Top 10 Greatest Pound for Pound All-Time

Robinson has to at least be number one on almost everybodies list...he was the reason people came up with the term pound for pound.

 

That's a generic, but accurate way to put it.

I say generic because the inherent flaw is you're ranking different, yet great, achievements against each other and there is no set criteria for how to weigh them. The biggest areas for me where differentiation can happen is this:

-Single weight accomplishments vs multi-weight accomplishments- do you prefer a strong single-weight resume (with perhaps some multi-weight success) with alot of defenses and reward guys who clean out the division more, or do you prefer fighters who move up in weight successfully and challenge the best, possibly with more losses coming along the way and without cleaning out entire divisions?

-Resume vs film: Do you prefer a great resume who may not look as great on film, or has minimal to no film footage, over the guy who looks better to you on film but without as good a resume?

-Do you hold the accounts of fighters from their peers and those from their era in more esteem, or does the modern opinion of fighters' accomplishments and caliber hold more weight? A fighter like Sonny Liston is ranked significantly higher today than he was in the 20-30 years following his retirement, for example. Other fighters who are forgotten about are dropped from current rankings despite their peers viewing them extremely favorably. Who do you believe in that instance?

Those are a few reasons I wouldn't worry so much about finding a "consensus, factual" top 10 list; the opinions have changed even amongst the experts over the past decades when there has been no activity among the fighters in question to dictate the changes.

So, to me, the cold hard truth is we'll never know who the top 10 best pound for pound fighters were, let alone in what order. So, rank who you want to where you want to- if your reasoning works for you, that's really all that counts in the end. :!::good

 

As a general rule for me, I *never* rank fighters for whom I can't find at least 10 videos. So my P4P list is much more contemporary than most boxing enthusiasts, many of whom I suspect conform their lists just to be taken seriously by their peers and isn't a true reflection of their actual P4P lists, that they keep to themselves.

I have no doubt in my mind that Pacquiao would demolish Henry Armstrong in combat, and I also firmly believe he has a better resume and better historical claim to being higher P4P. But you just watch and see the flames begin just by posting such a point. That's the real reason you see a "concensus" among fighters for whom no real footage exists to generate such a concensus in the first place.