A common criticism of some boxers is that they didn't beat another "great". Or if they did, that the great opponent was old, faded etc. IMO this is a nonsense criticism. If you look at boxing history, the vast majority of great fighters had upset losses at some point to lesser opponents. Ali to Norton, Louis to Schmeling, Tyson to Douglas, even Ray Robinson vs Turpin. By definition, when two greats meet, one of them is almost certain to win. But it's just one fight - we don't know if that proves they were great, or if they were just a bit lucky on the night, or the other guy didn't train properly, or it was a bad style matchup, or a bad decision etc. So, it is not actually that unheard of for a great to lose a fight or two, and even fairly humdrum opponents are capable of doing it from time to time. Whereas on the other hand, compiling an unbeaten, lengthy championship reign of 10+ fights or 5+ years is extremely rare (talking lineal title here, not BS alphabet titles). If you look at how few people did it, versus how many have beaten a "great", it is obvious that being a dominant champion vs a list of contenders is much harder than beating a great fighter once. It is just too easy to lose one or two fights when you are consistently up against top notch opposition. Another factor is that great fighters just rarely fight each other, prime for prime. Let's say anyone in the top 100 ATG list is a "great". That's one per year. Given that we have 8 divisions for most of boxing history, and more now, what are the chances of two greats being even able to match each other in a given year? Very slim. These "superfights" happen only a few times a decade across all of boxing. So for most great fighters, they just don't get the chance to prove themselves against even one great, let alone multiple greats. And even when they do, usually one of them is significantly smaller, or one of them is a lot older, so it's not an equal prime for prime matchup. Finally, one fight alone can be determined by things like a one-punch KO or horrible style matchup that don't really tell us much about how great the losing or winning fighters are. So - most greats just don't have the chance to prove it by beating another great. The ones that do, usually aren't fighting prime for prime, so the result is devalued. It's one fight so it's not *that* significant. And it's much harder to defend a title multiple times for multiple years against top contenders than it is to score one win vs another great fighter. For all those reasons, people should stop focusing so much on these "legendary fights" when assessing a fighter, and look more at dominant championship records, consistency, longevity, being the top dog for years. Because the latter are much more significant in rating a boxer's ability and achievements. Still not convinced? Consider this: Hagler never beat a great middleweight. Neither did Monzon or Hopkins. Louis fought 4 great heavyweights and lost to 3 of them (and arguably all 4 of them). Holmes never beat a great heavyweight, neither did Liston. Many fighters in the top 50 ATG list have either no victories over another prime ATG, or just 1 such victory, and often the latter is over an older or smaller such fighter. So, time to knock this bogus accusation on its head.
