Greatest Heavyweight Boxer of All-Time?

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Posted By: Aaron Conyers

Curious to hear some opinions of who was the Greatest Heavyweight Boxer of All-Time?
Hard to rate without fight footage of some boxers but..

Here are my Top 10 in no particular order.


James Jeffries
John L. Sullivan
Tom Cribb
Jack Johnson
Peter Jackson
Bob Fitzsimmons
Jim Corbett
Joe Louis
Jack Dempsey
Muhammad Ali

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Posted By: boxingcardman

Burt Sugar's Top 10 Heavyweights of all time:

1. Joe Louis
2. Muhammad Ali
3. Jack Dempsey
4. Jack Johnson
5. Gene Tunney
6. Rocky Marciano
7. Ezzard Charles
8. George Foreman
9. Joe Frazier
10. Larry Holmes


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Posted By: D. Bergin

I'm not a big fan of "lists" but my top several might go like this (bare-knucklers excluded):

1. Joe Louis

2. Muhammad Ali

3. Larry Holmes

4. Jack Johnson

5. Lennox Lewis

6. Rocky Marciano

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Posted By: boxingcardman

One of my favorites of all time. Wickedest jab in history, just cut his opponents to pieces. I was at the Klitschko fight (5th row ringside) and watching and hearing that jab churn Vitaly's face to hamburger was awe inspiring.

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Posted By: Aaron Conyers

I agree Lennox Lewis had a great jab. I can remember that fight well. "I won by the state of his face".
I was at the Lennox Lewis vs. Mike Tyson fight. Lewis definitely deserves consideration as one of the greatest.

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Posted By: writehooks

There's Ali, then everybody else. Why? Quality of competition.
Johnson, Dempsey, Louis, Marciano and Tyson COMBINED didn't beat – let alone KO – three champions as good as Liston, Frazier and Foreman.

That said, my Top 10 is as follows:

1. Muhammad Ali
2. Jack Johnson
3. Joe Louis
4. George Foreman
5. Sonny Liston
6. Sam Langford
7. Larry Holmes
8. Joe Frazier
9. Jack Dempsey
10. Rocky Marciano

11-20 would have to include Lewis and Tyson in the top half and Holyfield in the second tier. While I agree Lewis had a decent jab, IMHO it paled in comparison to Ali, Liston and Holmes. I started attending and reporting on LL's fights prior to the 1988 Olympics (where he won gold for Canada), and while he morphed into a much better pro than anyone could have expected, his lasting legacy is that he emerged as the best of very pedestrian heavyweight crop in the '90s. Awesome physical specimen, but boring as hell to watch. That – along with a suspect chin (remember Oliver McCall??) – puts him no higher than No. 13 in my book – south of Gene Tunney and Jim Corbett.

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Posted By: boxingcardman

Who did Johnson beat? A cheese champion (Burns), an over the hill Jeffries and Stan Ketchel? Willard beat him and no one would classify Willard as a great.

Louis took down Schmeling, Baer, Braddock, Sharkey, Conn, Carnera, John Henry Lewis and Walcott.



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Posted By: writehooks

Because of the color line and the fact he was was perceived as "invincible," Johnson really didn't have much choice in his opponents after he won the title in 1908. However, in the two years leading up to that victory, he had a pair of wins over a prime Joe Jeannette, a distance nod over all-time great Sam Langford and quick KOs of Bob Fitzsimmons and Jim Flynn. Not a bad resume – particularly when compared to Louis.

To dismiss Tommy Burns as a "cheese" champion is simply wrong. He was the first true "world" heavyweight champ, because after beating every challenger in the U.S., he travelled to Britain, Europe and Australia to take on (and defeat) all of their titleholders. If you want to talk "cheese" champs, look no further than Braddock, who decisioned a shot Max Baer and then, in his first "defense," surrendered the title to Louis after cutting a sweet deal that guaranteed him 10% of Joe's purses for the next 10 years.

Certainly, Joe's spectacular KO of Schmeling in their return match was one for the ages, but after that his leger is littered with has-beens, never-weres and, of course, those infamous Bums of the Month. Roper? Paycheck? Burman? Dorazio? Musto? Mauriello? Come on! The first time Joe faced a light heavyweight who punched back (Billy Conn), he came within a whisker of losing his title. The next time he faced a light heavyweight who punched back (Ezzard Charles), he lost.

Joe was Top 3 all-time, in my opinion. But better than Johnson? I don't think so.

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Posted By: Aaron Conyers

Nice video on Jeffries.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtOjXb3EsW4&feature=related

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Posted By: Joe D.

I know he is a whacko - but Mike Tyson is one of the best of all time....
he deserves to be in the top 5 discussion.

In his prime... he had incredible quickness, incredible defense, combined with incredible power.
He was a technician and a monster all at one time - and he was simply unbeatable for a stretch.

Tyson unified the championship, fought the top opponents of the time - and they were quality/skilled opponents. Problem was Tyson was so much better than the competition he made everyone look second-rate. (For a time - Roy Jones was like that as well.... just so much better than anyone out there he made everyone look bad).

And when Holyfield was fighting the bum of the month club during his championship reign.... tyson was still fighting the best out there and beat Razor Ruddock twice.

Anyway - I easily put Tyson in the top 5.



Larry Holmes? Take him off of the lists above.
He doesn't deserve to be there. Now there is a guy who didn't have any quality competition.



Here are my top 5.....
Ali, Tyson, Joe Louis, Marciano, Jack Johnson

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Posted By: George Dreher

Would have to say that taking their entire career into consideration, the greatest was Marciano, followed by Louis & Ali. I hate the guy, but prime Mike Tyson (1985-88) when he had Rooney as his trainer was probably unbeatable by anyone in history. The night he knocked out Michael Spinks, no one in history could have gone the distance with him. When Kevin Rooney packed his bags, Tyson was finished.

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Posted By: D. Bergin

Tyson had a very short prime, never fought Riddick Bowe, didn't fight Lennox Lewis until it was irrelevent, lost badly to Evander Holyfield twice and was made to look silly by an average Buster Douglas in his prime.

He's also never had a come from behind victory or ever been a factor once being knocked down or facing any kind of adversity.

Like Sonny Liston he was a fearsome bully who turned into an average fighter when facing somebody who wasn't scared stiff of him.

He was an amazing phenomenon for a short period of time and seemed scary good for a minute and made a ton of money. Unfortunately he was one of those too good to be true stories.

I tend to rate boxers more on longevity rather then prime vs. prime, especially when their primes are so short, regardless of the reasons or excuses.

Lennox came back and beat the two guys who beat him in rematches. He had a high KO percentage so I don't understand when people call him a boring fighter, he was a smart fighter who learned from his mistakes if anything. He also showed a ton of heart in his last fight against Vitali before retiring.

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Posted By: boxingcardman

I think the "problem" with Lennox Lewis is that he is a smart man and wasn't afraid to show it. People like the Tysons, guys who appear not to give a crap and just fling it out there. Lewis isn't going to threaten to eat someone's kids; maybe do their homework. Lewis learned and adapted, which is why he had a long career at the top. He learned to cut up his opponents, learned to use the jab to keep them away, understood that winning is the key, not how you win.

I also agree that the prime v. prime thing isn't a valid comparison, but for a slightly different reason: styles. We cannot know how a fighter would respond to another fighter's style unless they really went at it. How would Tyson get inside Lewis's jab? How would Marciano deal with Jeffries' crouch? Could Ali play mind-games with a sociopath like Tyson?

The better measure seems to me to be how a fighter did with his contemporaries. As far as Ali v. his contemporaries, he did not dominate them. He lost to Frazier the first time and just won the second and third, and split a pair with Norton. He didn't dominate Foreman but outwitted him and outlasted him. All valid things to do and all contributing to his greatness but not the devastating result we think of when we think of dominance. He also had his bums: Wepner, Bugner, Lyle, Coopman, Dunn, etc. Not taking anything away from the heavyweights of the 1970s--it was the best bunch ever at once and I proudly have all their autographed cards in my collection--and Ali was the best of the four--but he wasn't so much better than the others that he could be said to have been dominant over them. But, he was so charismatic, so beautiful to watch, and such a joy to listen to, that he captured the imagination. He was what a champ should be and as the first truly personable champ of the tv age, is the one against whom all the rest will be measured.

Heck, measured on the sheer toughness of the battles, Sullivan might well have been the greatest of all time. He dominated for years in the sport at its most brutal. Does a man who can go 75 bare knuckle rounds (yes, I realize they were truncated rounds but still) and lick any son of a bitch in the place for several years deserve a place closer to the top?

Tyson for a short time made the opposition look stupid. He was dominant. He was also a psychopath who lost his grip on reality and his edge when Cus D'Amato died. He had the tools to be the best ever but not the mind. Baer did too, for different reasons. He was everything you could hope for physically but too nice a man to be dominant. He was deeply affected when he killed a man, perhaps more so than we rightly credit him, which is fatal to a fighter dominating his class. Louis said before the Schmeling II fight that he was afraid he might kill Max, and he meant it; Tyson said that he tried to drive the nose into the opponent's brain. IMO to be a great champion, a fighter has to have a bit of a nasty streak.

Holmes has always troubled me. He was a legit champion, did everything he was supposed to do, fought everyone who was there, etc. But he had the misfortune of following that 1970s era. I also think he tends to give himself a lesser rating by whining about not being respected. The only fighter who could toot his own horn was Ali, and he only got away with it because you could never tell if he was serious or kidding around. At least some people think that Holmes's whining about how he's dissed is one of the reasons he isn't respected. If you have to promote yourself you can't be that good, right?

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Posted By: George Dreher

I think Tyson was invincible until he fired Kevin Rooney. Rooney has a punch/number system that he would yell from the corner and Tyson would respond with combinations. When Rooney left, the system was dead and Tyson had no direction in the ring. And Rooney was there from the very beginning with Cus D'Amato.
It is sad to think that the greatness of a boxer depends upon his corner, but in Tyson's case that was a fact. With Rooney in his corner, Tyson would have walked right through Lewis' jab and destroyed Holyfield.

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Posted By: boxingcardman

Don't forget that crazy bitch and her mother...

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Posted By: Joe D.

(this is an awesome thread btw)


George -

I agree on Rooney's importance.... but not so much shouting the numbers from the corner. At least if that is suggesting that Tyson needed someone to tell him what to do while he was in the ring (during rounds).

Tyson had all of that down cold at the time.

A complete animal - but Tyson was tactically incredible as well, and he had a very good boxing mind.
Unfortunately his decision making outside the ring was pitiful.... and because of this he wasted his the capabilities of his body and mind.

Tyson did need Rooney (or at least someone who wasn't afraid to actually be a trainer to Tyson) to help him keep the correct focus, to keep up with his training, and stay sharp tactically.

Unfortunately Tyson had too much money, or too much boredom, or too much bad decision making, or all of the above - - and he let everything slip away.

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Posted By: Darren

Ali
Marciano
Louis
Lewis

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Posted By: scott brockelman

ALI!!

who is 2nd doesn't matter, everyone in the world remembers Ali, they could not even name the rest. In my opinion he was the greatest athlete of the last half of the 20th century, forget #23. The man transcends sports, he is in fact "the greatest"

Scott

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Posted By: boxingcardman

He had the luck of coming to prominence in the height of the tv era, found the perfect foil in Howard Cosell, and delivered a larger than life persona and not be subject to the sort of persecution that brought down Jack Johnson.

From an historical standpoint, Jack Johnson was probably a more important figure than Ali and the Schmeling-Louis II bout had more social significance than any of Ali's bouts.

None of this diminishes Ali's skills; I don't strongly quarrel with anyone who puts him #1 or #2 behind Louis.

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Posted By: richie

I agree Ali was the "greatest" But i kinda lose respect for a man who fought for a living and refused to fight for his country. Also Mike Tyson before he parted ways with Bill Cayton & Kevin Rooney there was so one more fearful in the ring.

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Posted By: boxingcardman

Ali was willing to stand the consequences of his refusal to fight (jail), on the basis of his religious views:

"War is against the teachings of the Holy Qur'an. I'm not trying to dodge the draft. We are not supposed to take part in no wars unless declared by Allah or The Messenger. We don't take part in Christian wars or wars of any unbelievers."

As a result he was convicted of refusing to serve and sentenced to prison. On appeal, a unanimous (8-0) Supreme Court decided that Ali's conviction for failure to appear at induction for the Armed Forces should be overturned since the Appeal Board gave no reason for the denial of his conscientious objector exemption application. A man who is wiling to risk 5 years at Leavenworth over his religious views is about as sincere as I can imagine and is worthy of my respect.

He didn't just decide he had "other priorities" like some did.

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Posted By: richie

Totally understand is was about his religion. Just kinda funny that he fough & bashed in guys heads for a living. His religion was ok with that,But fighting for your country was forbidden and against his religion.I still think he was the best out there and i know this is OT but just my opinion. Thanks have great day guys. Richie

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Posted By: Jerry Hrechka

Difference between boxing & being a soldier is that boxers do not intend to kill each other, a big difference in my opinion. It can happen, but accidentally not intentionally.

The one fight I wish could happen would be Ali vs. Rocky Marciano, a 15 rounder, with both fighters in their prime and in perfect physical condition.

Any other match ups that you would like to see (Leaving the bare knuckles guys out for now)?

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Posted By: boxingcardman

Assuming all are in their primes

Lewis v. Tyson

Dempsey v. Tyson

Jeffries v. Johnson

and the grand-daddy of them all: Louis v. Ali

There Will Be Blood

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Posted By: Aaron Conyers

I would like to see Tyson vs. Foreman in their primes. Also would like to see Ali vs. Louis.

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Posted By: boxingcardman

Butterbean...

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Posted By: D. Bergin

prime Butterbean vs. a bit past his prime Tony Galento (to even things out a bit) might be a fun fight to see.