Who Do You Rate Higher - Max Baer Or Tim Witherspoon?

Bear, he had more quality wins even if he was a bit inconsistent.

 

Baer was the legit, undisputed heavyweight champion of the world when that was hands down the greatest prize in all of sports. Given the title fragmentation in recent decades, being the undisputed heavyweight champ is an extremely rare honor. Even though he was one of the least distinguished champions to wear that crown, it still puts him over Witherspoon imho.

This is nothing against Witherspoon. He was an awesome talent whose career was sabotaged by his horrible relationship with Don King. If he'd been able to spend less time dealing with mental games from his own promoter and more time staying in shape he could have reigned significantly longer.

 

Spoon and Baer are miles apart. Spoon was a much better, concentrated, more well-rounded fighter. Baer could hit and be hit, and he clowned too much. Without his power, Baer would be rendered useless, can't say that of Spoon. Not to say I don't like Baer, he was always fun to watch.

 

Without power a lot of fighters would be useless. Who cares? Baer was more dangerous fighter at his best and he had more quality wins.

 

I think that we would have to rank Baer higher, if only because he was the best in the world at one point, and had more top end wins.

 

I agree that Baer had many good wins, but Spoon had just as many.
Baer: Johnny Risko, Tom Heeney, Ernie Schaaf, Tommy Farr, Levinsky, Schemling, Carnera, and Galento.
Witherspoon: Ratliff, Snipes, Cummings, Tillis, Page, Smith, Tubbs, Bruno, Williams, Gonzalez
Their amount of top wins is really about the same. I will concur, however, that when Baer beat somebody, it was usually more impressive than when Tim beat somebody.

 

I see your lists and Baer opponents look more impressive to me. Most of Tim opponents you mentioned were Pat Comiskey level

 

I don't agree, but oh well

 

Baer and by a decent margin he was the champ while Witherspoon held a title he was never the real champ even though you could argue he beat Holmes.

 

Baer, the win over Schmeling and the fact that he was the lineal champ edges him ahead for me. I also think Baer has the deeper overall resume.

 

I mean, Tim has nobody close to Schmeling and I'm not even sure if he beat someone as good as Carnera. Smith and Bruno are among his best wins but they weren't that impressive to be honest.

 

Timmy