Quote Originally Posted by Master View Post
I would not call Liston or Norton a bum.

What is your definition for a bum?
Norton and Liston WERE bum busters by definition that most of their REAL HW (200+) opponents had lost more than a quarter of their fights.

If you consider their sub 200+ opponents in their records (of which their records were significantly or even largely composed) then their records are inflated to be better against modern HW boxers records.

The reason this distinction IS important in a cross era comparison is that TODAY if they were to box, that portion of their record would be considered part of their cruiser record (one in which they were HW's fighting CW's hence had a significant weight advantage which they would not be permitted nowadays.

It's only when you put CW back to CW and delete bums that you can make an accurate HW comparison between eras.

To put it another way, if you want to include olden days boxers cruiser records as valid HW records (as they were then) then that's fine, but you THEN have to include guys like David Haye's entire career as a valid HW career too (as it was then) and all of his opponents. It then becomes very clear how much better quality opponents Haye fought, beat and how many he KOed than these guys.

You cannot have it both ways!

I simplify all this by deleting all bums and cruisers off records when making such a comparison. In my opinion, you must!