Quote Originally Posted by Bilbo View Post
Like I say folks I'm not discrediting I openly admit I know nothing about him, but he's one of those names that seems to be almost hallowed in that nobody will ever criticise his resume or anything about him ever.

Yet if you mention Joe Calzaghe for example, who also totally dominated his weight class, never lost a fight, or even drew one, and beat two not only Hall of Famers but arguably two of the greatest of all time, people will literally leap to tell you why he is so overatted, has a padded record, should of lost to Hopkins and Reid, avoided the big names, had a poor defense, no punch, slaps etc etc.

So it's a fair question, is Calzaghe criticised so much more than Lopez because he was far inferior to Lopez or is it merely because if they are honest, nobody really knows much about Ricardo Lopez other than watching a few highlights or a couple of his major fights?

I mean with a guy like Calzaghe, virtually all of his opponents are well known to us, so we can criticise each of them in turn and point out why they were weak oppositon or old, or past their best, or had padded records themselves.

Whereas with Lopez I expect even Britkid has only heard of maybe a dozen opponents at best and most of them only in relation to fighting Lopez.

That's all I'm saying, was he really THAT good, or does fighting at an obscure weight, and the resulting lack of information and knowledge available to us as a result mean that his record and ability is simply not scrutinised as much?
I certainly think he does tend to get a bit overrated, as does Calzaghe by some, because of his record. He did appear to have a complete skillset & its not like he didn't fight some excellent fighters, the only debatable decision he ever had was the TD which should have really gone in his favour.

Like I say, he IS an ATG, I would rate him higher than Calzaghe, just purely on skillset, but do I rate him as the best fighter of 90s even? No, I don't think I could rate him as highly as Pernell Whitaker or even Roy Jones. Maybe had he moved up a little earlier & fought Carbajal or Humberto Gonzalez that might have answered those few questions, but we will never know. But, its not just some perverted boxing fan fetish why he gets rated so highly, he really was excellent, you only get it by watching him