Who's An Old Time Fighter, That You Find Overrated?

As a Heavyweight, Gene Tunney (with a kneel for my late Grandfather). I think many have him in their top 10 Heavyweights! He is outside of my top 20.

 

At one time I’d have said Harry Wills.

 

Then again, sometimes it depends on who is doing the rating. I have seen all time Heavyweight lists with James J. Corbett rated above Joe Louis. I cannot even imagine thinking that. I do not mean to just be picking on James J. Corbett, because, in many ways I do not think he was as bad as some today think he was, but James J. Corbett over Muhammad Ali? Really?

 

Yes, that's right, giving up substantial weight to beat world class fighters is impressive. If the 6ft 6ins Sebastian Fundora beat a prime version of the 5ft 9ins David Tua, I'd have found that mighty impressive. Obviously, in reality, as the vastly smaller man, Fundora would be stopped early.

Height isn't the only contributing factor to a person's optimum fighting weight. The 5ft 10ins Mike Tyson was noticeably more cut at 220lbs than the 6ft 4ins Enzo Macccarinelli was at 200lbs or even 175lbs (whilst I accept at LHW Enzo would have stepped in the ring above 175lbs, when he moved down to LHW he claimed to have struggled to get close to 200lbs whilst campaigning at CW).

You could reasonably claim that Fitz filled out after leaving MW and grew into a small LHW, or a SMW by modern weight divisions. Despite fighting bigger HWs, some much bigger, where it would have been in his interest to weigh as much as possible without compromising functionality, Bob never once did manage to scale above the LHW limit in his entire career, so your comment "he should be viewed as a HW campaigning at MW" is demonstrably erroneous.

 

Jim Jeffries.

I like all the really old timers, including Jim but I do think some people rate him being that much better than he actually was.

Some also buy into his obviously exaggerated feats of strength, speed and stamina external to the ring which is a lil bit gullible.

The press, and perhaps Jeffries himself, clearly wanted to paint Jim as a super man and hyperbole was the order of the day.

One pearler was a doctor claiming that Jim’s blood was unlike that of other humans. Perhaps Jim was really an alien?

 

Gene Fullmer. One should give credit, I suppose, for the way he elevated the art of fighting ugly, but he's just painful to watch. An old, undersized Basilio, a terribly undersized and outgunned Paret, a hotly-contested series against a Robinson that trained on Geritol at the time, and lots of foul-filled ugliness in drawing against Giardello. That's about it. Not sold on him.

 

Rocky Graziano,

 

I’m confident I’m about to make a world-first comparison between two fighters here, but there’s a parallel I think between Jeffries & a guy like Ricardo López, insofar as they’re tricky to rank because I feel both had capacity to prove themselves beyond their competition, but couldn’t, & so didn’t. So how good was Jeffries? It’s hard to really say, & I’m empathetic to both sides of the argument on him.

Personally, I’d have loved to see him in there with the greats.

 

I would say that he was very over rated up to about ten years ago, but that now the overcorrection has gone to far, and that he is now becoming under rated.

I guess we should under rate him for another hundred years, then review the policy?

 

I'm going to catch alot of heat for this but Jose Napoles for me.
I think Leonard and Hearns both beat him.

 

I think SRL and Hearns beat Napoles peak for peak too, but :

1) They were both monsters at WW; and

2) They were bigger than Napoles. 137lbs 2 months prior to his 28th birthday, Jose was never anything more than a LWW naturally. It always impresses me immensely when a fighter dominates a weight division that they're small at.

 

A lot of the examples given so far, are better examples of fighters that divide opinion, than fighters who ae either over rated or under rated.

 

The wild card with Fitzsimmons, is that the records of his opponents are almost certainly incomplete in most cases.

We don't even know how deep teh rabbit hole goes.