Quote Originally Posted by Beanflicker View Post
Quote Originally Posted by Rantcatrat View Post
Look at your opinion from the opposite point of view, how can you say Floyd Mayweather is better than Benny Leonard or Sugar Ray Robinson when you haven't seen footage on Benny Leonard or Sugar Ray Robinson? It's impossible.
If that's true, than the inverse must be true in that how can you say Benny Leonard or Sugar Ray Robinson were better than Floyd if you haven't seen the footage?

What great fighters did Ray Robinson beat? Jake Lamotta? Ok, well why was Jake Lamotta great when Ricky Hatton isn't? Lamotta, who I admit was a fantastic fighter with underrated boxing skills, is famous for beating Ray Robinson and giving him his first loss. But why is he great? He dropped decisions to nobodies all over the place. Ricky Hatton was an undefeated champ who beat one of the greatest fighters in the history of his division (Kosta Tyszu) to win the title.

Half the guys he fought are only known and considered "great" or even "very good" because they fought him and may have done well at some point or another. He was the litmus test!

And again, I can't say an opponent was great because newspapers said he was great. I have to bring up Roy Jones again: imagine if Roy Jones fought in the 20s and all we had of him were a few dusty video clips and a ton of newspaper clippings and hearsay.

"JONES MOVES UP TO SUPER MIDDLEWEIGHT, EMBARRASSES UNDISPUTED CHAMP."

"JONES GOES A ROUND WITHOUT OPPONENT LANDING PUNCH."

"JONES RACKS UP YET ANOTHER TITLE DEFENSE, KO'S CONTENDER WITH BEHIND-THE-BACK SURPRISE PUNCH"

"LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT JONES MOVES UP TO HEAVYWEIGHT, EMBARRASSES CHAMPION WITH AMAZING HANDSPEED, WORLD CHAMP FROM MIDDLEWEIGHT TO HEAVYWEIGHT"


He would be the undisputed #1 p4p of all time.
Your point is that you look at visual clues from their in-ring dominance to determine who is the best, whereas I think that is only part of it. I think most of it is your experience, and the quality of the people you face. It's easy to look good against bad competition.

I have more faith in the fact that Ray Robinson fought professionally 200 times and defeated other Hall of Fame fighters such as LaMotta, Basilio, Fullmer, Turpin, Olson, Armstrong, Graziano, Gavilan. Guys who saw him fight and were great, Joe Louis, Ali, Leonard, trainers like the aforementioned Arcel, said he was the best of all-time. I'm not even arguing Robinson was perfect. I just think there are more grounds to say that he is the best, than Floyd, which is just a visual test against good fighters.