With Both Now "Retired," Who Had The Better Legacy, Oscar or Floyd

[JazMerkin]

Im gonna try to break this one down. Floyd is an unbelievably talented fighter, but his overall competition doesnt quite stack up to Oscars. Both men have 39 wins. Both were multi-division champions. Yes, Floyd has no loses and Oscar has 6. But I give Oscar a lot of credit for his loses because they were ALL to future HOFers and he did fight them. Floyd hasnt fought 6 Hall of Fame caliber fighters in his career. Oscar did lose those fights but my rational is to take them off his record and put them on a shelf for now.

Now, we have 39 wins per fighters so Im going to select their 15 biggest wins. Again, this is my opinion, but there is not much to argue here and these are in no particular order.

Oscar De La Hoya:
Julio Ceasar Chavez
Pernell Whittaker
Miguel Angel Gonzales
Ike Quartey
Fernando Vargas
Jorge Paez
John John Molina
Rafael Ruelas
Arturo Gatti
Genaro Hernandez
Hector Camacho
Jesse James Lieja
Oba Carr
Ricardo Mayorga
Javier Castillejo

Floyd Mayweather:
Oscar De La Hoya
Ricky Hatton
Diego Corrales
Jose Luis Castillo
Zab Judah
Arturo Gatti
Carlos Manuel Baldomir
Angel Manfredy
Sharmba Mitchell
Jesus Chavez
Carlos Hernandez
Phillip N'dou
Victoriano Sosa
DeMarcus Corley
Genaro Hernandez

Now, going back to Oscars loses. 3 of them are current champions and all top p4p fighters in the world (Hopkins, Pac, Mosley). The two others are Felix Trinidad and Floyd himself.

Floyd has never lost a fight. Is that a testement to his greatness or lack of worthy opposition? You be the judge. Both guys are undeniably among the best of recent times and it will be interesting to see how history remembers them.

I think Floyd's resume surpasses Oscars clearly. It's one thing fighting the best its another matter to beat them all.

And Floyd is hardly short of Hall of Fame fighters on his resume, Oscar, Hatton, Castillo and Coralles are all pretty much shoe ins and with the exception of Oscar Floyd fought them all in their primes.

I mean if its just about facing the best and being competitive then Tony Tucker must be an all time great heavyweight for taking both a prime Tyson and a prime Lennox Lewis the distance, he almost managed to hang until the final bell against a prime John Ruiz as well

Let me ask you this, If Floyd fought all of Oscars opposition under similar circumstances, do you think he would be 45-0? Or if Floyd had lost the decision to Castillo, a B+/A-fighter imo, wouldnt that loss be worse than any of Oscars loses with the exception of Pac? After all Oscar loses were all to the best of the best. The numbers dont mean much to me, undefeated, defeated 6 times, its about the substance behind the numbers for me. Also I dont think Castillo or Corrales are a shoe in for the hall at all, if it were up to me they would be though.

You could much more easily argue the same if Oscar had dropped a decision to either Quartey or Sturm. If you look at it in terms of fights that you might feel they should have won our lost, then to me Oscar falls more convincingly behind Floyd. If you're going off official decisions than you have to accept that Floyd beat Castillo, just as Oscar beat Whitaker, Quartey and Sturm. If we do it off our own interpretation of fight results we would have to write out our own lists. Also saying if Floyd fought all of his opposition in similar circumstances is deceptive because of their differing sizes. If Floyd was the size to fight guys like Trinidad, Sturm and Hopkins than I think he would be able to beat them (although I'm not saying he definitely would). The simple fact of how much bigger Oscar looked against Floyd negates arguments about the size of their opposition. Floyd wasn't even a huge super-featherweight, let alone a huge light-welter like Oscar was whilst he was at the weight.