I here all this bull**** about how many losses a fighter has when ranking him in historical context. Do you think 1 win and 2 losses to elite level fighters is better than 3 wins against just below elite level fighters?
My criteria for Greatness: 1. Resume: a. Who did you beat/lose to? b. In what manner did you beat them/lose? c. What condition were you in? d. What condition was your opponent in? If you were in poor condition relatively and your opponent was in great condition, that means something. 2. Head-to-Head ability: How good are you in hypothetical head to head match ups against the Greats in the past, and relative to your era, who did you beat to allow us to accurately gauge this? If you didn't beat Greats in prime condition, we can believe you will beat Greats but there is more weighting if you have beaten them for sure i.e Golovkin's case, Trinidad's case, Mayweather's case etc. so many examples in history. 3. Longevity: Ring age, not actual age.
there is NO excusing away losses. of course the 3 WINS over very good fighters is better than 2 elite wins and 1 elite loss . Elite wins and losses are too subjective to ever try comparing . without any true fight season, schedule where you have to fight everybody in the top 5, there's no way to gauge things that had never happened . losing is never , ever EVER a positive in any competitive field. there's NO moral victories , it's 100% cut and dry, wins and losses, that's all there is folks
Once again, you for get to mention what have the beaten opponents gone on to do after said fighter beat them. I think this is a very important aspect to consider. If the beaten opponent goes on to win multiple belts in other divisions then that says more than when the beaten opponent loses 3 out of the next 5 fights and retires. A good example of this would be Calzaghe's win over Hopkins. Hops went on to get other belts and look impressive doing it! If hops had retired or looked terrible like Roy Jones did, JC's win wouldn't be as good.
Oh definitely, it's kind of an unspoken, inherent aspect of 'who did you beat?' on my criteria. My criteria doesn't mention all of the inherent aspects. However, there are other factors to consider here, that is, what condition were they in afterwards? I'm not holding RJJ's multiple losses against him when he was shot for example. Longevity is thus a point of discussion. I'm not going to hold it against RJJ if he's completely shot and his style is rendered useless and just give credit to whoever was doing well at a later age without considering their style; defensive fighters have longer careers. Aggressive fighting is a younger mans sport, even if you're defensively very adept.
When judging a fighter on terms of greatness I don't even consider the fights with anyone other than elite competition. Those lower level fights are either to stay busy or the only fights they can get at the time. Fighters who after the 1950s, when they stopped fighting every month, fought mainly top elite level competition and once they got to that level they were able to sustain that level of activity against elite level comp whereas during the 50s and prior it was custom to fight nearly every month and it is nearly impossible to fight elite comp every month. They wouldn't last very long if they did.
