Modern weight (category), All time great.

[Hagler]

Not much love for Charles. Archie Moore may be considered.

Holyfield and Frazier are locks, IMO. The third spot could go to Toney, Charles or Spinks.

 

[Sunfish]

Not much love for Charles. Archie Moore may be considered.

Holyfield and Frazier are locks, IMO. The third spot could go to Toney, Charles or Spinks.

I don't know if you remember the huge debate we had about Charles as a heavyweight, and no doubt he had some very good wins like jersey joe Walcott, jimmy bivins, Archie Moore, charley burley, joey maxim, joe Louis and I know they're not all hw fights and I know I must be forgetting some people, but he was a legend at middle, I'm not convinced he would carry it enough to cruiser to be a top 3 all time. Certainly an atg though.

 

[Hagler]

I don't know if you remember the huge debate we had about Charles as a heavyweight, and no doubt he had some very good wins like jersey joe Walcott, jimmy bivins, Archie Moore, charley burley, joey maxim, joe Louis and I know they're not all hw fights and I know I must be forgetting some people, but he was a legend at middle, I'm not convinced he would carry it enough to cruiser to be a top 3 all time. Certainly an atg though.

I mostly remember the length of said debate and the quantity of jokes made about it.

I have a feeling that with modern conditioning Charles would have the appropriate size for CW, not the biggest but a very technical one with good footwork. It's definitely debatable, though.

 

[Boxer]

Not much love for Charles. Archie Moore may be considered.

Holyfield and Frazier are locks, IMO. The third spot could go to Toney, Charles or Spinks.

I like that you consider him, Ezzard had some of the best boxing of his time that would also be considered the most modern in terms of being compared to today's boxers.

However ....... I think the fact that he was a small CW at best and really more of a true MW /LHW in core size, you can see from his Marciano fights that big tough guys the likes of Holyfield and Frazier may be able to bully him and eventually stop him.
I think he'd have more success against Toney as Toney is quite static and won't chase him down as much ala Roy Jones when he was pot shotted and couldn't corner Roy.

 

[Hagler]

Yeah, I wouldn't pick Charles against Holyfield or Frazier, but I think he has an edge over the rest.

 

[RizinSon88]

 

[Prefect]

Top it off with your average boxer these days has 30-50 fights and done.

Sugar Ray Robinson, Sadler etc had 100's of fights.

Imagine all that extra fitness and experience, toughness to boot.

All you need to do is watch some of the wars they had and you can see these fighters weren't to be underestimated, people in general were tougher back then, more manual labor etc.

The only thing I readily admit is pre-1950's the quality of skill was definitely lower for your avge boxer but they made up for that with pure toughness but by the time the 60's had come along these guys were about as skilled as boxers today and were arguably tougher in general.

Hence why a 40 yr old Foreman smashed his way to a title in the modern era and took Holyfield to points, could you imagine if Foreman was in his prime?.

Foreman only smashed cans in his comeback. Even in his fight with Moore, Moore was comfortably out boxing him. Foreman in his comeback was only dangerous due to people underestimating his power. This talk that he was a better fight in his comeback is horseshit. Young Foreman puts Old Foreman on to Medicare.