Who beat the better competition at heavyweight Archie Moore or Gene Tunney?

So do you rate Moore about Tunney at HW. Moore definately has the overall better resume against different styles, but the Dempsey wins trump all of Moore's wins. Then again you could argue Spinks and Moorer's wins at HW against Holmes and Holyfield trump Tunney's, yet no one ranks Spinks and Moorer over TUnney at HW. Why is this? Obviously they were blasted out but if Tunney had been blasted out by say Godfrey (who he avoided) would he be downgraded? Is it fair Tunney gets marks for not facing other top contenders?

 

Corrected, and you may have a good point, if you want to follow that train of thought, Tunney is dropping out the top 30 though

 

Well, as I recall, when I went through Moore's record to get a total of his heavyweight fights, my confirmed count was somewhere in the 60s in wins, but there were a fair number more fights that (at least at the time) weights weren't listed which looked likely to have been at heavyweight (judging by the chronology), so 75 wins is likely to be a pretty good approximation, to my knowledge.

 

By the way, however, though Moore's heavyweight record has some decided advantages over Tunney's, I would still consider Tunney's world championship and wins over Dempsey (who, at least for the second fight, had proven himself still an elite) to be an overruling factor in this comparison; Tunney ranks in the lower end of the top 20 for me, Moore the lower top 30.

 

Well, now that you have so kindly provided the stats, I would say that Moore's HW success has more depth and quantity.

But as someone pointed out, Tunney actually won the HW Championship --- add 'undisputed' to give better perspective. Plus, he beat the great Jack Dempsey, not once but twice. I know, I know Dempsey was past his best at that time.