My rankings

[Humean]

Where is your list humean?

I don't have a full 20 at moment but here is 16.

Criteria: 80% ability/quality, 20% achievements (Quality of opponents defeated both in terms of opponents quality in an absolute sense and in a relative sense in terms of opponents quality in that particular era, also taking into account losses/draws in prime years, longevity and making some allowances for different circumstances of different eras)

Made judgment call to leave off the following due to not enough meaningful fights at 160, Winky Wright, Trinidad, Leonard, Jones Jr.

1: Carlos Monzon
2: Marvin Hagler
3: Sugar Ray Robinson
4: Bernard Hopkins
5: Sumbu Kalambay
6: James Toney
7: Mike McCallum
8: Rodrigo Valdez
9: Marcel Cerdan
10: Sergio Martinez
11: Nino Benvenuti
12: **** Tiger
13: Emile Griffith
14: Michael Nunn
15: Kelly Pavlik
16: Jake LaMotta
17: ???
18: ???
19: ???
20: ???


No middleweight before the 30s will take the final four places because they just weren't good enough in terms of ability/quality compared to later fighters.

[Welsh Jon]

I don't have a full 20 at moment but here is 16.

Criteria: 80% ability/quality, 20% achievements (Quality of opponents defeated both in terms of opponents quality in an absolute sense and in a relative sense in terms of opponents quality in that particular era, also taking into account losses/draws in prime years, longevity and making some allowances for different circumstances of different eras)

Made judgment call to leave off the following due to not enough meaningful fights at 160, Winky Wright, Trinidad, Leonard, Jones Jr.

1: Carlos Monzon
2: Marvin Hagler
3: Sugar Ray Robinson
4: Bernard Hopkins
5: Sumbu Kalambay
6: James Toney
7: Mike McCallum
8: Rodrigo Valdez
9: Marcel Cerdan
10: Sergio Martinez
11: Nino Benvenuti
12: **** Tiger
13: Emile Griffith
14: Michael Nunn
15: Kelly Pavlik
16: Jake LaMotta
17: ???
18: ???
19: ???
20: ???


No middleweight before the 30s will take the final four places because they just weren't good enough in terms of ability/quality compared to later fighters.

Really interesting list. Obviously you have different criteria than me so it's pointless comparing them.

With some of the names of your list I'm surprised by the omission of Benn and Eubank.

[Humean]

Really interesting list. Obviously you have different criteria than me so it's pointless comparing them.

With some of the names of your list I'm surprised by the omission of Benn and Eubank.

They'd both be candidates for the remaining places but I really cannot decide on who to put there. Eubank and Benn had the quality but they didn't stay at middleweight for all that long whereas some older fighters had longer and more meaningful careers as middleweights such as Gene Fullmer and Alan Minter.

[billeau2]

I don't have a full 20 at moment but here is 16.

Criteria: 80% ability/quality, 20% achievements (Quality of opponents defeated both in terms of opponents quality in an absolute sense and in a relative sense in terms of opponents quality in that particular era, also taking into account losses/draws in prime years, longevity and making some allowances for different circumstances of different eras)

Made judgment call to leave off the following due to not enough meaningful fights at 160, Winky Wright, Trinidad, Leonard, Jones Jr.

1: Carlos Monzon
2: Marvin Hagler
3: Sugar Ray Robinson
4: Bernard Hopkins
5: Sumbu Kalambay
6: James Toney
7: Mike McCallum
8: Rodrigo Valdez
9: Marcel Cerdan
10: Sergio Martinez
11: Nino Benvenuti
12: **** Tiger
13: Emile Griffith
14: Michael Nunn
15: Kelly Pavlik
16: Jake LaMotta
17: ???
18: ???
19: ???
20: ???


No middleweight before the 30s will take the final four places because they just weren't good enough in terms of ability/quality compared to later fighters.

I would never nitpic a list because I flat out refuse to make them. I do think its deluded to use a term like "quality" which is nebulous to say the least....Persic spent a whole book trying to define quality (Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance)! which is to say Quality seems to be more of what one hopes to achieve with a list....Its similar to me saying "On my list the criteria is that the fighters are all the best 20."

So you have two statements that are highly subjective....nothing wrong with that in-itself, but then when asked to provide an objective point of view you tout out that your criteria is quality and that no fighter prior to a certain age has that degree there-of. Ability is for all practical purposes, when used arbitrarily....about as useful in this regard as quality.

Alas, all lists are opinions but, as a skeptic of lists I do recognize that guys like Welsh and Iron Dan, among others, who painfully apply some objectivity to their criteria do at least come up with a logical progression if fighters from point A to point B. You seem to avoid any dilmena in constructing your list....I will give you that!

[Humean]

I would never nitpic a list because I flat out refuse to make them. I do think its deluded to use a term like "quality" which is nebulous to say the least....Persic spent a whole book trying to define quality (Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance)! which is to say Quality seems to be more of what one hopes to achieve with a list....Its similar to me saying "On my list the criteria is that the fighters are all the best 20."

So you have two statements that are highly subjective....nothing wrong with that in-itself, but then when asked to provide an objective point of view you tout out that your criteria is quality and that no fighter prior to a certain age has that degree there-of. Ability is for all practical purposes, when used arbitrarily....about as useful in this regard as quality.

Alas, all lists are opinions but, as a skeptic of lists I do recognize that guys like Welsh and Iron Dan, among others, who painfully apply some objectivity to their criteria do at least come up with a logical progression if fighters from point A to point B. You seem to avoid any dilmena in constructing your list....I will give you that!

What I mean by ability/quality is simply how good a fighter is. In some sports it is easy to determine who is the best in history because they can actually measure it, such as in 100 metres sprint and such like. Usain Bolt is significantly faster than Jesse Owens and everyone else in history. For me any 'greatness' list has to surely be focussed largely upon how good the athlete/fighter was because the 'greatness' or 'significance' of an athlete/fighter is surely about how 'good' they were, at the very least relative to their own time. Looking at the film of Kalambay and LaMotta, as well as their opponents and looking at their records I think Kalambay was a better fighter than LaMotta. Might my judgement be wrong on that, and wrong on all my other judgements? Quite possibly, perhaps very likely but that is the way I see it. However the concept of ability/quality is not nebulous, isn't Mayweather better at welterweight right now than probably every single active welterweight? You also cannot possibily talk about a fighter having a better 'resume' than another without the idea of how good the fighters fought and defeated actually were and that is why I have a problem with the way people on here talk about 'resume'.

I keep my criteria as limited as possible because broader criteria would have to include things like cultural/social significance/impact. It seems extraordinarily hard to add that to the mix. Does Cerdan move up the list because about 300,000 Parisians came out to celebrate his defeat of Tony Zale http://www.nytimes.com/1998/10/02/op...edold.t_2.html whereas few people gave a **** about LaMotta when he defeated Cerdan?

Anyway there is no need to go into yet another debate about why I think boxing has improved over time. All i'll say is this, I don't think the best middleweights in the first few decades of the 20th century were as good as the best middleweights of subsequent eras, just as I don't think that right now that either Marcos Maidana or Amir Khan are as good as Floyd Mayweather at welterweight. There is nothing nebulous about that.

[Scott9945]

I don't have a full 20 at moment but here is 16.

Criteria: 80% ability/quality, 20% achievements (Quality of opponents defeated both in terms of opponents quality in an absolute sense and in a relative sense in terms of opponents quality in that particular era, also taking into account losses/draws in prime years, longevity and making some allowances for different circumstances of different eras)

Made judgment call to leave off the following due to not enough meaningful fights at 160, Winky Wright, Trinidad, Leonard, Jones Jr.

1: Carlos Monzon
2: Marvin Hagler
3: Sugar Ray Robinson
4: Bernard Hopkins
5: Sumbu Kalambay
6: James Toney
7: Mike McCallum
8: Rodrigo Valdez
9: Marcel Cerdan
10: Sergio Martinez
11: Nino Benvenuti
12: **** Tiger
13: Emile Griffith
14: Michael Nunn
15: Kelly Pavlik
16: Jake LaMotta
17: ???
18: ???
19: ???
20: ???


No middleweight before the 30s will take the final four places because they just weren't good enough in terms of ability/quality compared to later fighters.

I generally don't criticize lists because I don't make my own, but Kalambay is so ridiculously overrated here I couldn't let it pass. How does the #6 middleweight of all time lose to Duane Thomas? His record outside of Europe (0-2) says a lot. The win over McCallum was impressive, but other than that he was just another top middleweight contender. He shouldn't be behind Nunn, who flattened him with one punch.

[Welsh Jon]

What I mean by ability/quality is simply how good a fighter is. In some sports it is easy to determine who is the best in history because they can actually measure it, such as in 100 metres sprint and such like. Usain Bolt is significantly faster than Jesse Owens and everyone else in history. For me any 'greatness' list has to surely be focussed largely upon how good the athlete/fighter was because the 'greatness' or 'significance' of an athlete/fighter is surely about how 'good' they were, at the very least relative to their own time. Looking at the film of Kalambay and LaMotta, as well as their opponents and looking at their records I think Kalambay was a better fighter than LaMotta. Might my judgement be wrong on that, and wrong on all my other judgements? Quite possibly, perhaps very likely but that is the way I see it. However the concept of ability/quality is not nebulous, isn't Mayweather better at welterweight right now than probably every single active welterweight? You also cannot possibily talk about a fighter having a better 'resume' than another without the idea of how good the fighters fought and defeated actually were and that is why I have a problem with the way people on here talk about 'resume'.

I keep my criteria as limited as possible because broader criteria would have to include things like cultural/social significance/impact. It seems extraordinarily hard to add that to the mix. Does Cerdan move up the list because about 300,000 Parisians came out to celebrate his defeat of Tony Zale http://www.nytimes.com/1998/10/02/op...edold.t_2.html whereas few people gave a **** about LaMotta when he defeated Cerdan?

Anyway there is no need to go into yet another debate about why I think boxing has improved over time. All i'll say is this, I don't think the best middleweights in the first few decades of the 20th century were as good as the best middleweights of subsequent eras, just as I don't think that right now that either Marcos Maidana or Amir Khan are as good as Floyd Mayweather at welterweight. There is nothing nebulous about that.

Like I said I enjoyed your list because it is interesting to read names on there you don't usually see. However I think it's one thing to champion guys like Toney and Nunn, whose Middleweight era hasn't yet got the credit they might deserve, and quite another think to rank the likes of Kalambay and Pavlik above Jake Lamotta. Saying they have more ability than Lamotta is contentious enough, but your saying you take record and quality of opponents into consideration as well? I really don't see where you are coming from.

You said my list was inconsistent, but yours seems all over the place to me.

[billeau2]

What I mean by ability/quality is simply how good a fighter is. In some sports it is easy to determine who is the best in history because they can actually measure it, such as in 100 metres sprint and such like. Usain Bolt is significantly faster than Jesse Owens and everyone else in history. For me any 'greatness' list has to surely be focussed largely upon how good the athlete/fighter was because the 'greatness' or 'significance' of an athlete/fighter is surely about how 'good' they were, at the very least relative to their own time. Looking at the film of Kalambay and LaMotta, as well as their opponents and looking at their records I think Kalambay was a better fighter than LaMotta. Might my judgement be wrong on that, and wrong on all my other judgements? Quite possibly, perhaps very likely but that is the way I see it. However the concept of ability/quality is not nebulous, isn't Mayweather better at welterweight right now than probably every single active welterweight? You also cannot possibily talk about a fighter having a better 'resume' than another without the idea of how good the fighters fought and defeated actually were and that is why I have a problem with the way people on here talk about 'resume'.

I keep my criteria as limited as possible because broader criteria would have to include things like cultural/social significance/impact. It seems extraordinarily hard to add that to the mix. Does Cerdan move up the list because about 300,000 Parisians came out to celebrate his defeat of Tony Zale http://www.nytimes.com/1998/10/02/op...edold.t_2.html whereas few people gave a **** about LaMotta when he defeated Cerdan?

Anyway there is no need to go into yet another debate about why I think boxing has improved over time. All i'll say is this, I don't think the best middleweights in the first few decades of the 20th century were as good as the best middleweights of subsequent eras, just as I don't think that right now that either Marcos Maidana or Amir Khan are as good as Floyd Mayweather at welterweight. There is nothing nebulous about that.

I can accept your opinion about fighters being better in the modern era because you state it as an opinion. But how good a fighter is, is the purpose of the list, generally you need a qualifyer as to WHY a fighter is good, better, or worthy. Qualifyers might be a fighter's resume, a fighter's natural or technical ability, etc. But when you give the example of La Motta perhaps you are saying that the way a fighter looks on film is a qualifyer for your list. Looking at a fighters opponents is a strange one to mention because as I read your list I don't see that this is considered...You seem to have an opinion about "better" but you know what? you can't really be faulted for that because while some guys have what I consider to be excellent criteria...these things are, alas based on opinions.

[Humean]

I generally don't criticize lists because I don't make my own, but Kalambay is so ridiculously overrated here I couldn't let it pass. How does the #6 middleweight of all time lose to Duane Thomas? His record outside of Europe (0-2) says a lot. The win over McCallum was impressive, but other than that he was just another top middleweight contender. He shouldn't be behind Nunn, who flattened him with one punch.

Being 0-2 outside of Europe says what exactly? It always seems that non-American fighters get criticized for fighting at home and when they lose in the United States that that means that they can't have been very good and yet the same reasoning never seems to be applied when the circumstances are in reverse .

As to the two losses. The Nunn knockout was really a bit of a lucky punch in the first round, Nunn must of course get credit for it but I don't think this result was representative of their respective talents. The Thomas defeat certainly counts against him but Kalambay is not the only fighter to lose fights he shouldn't have that routinely get placed high on these kind of lists.

That is the downside but look at the upside, the Kalule defeat could have went either way, personally I thought Kalambay just edged it, therefore I rate Kalambay a bit higher on that that someone who thought Kalule won would. The McCallum win sure was impressive, despite the close scorecards he won that fight very clearly, clear to the point of being practically dominant and the return fight could also have went either way. On top of that he beat a number of mainly high quality contenders and belt holders in Herol Graham twice, Iran Barkley, DeWitt, Collins, Sims, Dell'Aquila, Seillier. It is close between Kalambay and Nunn, perhaps Nunn should be higher on my list, I might be letting my dislike of his style bias my list.

Like I said I enjoyed your list because it is interesting to read names on there you don't usually see. However I think it's one thing to champion guys like Toney and Nunn, whose Middleweight era hasn't yet got the credit they might deserve, and quite another think to rank the likes of Kalambay and Pavlik above Jake Lamotta. Saying they have more ability than Lamotta is contentious enough, but your saying you take record and quality of opponents into consideration as well? I really don't see where you are coming from.

You said my list was inconsistent, but yours seems all over the place to me.

The biggest reason I have Pavlik ahead of LaMotta is that I think if they fought each other 10 times with both at their prime then I'd favour Pavlik probably 7-3. I know there are plenty of people who want to portray fighters like LaMotta as being God-like and that even suggesting that a fighter as flawed as Pavlik could beat an 'all time great' is sacrilegious but LaMotta was far from perfect himself. In terms of 'achievements' there is a lot of positives about LaMotta but look at the negative, now i'm not sure if it is correct to say that the following defeats were all in LaMotta's prime but most of them were:

Robinson 43 (despite a big weight advantage)
Zivic 43
Marshall 44
Robinson 45
Robinson 45 (perhaps LaMotta deserved the decision here)
Hudson 47
Dauthuille 49
Villemain 49 (his previous decision win over Villemain was considered to be a bit of a robbery)
Robinson 51

So he lost mainly to good, very good and great fighters. The only really bad defeat here was Hudson but I think you can overlook that kind of thing from those time periods where they fought so often and refereeing and judging was often either very poor or outright corrupt. Somehow you do have to balance out these defeats along with the positives yet it seems like in these lists that only the positives are looked at. Pavlik by contrast doesn't have anywhere near the positive achievements of LaMotta, at least in part because his era didn't involve the high number of fights of LaMotta's era but Pavlik was the lineal champion and only lost one fight at middleweight and therefore only has one real negative to his name. Of course LaMotta has more longevity at the top than Pavlik (9 years ring top 10 versus Pavlik's 6 years).

I can accept your opinion about fighters being better in the modern era because you state it as an opinion. But how good a fighter is, is the purpose of the list, generally you need a qualifyer as to WHY a fighter is good, better, or worthy. Qualifyers might be a fighter's resume, a fighter's natural or technical ability, etc. But when you give the example of La Motta perhaps you are saying that the way a fighter looks on film is a qualifyer for your list. Looking at a fighters opponents is a strange one to mention because as I read your list I don't see that this is considered...You seem to have an opinion about "better" but you know what? you can't really be faulted for that because while some guys have what I consider to be excellent criteria...these things are, alas based on opinions.

Stating the reason that fighter A is better than fighter B because of fighter A's resume does not solve the problem because what does it mean for fighter A to have a better resume than fighter B than that he defeated, drew and lost to better opponents? How do you know how good they are? At some stage you have to make a judgement about how good a fighter is from watching them fight or if that is not possible then find some other evidence to indicate it, such as seeing the footage of some of his opponents. (For example you might get some indication of how good Greb was by seeing footage of Mickey Walker). You could also just trust the opinion of someone else, writers, historians, former fighters and trainers but none of them should be trusted at face value anymore than your own judgement should! Fighters and trainers usually have too personal a stake in their judgements and rely upon faulty memories and writers and historians are no more experts than you yourself are.

The reason that looking at opponents is certainly an element of it is because the better quality of opponent the more likely you will see the weaknesses and strengths of the fighter, the more you can see what they can and cannot do. But ultimately it comes down to how they look in the ring. I cannot qualify it any narrower than that because what makes one fighter better is usually really intangible, it is not about having a crisper and more powerful left hook but more about timing and spatial awareness or indeed their strength of will.

[Welsh Jon]

Humean I strongly suspect you have just made a list of 16 random middleweight champions and are now attempting to see whether you can make up bull**** justifications for them.