What if Nat Fleischer were still alive today??

I think that he only gave Karl 2 rounds.

 

Found an interesting short article in which Tunney picks Foreman but mostly because he doesn't seem to think all that highly of Ali. Tunney says that Greb would have "made a fool out of" Ali and that he himself would have beaten Ali because he was smarter and possibly hit harder. I'll try to type it up this week.

 

I started reading Ring Magazine in the mid-1960s so am familiar with a lot of Nat Fleischer's writings. I have some books he wrote or co-wrote and even received a nice response from a letter asking about former heavyweight contender Steve Dudas, who was a maintenance worker at my high school when I was a student. I always found his writings interesting, even if I did not agree with his assessments.

In my opinion, I do not believe his all-time rankings would have changed much, if at all, had he lived on. In his article following the FOTC, he stated that he did not see either Ali or Frazier cracking his top ten in the future. In previous writings, he had been critical of Frazier's nightclub act detracting from his boxing career. I believe he would have cited this divided attention as one of the factors in Foreman' upset of Joe, along with Frazier's overconfidence and undertraining for that bout. And I believe he would have seen Foreman's loss to Ali as another example of a cagey, seasoned veteran exposing Foreman's Achilles' heel and taking advantage of it. I do agree that the older Foreman would have given him pause and maybe caused him to reassess Foreman in light of what might have been. Even so, I believe he would have done as many others and looked at Young George and Old George as two different fighters who never came together to form the super fighter that never was. Regarding those who came after, my feeling is that if neither FOTC Ali nor Joe (nor pre-exile Ali) were top10 in his eyes, none who followed would be either.

I, too, always had thought his all-time ranking of Ray Robinson was too low. But if one considers Ray as a middleweight and ranks him on his performance in that division only, it makes more sense. I believe Robinson was at his best as a welterweight. His only loss in those early years was to LaMotta, a middleweight, and he went on to defeat LaMotta a total of five times. After winning the middleweight title from LaMotta, he lost it in his next defense to Randy Turpin, and was fortunate to stop Turpin in the return bout with his eye cut badly. By now he was in his 30s, retiring after his try at the LH title with Maxim. He came back, losing to Tiger Jones and losing and winning the title back in matches with Fullmer and Basilio. By now he was approaching 40 and while still skillful found lhimself losing more decisions to the top men. As a welterweight, Robinson was phenomenal; as a middleweight he was still great, but not as consistent.

 

Out of those listed in the heavyweight column,I'd only place Johnson,Louis,Langford,Tunney and Dempsey above Marciano.

 

Well he'd now be about 134.. So I'm not taking anything he says seriously!

 

I find his lists extremely bias and some choices seemingly absent of logic just exactly how can you not include Charles at LHW? Not even in the top ten ditto for Archie just ludicrous- I’m sorry but how could this man be considered the voice of boxing at any point he saw the greatest HW performance ever and rated Johnson Ali’s superior? We have all seen film of Johnson their is no magic Uncle Jack who only those who saw in person could comprehend.

I have always found him a tad obnoxious, especially him and his colleagues inability to type the words “Muhammad Ali”

 

Good points-

 

Well if that was from around 1972 he obviously didn’t rate the fighters of the 50’s and 60’s as I believe there’s only about 4 in there from those decades which would have been the modern day to him.
I couldn’t have saw him changing his opinion much coming up to the present modern day.