott, Tommy Ryan and Mysterious Billy Smith were almost universaly regarded as the three best welterweights of all time, making up the golden age of welters. Contenders from their era like Tommy West were seen as guys who would have been champions in weaker eras.

Jim Corbett and Bob Fitzsimmons were seen as top 10 heavyweights untill the 1950s. They were held in a similar position to Joe Frazier and George Foreman today. Guys with short title reigns who were unlucky to come allong in a deep era but would kick ass in any other.

 

A good pick.

The Nonpareil was seen as an absolute technical marvel in his day and while you can find contemporary articles critical of most historic fighters the media speaks of Dempsey with reverence.

Like with Jawn L, most of his key oponents have fragmmentary records and are forgotten today, while those of sombody like Jim Jeffries are fairly well understood.

Today there is little to judge him on.

 

Jem Mace: Considered the father of modern boxing in both Australia and the USA; never given the same respect in Britain, now hardly gets a mention, period.

 

The big question is why they lost their position. Is it due to better fighters, or ewfighters with a better resume, coming around or is it due to the people who saw them died out?

 

IMO I think it is due to the people who saw them died out and a mixture of people wanting to claim there era as the best or somthign like that dont know if I said it right or not

 

Lately, Joe Frazier.

 

I think the reason is the modern boxing fancy (generally) are lazy and do not look at the history of the sport like the way past fans have.

Boxing in my household has been brought down the generations, thus the stories of past glories are known.

More casual fans, thanks to sites like this, get to express an opinion to the world, a privilege only available to journalists and people who got published letters in opinion columns of The Boxing News' and Rings' of this world.

 

It's a natural progression really, I fully expect Holyfield, Lewis and Tyson to see their stock rise even higher over the next decade or two.

And it's not just boxing, you can look at things like tv shows or other sports or whatever...when it gets to a certain age, it seems to be looked upon more favourably. Distance gives perspective.

 

I think Lewis stock is slowly rising. However, I expect Tyson's stock to fall, and Holyfield's stock to fall in 20 years.

 

Jack Dempsey
Jack Britton
Ted 'Kid' Lewis
Gene Tunney
Tony Zale
Marcel Cerdan

 

tysons stock will never fall. IMO. if anything it continues to get better and better. people come to respect his accomplishments in the 1980s, and years from now when people see footage of him in his prime in the 1980s they will see what a machine he was.

 

Just like we see Dempsey today and is distruction of Willard

 

.............One rather obvious thing going here is the advent of more film of the modern greats; and of course, there is just that much larger a talent pool to choose from this many years on. When Nonpariel Dempsey or Jeffries were chosen as ATG's back in, say the 20's, Queensberry Rules boxing hadn't been around all that long. There just wasn't a century plus worth of greats to consider then.