Who's Your #3 Heavyweight?

Really ?
Why mcvey ? When a fighter is the most dominant ever in his division, he can´t be at 4.....In my view....

 

Vitali Klitschko

 

oh please. Head to head, compared to other greats I dont see Louis making it.

Also his record defenses is highly overrated. He is a top 5 for sure, but when people say he is number 1, thats Bull****:deal

 

Do you have Vitali ahead of Louis?

 

can't see anywhere near. not based on skills or resume. rates high h2h but that's about it

 

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Larry Holmes deserves the spot at #3, but I'd feel more comfortable putting him in there if he had a few more big wins on his record. Like some other fighters with long term dominance, he has the problem that either the guys he was defending against weren't great, or never got a chance to look good because they were shut down by his reign.

If we're judging strictly by resume, I couldn't in good conscience put him up that high, because when one's biggest wins are over Norton, Shavers, Mercer and Cooney, that's just not the most impressive group of names in the world. Yes, those are all fairly solid victories. Yes, there's a pretty nice list of decent to good contenders he beat, (some of them way after any boxer should be competitive with decent to good contenders) but it's only when you consider factors like length of reign and the dominance thereof that you can make an argument.

Of course, you can throw rating by ability in there, but I'm usually reluctant to do that because ability is so easy to misread and can be useless if it's not backed up by other factors. Everyone has stories about guys they were convinced were going to be great because they seemed to have great ability, only for those guys to fall flat for various reasons. (Everyone remember a couple of years ago when lots of people were saying that Mijares was going to be the second coming? How many people thought Hamed or Judah would accomplish more than they did?)

So, long story short time, asks me for my opinion on who was #3, I'd say Larry, and I think he gives Ali problems and maybe beats Louis H2H. Make me try to justify it with a lot of the quasi-scientific, not really impartial measurements that we generally try to use like resume, quality of competition beaten, etc, and I'm not sure he'd be that high up.

 

at no. 3 i have larry holmes. its a combination of his achievements and how well he does h2h in my point of view

 

I have Marciano at #3, closely behind Ali and Louis.

 

:huh
Do you care to elaborate ??

 

on their best nights these two would be hard to beat head to head. However, there are more reliable ATG's (as many as five) capable of producing their best form on a more regular basis.

 

I didn't realize this was a head to head rating thread... I made my pic based on legacy.... If its h2d, then my list would have to change drastically as a guy like Tyrell Biggs would have looked like Muhammad Ali in the 30's....

 

I have 2 top ten lists, ones based on accomplishments/legacy/resume etc and the other is purely head to head.
I believe Ali, Liston, Foreman and Tyson would beat him. Other than that, i dont have any problem with Louis

 

So is it H2H ? If it is then i would have Ali, Lewis and Foreman as my top 3.

But my #3 ATG heavy is Holmes.

 

nah, tyrell biggs would not have got past paulino uzcudun, al attore, roscoe toles, walter neusell george godfrey, larry gains and tommy farr. Not to mention sharkey, schmeling, Baer and Joe louis.