All Time Ranking for Heavyweight Bare Knuckle Champions

[Ben Bolt]

I would consider it similar to voting on the best picture for the Oscar not on you having watched the film but by reading reviews of said film.

I agree.

Still, I like the effort Marchegiano has done to highlight the bareknuckles. Harsh times, interesting characters, fascinating era to read about.

[Eff Pandas]

I agree.

Still, I like the effort Marchegiano has done to highlight the bareknuckles. Harsh times, interesting characters, fascinating era to read about.

I like reading about them myself.

I just don't like all the measuring of them particularly in a way that I don't see being reasonable or fair to these great men & pioneers of boxing.

Normal ATG ratings are ridiculous & impossible for even the tip top boxing historians. This is a step even further into the ridiculous & impossible as I see it.

[Ben Bolt]

Normal ATG ratings are ridiculous & impossible for even the tip top boxing historians.

I'm not a fan of ATG rankings. Or today's common pound-for-pound rankings. After all, they're all subjective.

I'm satisfied with that there were, and are, great athletes.

[The Old LefHook]

Anyone who does not like lists should get out.

[The Old LefHook]

Marci, keep an eye out for the milking muscle in those old photos. In bareknuckle days they did all the milking by mitt.

[Marchegiano]

I mean I'd strongly disagree with that analogy being a good one to articulate the topic at hand.

I would consider it similar to voting on the best picture for the Oscar not on you having watched the film but by reading reviews of said film. That would be a ridiculous way to decide the best film, but that's how folks judge the ATG best boxer fully or partially often times & you're even going further than usual here.

Randomly I wish we could test how ridiculous this is. Like take 20 current prospects. Never having watched any of their fights & predict how good they will be based on articles about them. My guess is you'd be waaaaay off on your skill assessment of them cuz the writers might not pick up on things you would or would ignore certain things or overly hype other things or just not be able to fully put the words on the page with what they are seeing. It's pure insanity you can measure a physical skill sport talent level vs other guys in the same sport to any degree of accuracy without seeing them compete. Be like a blind man judging fights based on the sound of the punches.

Full careers are not snippets from the beginning of a career, and, talk about being self serving...Y'all watch prospects and get that **** wrong too so wtf does prospects not turning out how they appeared in the early days of their career got to do with mediums used to share information? Not a god damned thing. It's not like once film came around bap **** boom it became easier to pick a prospect. Ring's success rate is about the same. David Price had fans, but, mine was the one that was a bad analogy...not real reason given, just, mine's bad, and, this one's good, don't worry about how obviously flawed it is.

Legends are not sparsely covered, and to be honest I think you're doing a lot of assuming. Price is on film, Dempsey is less so, more people know how Dempsey fought than Price. Legend, scrub, media change won't change that juxta.

You don't believe you can read who Ali was and read who Carnera was, and never watch them, and walk away knowing Ali was the greater HW champion? Really? Y'all reckon that'd be hard to do? Would it become difficult to separate Marciano from Dempsey if we didn't have a handful of filmed fights? Not even a little, you're either more impressed by Jack's career or Rocky's. Seeing a bit of them doesn't help.

You can't see a lot of boxing anyway. You have the magic ability to watch a punch land and measure its foot-pounds? Exactly.

And when folks argue about modern boxers anyone can watch it's hardly ever clips they use. It's resume isn't it?

If eye test really mattered people would be over the moon over Marciano's Suzie. There's no more perfect example of a punch going right than that one. It's got ring placement, accuracy, timing, gap control, baiting, anatomy placement, and power. TF else is there?

Marciano's a legend because of the 0 not because of his filmed perfect punch that seems to be exclusively appreciated by Marciano fans who never use it to justify being a Marciano fan, or anything else he's ever done on film, but rather uses resume because we're always attacked in the resume department.

Use boxrec to justify modern, filmed their who careers, fighters, but, I can't learn who Tom Cribb was off the books written in his time, the articles that followed him, the promos released by Barclay, or the first hand accounts through out his career?

I'm unsure as to whether or not Mendoza was truly unhittable in his day because I didn't actually see the misses?

Bunch of nonsense if you ask me. Little here worth a damn.

[Eff Pandas]

[COLOR="Indigo"]Full careers are not snippets from the beginning of a career, and, talk about being self serving...Y'all watch prospects and get that **** wrong too

That's exactly what I'm saying with this. It's a silly way to judge athletes by words.

You don't believe you can read who Ali was and read who Carnera was, and never watch them, and walk away knowing Ali was the greater HW champion?

I mean sure if we are reading about Rod Salka's skills I'm guessing his place historically won't be changed a whole lot. But we aren't talking about a fringe contender vs greats. We are talking about a bunch of guys who were the greatest of their day.

And when folks argue about modern boxers anyone can watch it's hardly ever clips they use. It's resume isn't it?

I've made it no secret I think ATG & P4P talk is silly as well. This is just a level beyond THAT silliness.

Marciano's a legend because of the 0 not because of his filmed perfect punch that seems to be exclusively appreciated by Marciano fans who never use it to justify being a Marciano fan, or anything else he's ever done on film, but rather uses resume because we're always attacked in the resume department.

No idea why this would be relevant.

Use boxrec to justify modern, filmed their who careers, fighters, but, I can't learn who Tom Cribb was off the books written in his time, the articles that followed him, the promos released by Barclay, or the first hand accounts through out his career?

Learning who a fighter was & rating him like he was a Chinese restaurant over other folks words on that Chinese restaurant vs other Chinese restaurants, & not your own experience eating there & dealing with the staff vs eating at other joints & etc, is a whole other thing than the stuff you keep bringing up.

[billeau2]

That's exactly what I'm saying with this. It's a silly way to judge athletes by words.



I mean sure if we are reading about Rod Salka's skills I'm guessing his place historically won't be changed a whole lot. But we aren't talking about a fringe contender vs greats. We are talking about a bunch of guys who were the greatest of their day.



I've made it no secret I think ATG & P4P talk is silly as well. This is just a level beyond THAT silliness.



No idea why this would be relevant.



Learning who a fighter was & rating him like he was a Chinese restaurant over other folks words on that Chinese restaurant vs other Chinese restaurants, & not your own experience eating there & dealing with the staff vs eating at other joints & etc, is a whole other thing than the stuff you keep bringing up.

A couple of comments.

First of all? Film is like a concentrated form of knowledge, especially when one knows what to look for... And considering how long boxing has been around as a sport, to the present day, we are looking at a situation where we still have relatively little film in proportion to the whole of the sport... that will change as we advance because we have film now.

I think we need history and good methods of history precisely for the reasons given. We have to be true to historical methods because they allow for a way to compare... That also means letting fighters "season" before we throw them into a mix of historical established boxing "truisms." So... A fighter like Floyd, or Ward, needs to be looked at with some time passing.

But the point that Efpanda make about comparison in a general way regarding greatness, I believe is true. We really cannot compare Greb to a fighter we have tape on. As a matter of fact one way I can spot a casual is to look in the mirror, errr i mean is to listen for when someone just makes a list, and without qualifying it, puts certain fighters on that list that we only have historical information on.

This is one of a few reasons I do not make "lists." Someone like Marchgiano has the ability to speak on someone like Mendoza because he has looked at historical materials carefully, most of us have not.

So can we compare fighters using historical materials? Yes... But it has to be apples to apples. And it has to include meticulous examination of any tape, a common source of information... Vis a vis, if I compare Spinks to Rosenbloom, do I have enough tape on Maxi? or should the comparison be based on historical information? That would he an example.

[Marchegiano]

That's exactly what I'm saying with this. It's a silly way to judge athletes by words.



I mean sure if we are reading about Rod Salka's skills I'm guessing his place historically won't be changed a whole lot. But we aren't talking about a fringe contender vs greats. We are talking about a bunch of guys who were the greatest of their day.



I've made it no secret I think ATG & P4P talk is silly as well. This is just a level beyond THAT silliness.



No idea why this would be relevant.



Learning who a fighter was & rating him like he was a Chinese restaurant over other folks words on that Chinese restaurant vs other Chinese restaurants, & not your own experience eating there & dealing with the staff vs eating at other joints & etc, is a whole other thing than the stuff you keep bringing up.

Learning through video is superior and more first-hand, got you.

When you've watched all of Mike Tyson's career, seen every interview and pre fight ceremony, downloaded the entire WBVA, and still have questions about Mike Tyson where do you go for more in-depth coverage of Mike Tyson? Maybe a book on Mike Tyson?

[Eff Pandas]

Learning through video is superior and more first-hand, got you.

When you've watched all of Mike Tyson's career, seen every interview and pre fight ceremony, downloaded the entire WBVA, and still have questions about Mike Tyson where do you go for more in-depth coverage of Mike Tyson? Maybe a book on Mike Tyson?

To be clear I'm not saying we need to burn all the boxing books or they have no value. Hell I love a good story.

I'm saying **** measuring athletes you've never seen & are basing your opinions on them against each other based on words of various authors where there is no metric to even measure the writers against each other to verify how truthful, full of sh^t or just how well they are at gauging athletic skills & then put words on paper to illustrate them is a ridiculous thing BEYOND the ridiculousness of **** measuring great men of this sport from a multitude of eras in general.