Top 3 most overrated boxers of all time

1. Tommy Morrison
2. 70s Foreman
3. 90s Foreman

 

I thought that he thoroughly outboxed and outfought Ike Quartey.

 

Vic Darchinyan is apparently a future hall of famer..... :/

 

1. Edwin Rosario - Tremendous puncher, but also something of a front-runner and lacking in versatility and resilience. He basically just fell apart in both of his fights with JL Ramirez, after Ramirez forced him to fight beyond a few rounds, and was very lucky to get the decision in the 1st fight IMO. He was also rocked and being outhustled by, of all people, featherfisted Howard Davis, until he finally worked up the nerve to go after him and pull the fight out in the last round.

2. Cleveland Williams - Had a long list of KO wins against second- and third-rate opponents, but seldom, if ever, displayed that same level of power at the elite level. He seems to be rated more on his reputation rather than his actual achievements.

3. Jerry Quarry - A good, solid fighter, but his reputation as "one of the best HWs never to win the title" is way overblown IMO. There's obviously no shame in losing to the likes of Ali and Frazier, but he also came up short against the likes of Jimmy Ellis and George Chuvalo, and arguably also against Patterson as well. I don't even think he was the best non-HOF contender in his own era, let alone one of the best of all time.

 

Probably the best answer.

 

Brian Mitchell
Ray Mancini
Kostya Tzyu

 

1 Wilfredo Gomez
2 Carlos Zarate
3 James Toney

I think all 3 are greats but also think their greatness gets overstated

 

Many guys today are overrated. Just on the title and catchweights. Mikey Garcia being a 4 times champ is ridiculous. We have to get rid of so many titles.

 

Primo Carnera...

 

Tyson
Dempsey
Mayweather

 

Holyfield (hate saying it one of my favorite fighters)
GGG
JAck Johnson

Being “overrated” shouldn’t considered an insult to these warriors. All decent champs

 

Well Heavyweights in general tend to get overrated; particularly the likes of Dempsey, Marciano and Corbett (the latter might just be THE most overrated fighter of all time, albeit with some stern competition). Annoys me when I see a publication or writer giving their top ten pound for pound list with about half of them being Heavyweights.

Anyway, I'll avoid the Heavies and roll out someone smaller who I feel gets too much credit. Goes without saying that this guy is a great fighter, of course - just not as great, in my eyes, as most others seem to believe.

Ruben Olivares. Mexican fans consistently revere him above all their other champions, Chavez aside, and he's often placed inside the top three Bantams of all time. For me, his championship record is just too patchy for that; he lost almost as many world title fights as he won, and all but one of them came before he turned thirty. He looked like a potential Bantamweight GOAT in waiting when he blitzed Rose and Rudkin, but never really hit those heights again. Struggled badly to go 2-1 with Chucho Castillo, beaten inside-schedule to lose the title for a second time to Herrera, inexplicable knockout loss to Art Hafey, who could only be described at best as a gatekeeper if he's lucky, before losing more than he won as a Featherweight champion / contender. The losses to Arguello (given he was against a legend in the making and was ahead after twelve) and Pedroza (over the hill by then) don't harm him too much, but the defeats to Chacon, Kotey, Lopez etc. really take some of his sparkle off, in my eyes. Overrated as a Bantam and pound for pounder, largely because of his devastating power, exciting style and colourful personality.

 

Do you find Corbett overrated in general or on this forum? Can’t say I have seen any in either strata rate him highly enough to see him being overrated.

 

I’m not a huge fan of calling fighters overrated. I think for a lot of guys out there considered “overrated” there’s folks underrating them too.

 

I've not been posting here regularly enough on here until recently to really get a gauge of how he's rated on this forum. I guess it's more a general thing I've noticed on other forums, or in publications. Also, I feel Corbett's reputation as being perhaps THE father of modern boxing as we know it is overstated. His supposedly unique and ahead-of-the-curve skills didn't stop him from losing the lion's share of his most significant fights (albeit he put up a good show and was occasionally in command of these fights before being felled), and I tend to think that Benny Leonard and Tunney are much more deserving of that status.

I appreciate that these guys were compiling their lists before Ali's career ended and before the likes of Holmes, Tyson, Lewis and Wlad had done their thing, but in 1971 Nat Fleischer put Corbett as his fifth best Heavy ever; even as late as 1975 Nat Loubet had him at number eight; and that same year, John McCallum's contributors to his Boxing Encyclopaedia collectively voted him in to fourth! Even allowing for the fact that we've had 40-odd years of Heavyweight champions since, he should never have been that high, even back then. Since the turn of the century, Tracy Callis (who I like as a writer overall) put him number seven.

Why? He was pretty inactive by the standards of his time. He took the title from an alcoholic, bloated shell of Sullivan. He then made just one genuine defence in five years (!), before losing it to the lightest man to ever win the Heavyweight title (granted, he was ahead in the fight before being caught - but he got caught nonetheless). He then tried twice to regain the title, and was stopped both times. Good wins over Choynski and Kilrain, but nowhere near enough to justify the praise and reverence he gets.