Here is the last of the ratings. Comments and critisms welcome. I was a bit surprised at the lack of depth to the 70's but this can in part be explained by the quantity of good 60's fighters who extended their career's well into the 70's and also Larry Holmes, whom I rated in the 80's. The top 5 I thought rated themselves. The 80's led to a big call, Tyson or Holmes. I plumped for Larry on the basis of his longevity, consistantcy and a reasonable second career. To-morrow i might go for Tysons sheer power and speed. The hardest call I had to make. The rest of the alpha boys are a matter of opinion, I tried to rate them on what they achieved rather than their potential. The 90's I lead with Holy rather than Bowe despite the latters head-to-head superiority based on a far better career resumee. The 2000 on I perhaps should'nt have touched at all and after Lewis and V.Klit i think it is fair to say that the jury is still out on a lot of them. One comment I would make is that after completing this exercise I am surprised to see the strenght in the 10-20 ratings of the 80's-the best of all in my opinion. See below the caviate I attach to all of the ratings. "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." This content is protected 1 foreman 2 norton 2 young 4 lyle 5 shaver 6 tate 7 bugner 8 knoetzee 9 bobick 10 middleton 11 l.spinks 12 h.smith 13 LeDoux 14 l.jones 15 ward 16 merritt 17 garcia 18 ocasio 19 bordeaux 20 kirkman This content is protected 1 holmes 2 tyson 2 witherspoon 4 doughlas 5 m.spinks 6 tucker 7 tubbs 8 cooney 9 dokes 10 coetzee 11 thomas 12 weaver 13 berbick 14 smith 15 ruddock 16 page 17 c.wlliams 18 snipes 19 damiani 20 mason This content is protected 1 holyfield 2 bowe 2 moorer 4 mercer 5 ikebuchi 6 byrd 7 tua 8 mccall 9 bruno 10 akiwanda 11 morrison 12 grant 13 golota 14 briggs 15 donald 16 seldon 17 hunter 18 norris 19 botha 20 schulz This content is protected 1 lewis 2 v.klitscho 2 w.klitscho 4 Peter 5 toney 6 maskaev 7 rahman 8 ruiz 9 valuev 10 sanders 11 chagaev 12 igbramov 13 k.johnson 14 lyakhovich 15 brewster 16 oquendo 17 mccline 18 povetkin 19 mesi 20 brock This content is protected
Ok apart from choking in big fights, and getting blown away by the likes of 'The Giant' White, what did Douglas (who won no alphabet crap in the 80s) achieve to beat the alphabet crap holders and a Legitmate Champion in Spinks?
Doughlas is hard to rate. He did beat McCall and Berbick and of course he did beat Tyson. He also did pretty well against Tucker. It is possible to pick holes in most of the alpha boys but Doughlas was more inconsistant than most. However I cant ignore his high, he delivered an ATG his first defeat. Got to be worth a lot of ABC wins.
But he did not beat Tyson in the 80s. You are rating him fourth on a strength of a victory over Berbick who was at least four years past his best (maybe eight); and a victory over McCall who at the time was considered a sturdy journeyman. Blowing the fight against Tucker because of a lack of dedication is hardly a plus IMO.
I must have missed something, but where is Ali rated? I see, you have him stuck over the sixties. I missed that. Sorry.
The ratings are not of the decade, they are the lifetime ratings of guys who i adjudge did the greater body of their work in a particular decade. you are right about the Tucker performance, he gave a glimps of his ability and then quit.If I had rated him in the 90's I would have him at three. Spinks beat Holmes and an old Cooney and Tucker was fed on a diet of has-beens and faded badly. There is no stand-out to displace Doughlas even though your critisms of him are valid. the McCall win may not have seemed much at the time but we're more interested in substance that perceptions.
Right:huhVirtually Douglas entire body of positive work consists of what happened on February 11th 1990. The biggest positive thing that happened to Buster in the 80s was Ribalta looked so bad against Jeff Sims that he blew his pencilled in rematch with Tyson freeing the date for Douglas.