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I agree. There is just a natural evolution of the human race and all of the advantages of knowledge, equipment and training practices make athletes, not just fighters, better, stronger and faster.
However, my personal criteria of measuring greatness in sports is how a particular competitor changes their sport. Would there be a Adrian Peterson if there had been no Jim Brown? A LeBron with no Michael Jordan? A Mayweather without an Ali/Robinson to come before him? I think not. And in that sense Mayweather has changed things, but not in the way Ali did. How many fighters have done Ali impressions over the years in and out of the ring with varying success?
if the human race were evolving wouldn't we be getting smarter but physically weaker? Not stating, just asking a rhetorical question. We've been forcefed so much stuff all of our lives we just don't use our own heads. Why would the race be getting stronger and faster when we don't even need strength and speed like we did 30,000 years ago. Another interesting "scientific" finding came out a couple years ago showing prehistoric man running after some kind of animal and using their measurements they were able to tell how fast he ran and they stated it would be faster than the fastest man alive today. Not telling you to change your mind, just question things a bit.
As far as your criteria for greatness, well i've always thought there were two seperate and maybe overlapping criteria. One is the impact on the sport and it's advancement and improvement, the other is strictly how these fighters would do without all of that, head to head with whoever else. For example, context wise, no fighter even comes close to Dempsey who brought so much to the style and improvement of boxing as well as how he was in comparison to his contempories. However, i don't think Dempsey could beat Tyson, Holmes, Louis, Ali even though he made it possible for them to be as good as they were. I've said above how primitive and godawful fighters of the pre 30's and even some of the thrities fighters look. Benny Leonard, Jack Johnson not only do not look good enough to beat the other greats, they don't even look good enough to beat a promising amateur.