do you judge guys on their resume?, weight divisions conquered?, achievemnts?, h2h? e.g - fitzsimmons, surely there are more modern people at middle, light-heavy and heavy who could beat him, but do people rank him high on how he was the first 3 division champion or on how good he was in his day for his era? sureley some of the very old boxers who, had records of 100s of wins and were dominent in multiple weight divisions, like greb and langfored (apologies if i am wrong, i am limited on information about them and have noticed how hight they rank), could get beat of more modern boxers. or am i wrong this goes more for the heavies however, despite being amazing for his day and age, i couldnt see marciano beating lennox lewis for example
The most important thing to keep in mind is rating fighters for what they were in their own era. If I say that resume is the most important aspect of a fighter's greatness than it could be difficult to say that Pernell Whitaker was a greater fighter than Holman Williams, which I do say. I say it because Whitaker fought in an era where it was simply impossible for him to build up a resume that could rival Holman's. He wasn't fighting every other week against other great fighters. Just like I can't hold the relative lack of footage of Williams (or even his inferior dominance) against him when comparing him to Whitaker. That's the tricky thing with comparing fighters who fought in such different times. In the end, Whitaker seems to stand out a hell of a lot more in his era than Williams did in his, so I rate him as the greater fighter. Then, of course, you get to the whole bit of Williams fighting in a stronger era, and that just muddles the whole thing up some more, and now you've got to compare eras and decide if being 5th best in an A era is better or worse than being THE best in a B era, and so on. Still, the general point of rating fighters based on who they were in their own era and what their accomplishments mean in that particular time has to always be accounted for and it must come first. After that, my criteria is fairly straightforward. In order of significance, I rank fighters based on the following categories: Resume - Strictly the quality of opposition defeated. All the factors that decide the value of a win are accounted for, so weight-jumping comes into play most heavily here. Consistency/Dominance - 50 consecutive victories against C level opponents could outrank mixed results against 50 A level opponents. Potentially, at least. Peak Ability Level - Just how good was the fighter at his best. Longevity - Defying age matters, but it's mainly how long the fighter was able to sustain top level success. Official accomplishments and records and the like are only really taken into account if I can't split two fighters using the criteria above. Also, I don't assign number values to any of the categories. I don't see rating greatness as a strict science. Horribly subjective stuff.
Agree with all of this. Further to 'Peak Ability Level' I usually think along the lines of 'how did this fighter apply himself' so that's in every bit of footage, fight review, etc etc seeing how this fighter performed, what aspects of games he utilised to best effect, what his holes were, which styles blah blah blah blah blah. Which is why I have Jung Koo Chang around, hmm, 60-70 :yep
Like the cobra said, resume, dominance/consistency, ability level, longevity......but the problem to me is that IMO is impossible to separate all these things........they are all inherently connected, all of them.....in my view.
A mix of Talent/skills/ability with how they did when it is clear that they were at the top of their game. This dose not mean "Prime" years only I'm most critical about the latter part. I think there are a lot of boxers with all the talent/skills/ability in the world, who for what ever reasons didn't win big fights, or lost to guys who going in had no bussness beating them.
