The 1940's I found the hardest to assign ratings to once I left the top six or so. I could easily juggle the next 14 anyway. I rated Charles and Walcott as 1940's fighters, feeling thats when they did their greatest body of work, you could make a case for putting them in the 1950's. I included Joe Louis as I feel he has a strong fan-base! In the 50's I have LaStarza, Valdez and Williams lower than many might rate them, I feel their accomplishments does not match their potential or some peoples perception of them. the 60's I am happy eneough with, Patterson and Ali could easily belong to the 50's or 70's, I just felt they did their best stuff in the 60's. Below is the intro I included with Part 1 of these ratings by way of explanation. "I am in the process of rating the top 200 Heavyweights of alltime, a daunting task. The methodology I am applying is to rate the top 20 for each decade, a total of 260 boxers and then use this template to do up the 200. I intend to post my ratings for the decades in four parts as the total would be too big a post for forum readers to absorb in a short span of time and offer their criticisms and opinions. NB A fighter is rated in only one decade, the one in which IMO he did his best work. Sometimes this can be arbitary, think Jeffries, Louis, Doughlas for example but in the final shake-up it wont matter. NB2! While I have rated the men by decade I'm rating them on them on their career body of work. The main criteria is career accomplishments, not potential or peak performance. Head to head comes into play only when I find it hard to split two fighters and I'm sure the biggest factor is my own biases and lack of knowledge." 1940-49 1 LOUIS 2 CHARLES 2 WALCOTT 4 BIVINS 5 RAY 6 CONN 7 GODOY 8 TOLES 9 BETTINA 10 MURRAY 11 B.BAER 12 BAKSI 13 THOMPSON 14 SIMON 15 MAURIELLO 16 OMA 17 SAVOLD 18 LESNEVICH 19 MAXIM 20 FRANKLIN 1950-59 1 marciano 2 liston 2 moore 4 johansson 5 h.johnson 6 machen 7 folley 8 Cl.Williams 9 Henry 10 Baker 11 LaStarza 12 Jackson 13 Valdez 14 DeJohn 15 Layne 16 Satterfield 17 Harris 18 Summerlin 19 Sys 20 Cockell 1960-691 ali 2 frazier 2 patterson 4 quarry 5 ellis 6 terrell 7 bonavena 8 chuvalo 9 cooper 10 d.jones 11 cleroux 12 mildenberger 13 martin 14 spencer 15 peralta 16 mathis 17 m.foster 18 a.jones 19 london 20 clarke
Is this based on accomplishments or head to head? If it is the former, then i think Liston has no business being #2. Walcott, Moore, Charles and arguably Patterson have done more in the 50's, beat more contenders. In the 50's, Liston had beaten DeJohn (top contender), Valdez (old, not ranked anymore as far as i know) and Williams who was also not ranked yet. Walcott and Charles were champions and had beaten quality opposition. I like your 60-69 list. My only question is how much did Bonavena did in the 60's to get a #7 ranking? I'm doing this off the top of my head so maybe i'm mistaken but i thought his best work was in the early 70's. Sorry, i missed the part where you said that you only ranked a fighter in one decade. Why though? Isn't being ranked high in two (or more) decades a sign of greatness? And more important, it gives a skewered view of the rankings because they can still be an essential part of an other decade. For instance, it will seem now like Ali's win over Bonavena in the 70's is not against a top20 opponent because you ranked him in the 60's.
Good work. I am interested to see the 80's, 90's and 00's. I do think Ingo was a shade better than Moore.
Ingo over Moore was one that caught my own eye when I looked them over. Archie has longevity but the Sweede had a few glorious years. Tough call, I think. I'm not rating the fighters on what they did in the decade but in their whole career but I have assigned them to what I feel is their best decade for rating purposes. Am i making myself clearer or are am i making things worse?
Both. Seriously though, that is a strange approach. Ali is THE definining boxer of the 70's but in your way of looking at things, he is not there because his prime was in the 60's.
Well, good lists. The only rating that jumped out at me as weird was Mike DeJohn over Rex Layne. DeJohn was a second-tier contender who never cracked the top five and was never considered a serious threat to the top men. Other than edging Cleroux in a very close fight, his top wins were over fellow fringe contenders Miteff, Hunter, and Powell. In contrast, Layne was viewed by some as a coming champ, and defeated champions Charles and Walcott (your 2 & 3 men of the 40's) as well as top men Thompson and Satterfield, and a slew of decent contenders such as Kahut, Dunlap, and Brion. He is way above DeJohn in my estimation, who I think could be dropped right out of the top twenty and replaced by someone like Neuhaus or Erskine.
Thanks for your comments, Old Fogey. As regards DeJohn I think he was slightly better than you give him credit for. He lost splits to Valdez and Chuvalo, beat a slipping Baker and a prime Miteff. Dick Richardson was a good win also. However having said all that I take your point and accept that he would just about hold his top 20 spot.
I have no trouble with the top listed fighters, and will comment later on the second tier. But for now, just a comment: How can you rank Tami Mauriello over Gus Lesnevich when Gus beat up on Tami in four separate fights. Head-to-head matchups have to count for semething.
