Who is the greatest of them all?

Bit of a surprise.

 

Right, so we can probably agree that neither Duran or Pep were "washed up" at that point in their careers?

I mentioned them. You seem to be saying that Pep quit twice in spite of Saddler - there are circumstances, but that is crazy, insane luck (good or bad depending on your perspective) given that Pep won so many other fights against so many other men during the surrounding years. I think that it's unfair to provide credit to Ali or Leanord for a "quit on your stool" type win but withold credit from Saddler in similair circumstances. Which was why I brought those men up.

You're underminning these wins based upon two things here:

1 - Pep is up against his stylistic cryptonite.

2 - Saddler didn't do well against other fighters around that time.


My argument is that

A - Who cares? Ali gets credit for his wins over Lisotn (stylistic cryptonite), Foreman gets credit for his wins over Frazier (stylistic cryptonite), and rightly so.

B - Look at it the other way. Again, during the period he matched Saddler, Pep beat everybody else he fought, including very high class opposition very convincingly. If Saddler was able to beat Pep at this time despite having become vulnerable himself, what an achievment.

Imagine how highly Frazier would rank if he had dominated a series with Ali. That's the sort of thing we're dealing with here IMO.

I think that the reason behind the glaring difference in our ratings is our view of the Pep wins, with which there is a film issue, which is **** because if we have those fight films we're much the wiser. But there IS a big gap.