Who was the best '70s heavy outside of top 4?

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Young had a very crafty style that would give anybody trouble, especially sluggers and counterpunchers, but he was not a great fighter.
Quarry was just tough as nails.
Shavers was power incarnate.
Lyle was s banger who took loads of punishment to bang some more.

None of these fighters could get over the hump, but all of these fighters could be champion today. I would pick Young as the best of the lot.

 

Eh, the Chuvalo loss was a freak incident.

 

And Frazier himself actually thought Bugner had improved when he met Ali for the second time (in 1975).

 

I always felt that Young's win over Foreman wasn't quite the Foreman he had been. Gil Clancy had brought George's legs way too close together in trying to shorten his hooks, but in doing so took away George's natural leverage and full movement which brought those booming punches we saw against Norton and Frazier. George's jabs looked nice against Young but he could'nt put his body into them as before because his feet were so close together. When George rocked Jimmy badly he looked soooo off balanced doing it because again of his badly placed feet.

 

Perhaps, but being all inside of his first 20 fights, these are more along the lines of Shavers' losses to Ron Stander and Stan Johnson. It would be more important if it were a peak, championship-caliber Quarry getting draws against these guys, who were still better than a Bob Stallings- note that a prime Quarry did beat Doyle by a lopsided UD.

He may have done better in losing against Ali and Frazier (though Quarry fought them when they were closer to their peaks), but he also lost to Quarry victims Middleton, Lyle, Shavers and Bodell. Bugner never had a real major win- the best he managed were over old versions of Jimmy Ellis and Henry Cooper.

True, but the Chuvalo loss was largely seen as something of a fluke with Quarry mistiming the count while well ahead on points. Either way, Quarry gave Lyle himself a thrashing.

It is true that Shavers did much better against Ali and Norton than Quarry did, but it's also worth pointing out that he fought them when they were in their mid-to-late 30s and clearly on their way out, while Quarry fought them while they were in or close to their primes. Even still, I think it is a valid point that Shavers was considerably more competitive than Quarry against the real elites, since Quarry was straight-up dismantled in all of his fights with Ali, Frazier and Norton.

I agree about Young, anyway. I go back and forth about these guys. Young has the best elite-level success, with a win over Foreman and razor-thin losses to Ali and Norton. What's impressive about Quarry is his all-around repertoire and longevity- he was one of the top guns of the division clear from '67-74, an eight-year run near the top, and accumulated an impressively deep and varied collection of scalps to his credit, with wins over Patterson, Shavers, Lyle, Spencer, Mathis, Foster, Middleton, etc., some of these wins in highly-impressive fashion. However, as you point out, he does have his share of embarrassing losses, and he was beaten badly by the cream-of-the-crop guys. Young had a much shorter run of success, a shallower winning resume and an inferior overall record, but his top-tier results during his peak years far outshine Quarry's.

For the record, since this is a multiple-choice poll, I voted for both Quarry and Young.

 

His fight against Frazier showed if Bugner could of been bothered, he could have had that fifth spot, hell he may of been giving Norton an argument for #4.

Although I voted for Bugner on potential, the reality was Quarry deserved #5.

And looking at the poll I stand corrected. Young is not flavour of the month, he is flavour of the year...

Yes he was underappreciated, and underrated (mainly because he was very boring to watch) but he was not as good as Quarry.

 

I'm going to go against the grain and say head-to-head Jimmy Ellis was the best 70s heavyweight outside the big four. He had very good boxing skills, underrated power, decent chin (it was amazing to see him get up against Frazier after the second monster left hook). Made a near clean sweep of the Hw division to win half of the HW title. Head to head, in his prime he beats all on that list.:good

 

:huh But his prime was 67-69, not the 70s IMO.

 

Well, the Frazier fight was in 1970, and he was in his prime in that fight, so Ellis wins on a technicality.

 

LOL Kudos for the nice effort to get out of that!

But you are far too clever to argue Ellis was #5 on the strength of a fairly crushing early rounds defeat :good

 

At the hands of an ATG at his peak while dominating the first half of the fight, that's not so bad.:good

 

Down side was it only lasted four full rounds.

I am on to you; with spin like that you are either Alistair Campbell or Karl Rove.