worst heavyweight champion of the last 50 years?

Being 21 years old and small for your weight class, while tangoing with 26+ year old men who are fully matured is not as easy as you might think. Some say that he won the title by beating up " A washed up 40 year old man." Well I've got news for you. There are a lot of 40 year old men who can school 21 year old guys, and most of them aren't all time great prize fighters like the one who Floyd beat for the title.

 

Moore was a monster at that stage of his career.

If Patterson had not been around, he would have basicaly helped himself to the heavyweight title.

 

Agreed,

While I don't feel that Archie Moore's stay at the top of the heavyweight division would have been a lengthy one, he certainly could have reigned for a period, if only brief.

 

Patterson was awesome, if not for Tyson he'd easily still be youngest ever HW champ.

 

i'm kinda surprised sam peter hasnt gota mention
his showing against vitali, as a champion, was disgraceful i thought...he didnt try at all

 

Leon was miles better than Briggs.

Atleast Leon earned his victory over Ali, Briggs didn't even do that.

Limiting to lineals is a bit silly anyways considering how modern boxing has developed. Any and all claimants should be included.

 

He could have reigned for a long time fighting Brian London, Pete Rademacher and Tom McNeeley and ignoring the top contenders.

Patterson squeezed 6 years out of doing that.

 

are we judging them as champions, like i did with peter, or do we take their whole career into account.
cause its easy to pick holes in patterson the champion but if you look at his whole career, especially late 60's, against ellis for example, he wasnt bad at all

 

At least Briggs has a significant resume outside of winning the title, albeit controvertialy.

 

He also came back from a devastating defeat to a young undefeated contender who had made short work of a prime Machen and regained the title. For whatever reason, Floyd gets **** on a lot for this.

 

A young champ means you fought lots of opponents in a short span of time, you go quickly up the learning curve, you can adapt well, you are likely without more than 1-2 loss by the time you are champ.

after marciano retired to avoid fighting patterson, patterson then had to fight through a tournament of guys to get to the title. In otherwords he pretty much beat all the guys who were ranked the best at that time and came out on top. To me that is more impressive than hasim rockmans lucky punch.

Regaining the title speaks to your ability to come back from adversity and to learn. Something bad happen, you lost the title, ok, well can you come back and win, or maybe you were just a flash in the pan who crushed tomatoes.

He would destroy marciano and marciano got out before he got hurt because he didn't want patterson to destroy him. As my old coach use to say, you don't have to be the best or even the better boxer to beat

 

Your claim that Marciano retired to avoid Patterson is too ridiculous to even reply to anymore.

I don't even think you believe it. I'm starting to think it's a joke.

 

Jimmy Ellis

 

How do you explain that marciano planned to return to boxing and started training after johanasson won the title but quit his plan all of a sudden after the Patterson won back the title?