When ranking old school heavyweights, should they be ranked at Cruiserweight?

It's a bit of a tricky argument. H2H they'd be far more comparable to modern day cruiserweights, but on other hand they still had to fight in an open division against men who could be significantly larger than them. Personally I'd lean towards no, due to that second factor.

 

I tend to agree but I'd also be interested to read people's arguments against this suggestion. My mind is open.

 

Holyfield? He was a dominant figure at heavyweight. As far as Dempsey is concerned, he fought in an era when there weren't a lot of giant men fighting. The best way to compare fighters from different eras, is to see how doninant the fighters were/are. But yeah, I see your point, Dempsey standing at 6'1" would have some serious problems against, Joshua, Fury and Wilder.

 

Great post,I can see the argument on this by today's HWs i'd put them @ Cruiserweight but some will say no & I get that argument to.

 

The facts are, these super heavyweights these days are of a different breed. Are they P4P better than the old guard? Highly doubt it. Put them head to head though and the super heavyweights clean up. It’s the nature of heavyweight boxing, being big and being able to have at least a little bit of boxing ability.

 

Good post, I think Sonny Liston was like the first real Heavyweight.

 

I think if you're ranking HWs historically then you rank them where they fought, regardless of their actual size. That's a legacy thing.

If you're talking H2H then issues of weight and height/reach become far more pertinent.

 

How big was Jess Willard (who Dempsey beat for the title)?

 

The thing is kid Holyfield started his career at cruiserweight. Bulked up steroids and fought at heavyweight and beat heavyweights.so he is a heavyweight. Usyk has never fought a heavyweight a day in his life. So until he moves up and fights heavyweights he is a cruiserweight.

Guys like Dempsey was a 190 pound cruiser weight and always fought at around that weight. Rocky Marciano was a cruiserweight and always fought at around 185 and his opponents were all around that weight or lower. So when comparing fighters who weighed the cruiserweight amount and only fought guys who were cruiserweights then any real boxing fan would only compare them to cruiserweights.

But yeah it is amusing to see these delusional boxing fans still put guys like Rocky Marciano, Gene Tunney, Jack Dempsey or in some cases 160 pound guys like Bob Fitzsimmons and Harry Greb above any modern sized 205 plus pound heavyweight.

 

Nothing absurd about it--fighters are ranked by what they accomplish IN THEIR OWN TIME.

 

Are you talking about weight or height? Cause I grew up during the heyday of Mike Tyson, so I've seen height advantages get negated already.

And if it's weight you're talking about, how do you think a Dempsey would look like in 2018 and a Joshua in 1921? Different times, different diets, different training methods...you name it. What time would Jesse Owens run the 100m dash if he'd been born in 1986 instead of 1913?