Mayweather's top 5 fighters of all time

So I did a little digging- Ray Robinson beat men 16 who could have claimed to have been champions at one point or another.

Floyd is 23-0 against former world champs.Berto is likely to be 24.

And sure, there are more titles today but as I pointed out, remove the filler and what do you have? A record against legit guys not much different than top guys today.

Well, yeah, that makes the comparison more or less pointless.
 
Did the hosts pick those 10 to choose from? JCC, Leonard, Whitaker, Mayweather, and Marciano don't need to be in that class, but it's not hard to see why there were picked.

I would rank those guys:

Robinson

Duran
Armstrong

Louis
Ali

Ray Leonard or Whitaker


JCC

Not sure between Mayweather and Marciano. McFarland is clearly the greatest undefeated boxer over those two though. Mayweather's reasoning is amusing, usually athletes are pretty bad at ranking the greatest of their sports. Duran in January gave some insight on his opponents for The Ring:

I rate Mayweather way over Marciano. Rocky was tough as hell and perhaps gets underrated by some, but you can only be rated so highly when you have so few fights against opponents truly on the world level.
 
Well, yeah, that makes the comparison more or less pointless.

Not really. It goes a long way to show the quality of opposition that Mayweather has fought.
 
I rate Mayweather way over Marciano. Rocky was tough as hell and perhaps gets underrated by some, but you can only be rated so highly when you have so few fights against opponents truly on the world level.

Marciano did't fight one elite fighter who wasn't years past his prime except arguably Charles.
 
Not really. It goes a long way to show the quality of opposition that Mayweather has fought.

It shows that Mayweather has a very impressive resume, but it doesn't do a lot to show you how he compares to a fighter like Robinson.
 
Marciano did't fight one elite fighter who wasn't years past his prime except arguably Charles.

I think Moore was probably closer to his prime than Charles, and Moore was never really an elite HW. Yeah, it's not really Marciano's fault that for the brief period that he was at the top the division was extremely weak, but I've never seen Marciano's resume as stacking up with the greatest at HW, let alone the greatest across all weight classes.
 
that was ridiculous, first of all, they should have told him he can't include himself, that's how that question is usually handled and as Larry Merchant told Marvelous Marvin Hagler when he said he was the greatest Middleweight ever, "that's for other people to decide". Also, his racial choices were interesting, I anticipated that he would choose a non-black fighter right behind him, just because brothers are usually harder on each other and put each other down and are more competitive with each other than they are with anyone else. Ali, on the other hand, and many other black fighters tend to go too far the other way, discounting great white fighters out of what could be called reverse prejudice I guess. Ali has said many different things at different times when it came to his choices of who was best, but usually, his picks center around Johnson, Louis and himself at heavyweight, with himself first and Sugar Ray Robinson pound for pound. Depending on the situation he would answer differently, I think he has usually named Jack Johnson as the best heavy after him and sometimes has said Johnson was the greatest. He rarely said anything good about Dempsey but told him "I'm glad I wasn't fighting when you were around" when he met him in the 80's. Fighters are often poor analysts and are too biased one way or another, with their picks as ATG and with their picks in big fights. You'd think they'd know better than anyone but they don't.
 
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Marciano did't fight one elite fighter who wasn't years past his prime except arguably Charles.

I don't know, all depends on who you're asking, each great fighter had fights they should have dominated and they lost. Joe Louis had a couple close decisions on his ledger and almost lost to Billy Conn, Ali (which is what Mayweather uses for ammunition) had a string of horrid performances which even I, as a huge fan, can't bring myself to fully watch. The Mac Foster fight was terrible, the Young fight, Spinks, that Spanish fighter. With Marciano, he was special in his dedication and his endurance. He wouldn't have beaten a lot of guys just because he got hit too much, cut too easy and was too small but on the other hand, no heavyweight had a greater punch output, more conviction and toughness than the rock. They say he trained six months for a fight, most fighters train six weeks and most of them don't even do that right so Rock was special. In watching a lot of Hagler fights recently, I can't help but notice that Hagler lifted that style of non-stop, relentless punching from Marciano, I'm sure the Petronelli brothers told Marvin everything about the Rock.
 
It shows that Mayweather has a very impressive resume, but it doesn't do a lot to show you how he compares to a fighter like Robinson.

There's not really many ways to compare two fighters from different eras other than quality of opposition.
 
There's not really many ways to compare two fighters from different eras other than quality of opposition.

He is saying that you cannot accurately compare their quality of opposition by simply counting the number of champions they fought because in modern boxing there are many more "champions" with paper belts to take.

There are guys who are 2 or 3 division champions who have never held a lineal belt in their entire career. That means if this was 1950, they wouldn't even be a champion. If Floyd beats him in this era, he gets to add a champion to his list. If SRR beats him in his era, he's just some guy.
 
He is saying that you cannot accurately compare their quality of opposition by simply counting the number of champions they fought because in modern boxing there are many more "champions" with paper belts to take.
There are guys who are 2 or 3 division champions who have never held a lineal belt in their entire career. That means if this was 1950, they wouldn't even be a champion. If Floyd beats him in this era, he gets to add a champion to his list. If SRR beats him in his era, he's just some guy.

Its not hard to look at a fighters resume and figure which guys are quality fighters and which aren't.

And not all of the champions Robinson fought were lineal champs when he fought them either. Fritzie Zivic for example had alot of miles on his tires and was inconsistent to the point that you could consider him mediocre. Henry Armstrong was waaay past it. Lamotta wouldn't evenbe considered great if it weren't for his one miracle win over SRR.


I think lots of guys Robinson fought get too much credit for fighting him.

That said, Ray beat the big names around his weight, but there's no denying that Maweather has done the same.
 
Its not hard to look at a fighters resume and figure which guys are quality fighters and which aren't.

And not all of the champions Robinson fought were lineal champs when he fought them either. Fritzie Zivic for example had alot of miles on his tires and was inconsistent to the point that you could consider him mediocre. Henry Armstrong was waaay past it. Lamotta wouldn't evenbe considered great if it weren't for his one miracle win over SRR.


I think lots of guys Robinson fought get too much credit for fighting him.

That said, Ray beat the big names around his weight, but there's no denying that Maweather has done the same.

I think the best way to compare fighters from different eras would be to make a list of each fighter's best 25 wins (I guess you could do more or less, I don't know), and then examine their losses. That eliminates the fluff, and forces you to look strictly at what they were able to do against the best fighters of their own time.

If you do that, I bet Mayweather compares very well with the most accomplished fighters of all time. But I'm not as knowledgeable about the old-time boxers (pre 1960's) as a lot of people on here, so I don't attempt to say exactly where he should be placed.
 
hard to measure todays top fighters because the talent surrounding them can't push them, that has to hurt them. No, I'm not saying you should willingly fight wars, i'm saying sometimes you fight guys good and hungry enough to make you fight a war, that's where we found out who's who. I love Roy Jones but no one even really seriously talks about him anymore because he couldn't take a fraction of what he could dish out, he's lucky to be in the top 100 of knowledgable experts ratings.
 
hard to measure todays top fighters because the talent surrounding them can't push them, that has to hurt them. No, I'm not saying you should willingly fight wars, i'm saying sometimes you fight guys good and hungry enough to make you fight a war, that's where we found out who's who. I love Roy Jones but no one even really seriously talks about him anymore because he couldn't take a fraction of what he could dish out, he's lucky to be in the top 100 of knowledgable experts ratings.

I'd say that's excessive.

Now I've always been ardent in saying that RJJ is overrated and I'm not hugely impressed by his resume. but he still faced some top fighters and made a lot of them look bad. He loses points for avoiding Michalzewski, but he was still a dominant force in his era and the #1 P4P. In fantasy H2H he rates pretty well too.

sometimes a man is to good for his own good and I don't think he should be punished for that. To say that he's not top 100 all time is waaaay to harsh. I think he's pretty clearly top 50, but I don't think I'd have him much higher than that.
 
I'd say that's excessive.

Now I've always been ardent in saying that RJJ is overrated and I'm not hugely impressed by his resume. but he still faced some top fighters and made a lot of them look bad. He loses points for avoiding Michalzewski, but he was still a dominant force in his era and the #1 P4P. In fantasy H2H he rates pretty well too.

sometimes a man is to good for his own good and I don't think he should be punished for that. To say that he's not top 100 all time is waaaay to harsh. I think he's pretty clearly top 50, but I don't think I'd have him much higher than that.

I said he's lucky to be in most "expert's" top 100 and I think that's true. Especially for the older guys who've seen more than most younger guys. A guy like Max Kellerman may rate him higher but the guys who've spent years watching fighters were not that enthralled with Roy, before and after the Tarver fights. He was incredible offensively and I think the way he used his speed and power terrified his opponents so much that lots of them were beat before they started and others quit trying once they got knocked down. Roy is a strange case, he wasn't any faster than many fighters. sugar Ray Leonard could match speed, Thomas hearns for single punches was about as fast as anyone ever in his prime, Hector Camacho was faster than all of them, had better defense and reflexes than all of them and a better chin (too bad the party life got to him) and even he got hit by flush shots. Different eras, different men, different levels of desire and guts. I do not think history will be kind to Roy, ironically, had he retired or died right after the Ruiz fight, people probably would think he was in the top ten easily. It's only when he (any fighter really) has to struggle that we see what they are made of. Sugar Ray Robinson had some fights with guys who didn't belong in the ring with him talent wise but they had either a style or the guts to bring the fight to him. Ray was on his way to losing the second fight to turpin, within a round of losing and not only that, he had to fight his ass off the whole time just to make it an even fight, his kayo of turpin will probably be his and maybe even boxing's best display of Championship grit and spirit.
 
anyway, i don't mean to beat up on roy, i use him as only an illustration of what may weather's legacy may eventually be, a great one but not as good as he or some of the other fans may think right now. I mean, it's ridiculous when 40 and fifty year old men are running shit, to me, that says everything.
 
I'd say that's excessive.

Now I've always been ardent in saying that RJJ is overrated and I'm not hugely impressed by his resume. but he still faced some top fighters and made a lot of them look bad. He loses points for avoiding Michalzewski, but he was still a dominant force in his era and the #1 P4P. In fantasy H2H he rates pretty well too.

sometimes a man is to good for his own good and I don't think he should be punished for that. To say that he's not top 100 all time is waaaay to harsh. I think he's pretty clearly top 50, but I don't think I'd have him much higher than that.

Jones Jr. never avoided Dariusz, it was the other way around. Here you have a guy who faked an injury because 20000 people were booing him in Germany. Going to the US and fighting Roy was no option for him. Roy would've outclassed him anyway. Maybe some folks suspect a potential knockout because Roy turned out to be chinny later on, but that wasn't going to happen at that time...you must have forgot.

You could also claim that Roy ducked Eubank and Benn.
 
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This isn't the first time Mayweather has slighted Ali. Back in April, prior to the Fight of the Century, Mayweather told Stephen A. Smith that "no one can ever brainwash me to make me believe that Sugar Ray Robinson and Muhammad Ali was better than me."

ROFL

Does anyone take this guy seriously?

1) Ali fought at a time when multiple legends that could have been the champ in any other era were fighting; easily the greatest HW era, if not the best boxing era period.

2) Ali ALWAYS stepped up to fight the best- Patterson, Liston, Moore, Norton, Frazier, Foreman, Young, Shavers, Holmes, you name it. He fought Frazier and Norton (who both could been dominant champs in other eras) 3 times each, 6 BRUTAL fights.

3) Don't even get me started on the era that Floyd fought in.

4) Compare to #2 above- there was ONE such fighter in Floyd's era, and what did Floyd do? Fought him a grand total of 1 time way late in their careers after that fighter had plummeted and started losing.

5) Floyd, you are a joke.
 
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