What is the lowest justifiable ranking for Ali?

Can anyone make a case for him not being in the top 3 of all time? Is he outright the greatest? Do you think his standing will diminish with the years as has happened to others?

 

He's outright the greatest.

It will be interesting to see what people will be saying in 2050.

 

That's what I was getting at. Will there come a point with the newbies when they say "Ali wasn't ****, he was 20lbs lighter than such and such!"?

 

At the moment Louis and Ali are 2 and 1 interchangeable and that is pretty much locked in.

 

Maybe like 13. Or at least outside of the Top 10.

Ali's resume is deep. You know the guys: Frazier, Foreman Liston, Patterson, Norton, Chuvalo, Bonavena, Moore, Foster, Shavers, Young, Ellis, Terrell, Folley, Quarry, Lyle or some ****.

There are a lot of guys with depth too.The pantheon would seem to be Henry Armstrong, Sugar Ray Robinson, Harry Greb and Sam Langford.

After that it gets tricky.

Ezzard Charles
Became the No. 1 MW in the world, beating Simmons, Yarosz, Anton, and Burley. Is the unanimous pick GOAT at light heavyweight. He also managed to win the HW crown and defend that thing eight times.

Roberto Duran
Another weight-climbing freak. Four-division world champion that includes the most vicious of runs at LW and maybe the greatest single win ever in Montreal.

Benny Leonard
Ran up some stupid 80-2 ledger in his prime, styling on every stylist that you can think of including Jack Britton at WW.

Joe Gans
Speaking of LWs, Gans probably has a deeper resume than the other two.

Archie Moore
I don't even have time to go into details with this fella. Fought over 200 times, piles up over 100 KOs and fought for roughly 800 years, wreaking havoc at MW, LHW and HW.

Joe Louis
Ali is the greatest HW for me. But it's silly to think the Bomber doesn't have a case.

Barney Ross
Underrated IMO. Beat the other corners of the Holy Trinity as well as Petrolle, Battalino, Garcia, Baby Gans, Grogan, Ghnouly, Miller, Pacho, Woods, Jannazo, Nebo, Farr, Klick, Fuller, Burke, Davis, Hess. And a lot of them multiple times.

Fitzsimmons was the pound-for-pound best of his day for like seven years.

Mickey Walker did some crazy ****.

As did Packey McFarland, beating Goodman, Yanger, Herman, Britt, Cross, Moran, Murphy, Wells, Bronson, Britton, Welsh and retired for two years to come back and give Mike Gibbons a run for his money.

He's Top 7 for me, though. I think.

 

at hw? easy top 2.

p4p? srr, greb, charles and armstrong have to be ahead of him imo but anyone else is arguable

:good

 

I assume you mean at Heavyweight, not pound for pound

At Heavyweight, one or two.

I think 1

 

Define justifiable. Even at heavyweight you could push Ali way down to the bottom of the top 10 if you never gave him a break.

Let's say you scored every close fight against him. Jones, Young, Norton, Shavers. And let us further think of both Sonny Liston fights as fixes. You are still left with a very deep resume. Frazier and Foreman are all time greats at the weight but you might be unimpressed by Foreman's work outside of winning the title and think that he only beat Frazier when Frazier had been demolished. Even then Ali has such depth (Quarry, Patterson, Bonavena, Terrell etc.) that he is top 10 material

so low but still superb

 

Amazingly, I think his legacy as the GOAT will outlast that of any other boxer. But of course, it will become more and more common that younger folks will call him outdated and outsized.

 

You can make a coherent case for 2, and that is it.

 

A lot of people say 2.

I say 3 may even be possible. IMO jack Johnson has an underrated ranking and may be number 1

 

2 is as low as i can rate him.

 

I agree with this the most.

To me, Ali Louis and Johnson are in their own class.

 

When comparing fighters of multiple generations, you can't just look at their resume. You have to take style, strengths, and weaknesses into account. Ali couldn't throw a decent uppercut and was a sucker for the left hook as shown in the first Frazier fight. I still put him as number 1 HW of all time though. No fighter could beat him two times in his prime.

 

I think his legacy will greatly suffer with future generations.
There is plenty of material for them to work with.

* Suspect launching of his career with the two, likely fixed, Liston fights.
* Getting free rides from refs for his holding and neck pulling
* Gift decisions
* A rabid racist who advocated race and religious murder
* His mean spirited diatribes against Frazier, who had helped him financially when he was down

If a Dempsey, Louis, Jeffries, Johnson or Marciano had a rap sheet like that, they wouldn't be anywhere on anyone's list.