A few Willie Pep videos that I Like.

[Beanflicker]

It's thinly-veiled lemming syndrome. You ask someone to justify their opinion and they can't do it. They'll do like Greenz and say "OH WELL ITS MY OPINION IT CAN'T BE WRONG." Weak thinking mother fuckers

[IamInuit]

If you have a losing record, you don't belong in the ring with a world champion. If you have under 15 fights, you don't belong in there with a world champ that has over 100. That's as true now as it was in 1930.

By that logic Rigo should have never been in there with anyone he has fought as a pro along with all the other boxers that got title shots in quick fashion. Fighters have actually debuted in title fights. In addition again, if you fight once a week or once a month you are going to have a losing record. When you fight once a year you might bring a winning record. What makes Pep a phenom is that he did both. I remember you jumped all over Greb because he fought 45 times in one year and never lost.
Lets pull 45 guys off the street and have Floyd fight them in one year and see what happens.

When it's old timers, we give a 80/20 split in focus/importance to quantity. When it's modern fighters, we give the 80/20 split in focus/importance to quality.

Look in the mirror though. Anytime any past great is brought up, the first thing you attempt to do is ridicule and belittle them. We are comparing different eras that are and were different how else are we to compare? I'm sure military men compare battlefields of the past with today's and in some cases copy the past like the Yanks copying Rommel in the Iraqi desert. You discount past greats because there is no video well when Ray Robinson says Pep was the best pure boxer he'd ever seen I have a tendency to believe him.

Btw I think Sanchez rips Peps head off and Arguello would also but that does not take away from the mans greatness.

[powerpuncher]

floyd actually has trouble when he gets to the ropes. if you watch the fighters over the years that have pushed him to the ropes (castillo, sosa, cotto, and maidana all come to mind), it makes floyd uncomfortable and he gets hit cleanly. he wants to be in the middle of the ring where he can spin out of a bad situation if he gets in trouble. pep also has this same problem which is what saddler exploited. mayweather just never fought a saddler type fighter (paul williams has the same body type so it could have been an alright comparison had they fought).

I don't think it's fair to say Floyd is uncomfortable and gets hit clean on the ropes. Maidana had him there for 12 rounds and never landed anything of real substance that hurt Floyd. We're talking about a guy who's never been dropped and we can count the number of times he's been hit with a punch that hurt him on one hand.

I don't know if I agree about Floyd never fighting a Saddler-type fighter. What about Diego Corrales? Corrales was a tall power puncher (33-0 with 27 KOs at the time). Willie Pep was 5'5'' and Saddler was 5'8'' - a 3 inch advantage. Floyd was 5'8'' and Diego was 5'11'' - again, a 3 inch advantage. I think Corrales was very comparable to Saddler in terms of size, style, power, and the height advantage held over Floyd as opposed to the height advantage Saddler had on Pep.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpKHFZ6ixKs

Look at that. Pep is fast but gets absolutely mauled by body shots and dropped in the corner in the first round. Pep is the classic slickster, he's great at avoiding those bad areas but when he got in them he had no idea what to do.

You contrast that with what Floyd did to Corrales, and I think anyone should be able to see the difference. Corrales got Floyd up against the ropes and corner and landed nothing clean.

Corrales wasn't the same type of fighter as saddler. It's not just about being tall but about being aggressive and even dirty. Just like Floyd mentioned maidana using dirty tactics in their fight. That is why Floyd had trouble. Saddler would have been way worse. Also, Floyd did get hit cleanly by maidana multiple times. He took the punches well though.