Fighters could actually be credited for what they did/do. Up until ali came around you couldn't say that one era was better than another. You just had to figure that each era's champs fought who was there and that was that, there was never a measuring stick like him around before. Joe Louis dominated as did the champs before him but no one ever tryed to claim that they were the best. Ali brought trash talking and the other era's into perspective like they hadn't been before. Now you have to look back and say is ____ really as good as foreman/frazier was? Was their competition really THAT good?

A lot of people try to maintain the argument that everyone can only fight those who are available to them and that era's shouldn't be compared like that but because of ali, i don't think its possible. I mean in every era you're gonna have your fast guys (patterson, tillis, byrd, ali), your power guys (Foreman, louis, tyson, vitali), your brawlers (brewster, marciano, liston, frazier) but now you'll get the line "How can you possibly compare them to each other?". Without him they'd still be compared, but we wouldn't be calling former heavyweight champions (abc belts or not) bums. He set the standard for any era, and thats something that was never done before.

It's a good thing (even tho it doesn't sound like it) because it has set boxing a place in history that it can never lose simply because no athlete has ever transcended their sport more than ali did. Yeah jordan was huge and still is but jordan is an american icon and not a global one.