Steadfast opinions and Interests

[Elroy1]

Let's be honest Bill..

Come on..

REASON with me here for a moment..

NOBODY REALLY thinks that say Muhammad Ali or Joe Louis were bums.. Hell, nor does anybody REALLY think that even SonnyListon or Earnie Sahvers were "bums" (although "bum busters" is entirely accurate).

But really, what they did back in 1970 or 1930 you seem to encapsulate as time immemorial. You hold these guys to impossible standards that they could never uphold to in reality.

The simply assertion of how good Ali's reflexes were is discredited by anybody who has seen his fights..

In fact you and Anthony and all nut bags know, that MOST of the guys claiming Ali or Louis to be the best in the world have NEVER seen a complete Ali or Louis fight!

When somebody tells someone Tyson was a machine today who never seen him before and they pull up a clip of him, what do they say? Of course they are impressed!

But what about Ali for example or Foreman? Today it is a joke!

It is immediately clear to anybody, man woman or child who has no vested interest in boxing that Foreman is not really powerful by modern standards and that Ali is very bad at boxing.

It is only because you are CONDITIONED to think or saY so that this meme sticks so strongly.

If I divulged with a religious nut the fact that jesus birthday is merely a celebration of the suns movement in the sky, would that prevent you from doing thanks giving this year? Of course not! But it is still a very powerful meme!!

You guys both and others are promoting boxers from years in the past who have physically not much chance at all of winning against modern boxers who, apart from the usual slander, ALL have exceptionally better records than anything that came before. And that is, MEANINGFUL records too, not the inflated variety your old heroes relied upon..

I don't want to be unkind and I don't want to be acidic here Bill, I am reaching out here.. But I DO want to be factually correct... So listen closely..

When I say that Ali etc are bums, OF COURSE I am half joking in the sense that they were the BEST then on offer, no doubt!!

However it MUST be understood that should they have been ALLOWED to even fight today (which they mostly either wouldn't have or atleast would have been cruisers) then they would have been nothing but bums!!!

How could it be otherwise? LOOK at them!

[billeau2]

Let's be honest Bill..

Come on..

REASON with me here for a moment..

NOBODY REALLY thinks that say Muhammad Ali or Joe Louis were bums.. Hell, nor does anybody REALLY think that even SonnyListon or Earnie Sahvers were "bums" (although "bum busters" is entirely accurate).

But really, what they did back in 1970 or 1930 you seem to encapsulate as time immemorial. You hold these guys to impossible standards that they could never uphold to in reality.

The simply assertion of how good Ali's reflexes were is discredited by anybody who has seen his fights..

In fact you and Anthony and all nut bags know, that MOST of the guys claiming Ali or Louis to be the best in the world have NEVER seen a complete Ali or Louis fight!

When somebody tells someone Tyson was a machine today who never seen him before and they pull up a clip of him, what do they say? Of course they are impressed!

But what about Ali for example or Foreman? Today it is a joke!

It is immediately clear to anybody, man woman or child who has no vested interest in boxing that Foreman is not really powerful by modern standards and that Ali is very bad at boxing.

It is only because you are CONDITIONED to think or saY so that this meme sticks so strongly.

If I divulged with a religious nut the fact that jesus birthday is merely a celebration of the suns movement in the sky, would that prevent you from doing thanks giving this year? Of course not! But it is still a very powerful meme!!

You guys both and others are promoting boxers from years in the past who have physically not much chance at all of winning against modern boxers who, apart from the usual slander, ALL have exceptionally better records than anything that came before. And that is, MEANINGFUL records too, not the inflated variety your old heroes relied upon..

I don't want to be unkind and I don't want to be acidic here Bill, I am reaching out here.. But I DO want to be factually correct... So listen closely..

When I say that Ali etc are bums, OF COURSE I am half joking in the sense that they were the BEST then on offer, no doubt!!

However it MUST be understood that should they have been ALLOWED to even fight today (which they mostly either wouldn't have or atleast would have been cruisers) then they would have been nothing but bums!!!

How could it be otherwise? LOOK at them!

Its good to hear you try to be reasonable...I will always respond to such dialogue constructively. A couple of things:

a) I am not so biased regarding talent when talent is evaluated soberly by all involved. I tend to think a fighter like Razor rudock for example, deserves more accolades than most give him... i certainly respect the talents of fighters like Tyson and Lewis. I have reasons why I think boxing and boxers from the past are also better than people often credit them. If I had to state the most basic reason it has to do with subtlety. Time actually spent doing the thing... The average fighter, like anyone else really, would start at a young age and be mentored up the ladder.

But there are trainers like Barry Robinson, who are passionate, totally ensconsed in modern fighters and their subtle ways...and I support him and often his conclusions. They were/are all good imo, the enviroment changed, different factors and techniques came into play. My point again, is that I don't favor the older fighters exclusively. when a fighter fights with smaller gloves, things are just different. The fighting distance is different, the concerns are different, not better, not worse. You can see in my posting I often point this out, not necessarily in a biased fashion. it takes tremendous power to generate in 8-12 oz gloves, some punches used in the old days can't even be used.

having said that I can always agree to disagree on relative talent and merit...sans greatly exxagerated claims to either extreme! I would equally laugh at a poster who thinks that a guy like Jack Johnson is invincible as one who thinks Klitsko is invincible.

b) I am going to be honest here once again, just take it on faith that i mean this in a constructive way. There are people that believe that because NASA (the space agency) has lied to us, which is almost surely the case... that we have virtually no idea about anything that cannot be eyeballed in some fashion as a measurement.

Two comments: First, One can certainly abide that the government has lied to us. One can even think, that there are things in space that prove exterrestial activites...One can do this without being so extreme as to discount all physics since Aristotle. Some of these people think the Earth is flat because of what their eye tells them. These people do not believe in gravity, thinking that pressure differences keep us afoot. My point here is that this to me is extreme. I won't get into the reasons but a little understanding of satelite activity and how we measure things based on emissions can tell us that this position is absurd.

Frankly you come across as extreme in your views, analogous to the way these people, who, are contrarians, come across. I actually am a contrarian myself. I value to a great extent, the bravery, the self sacrifice of going against the herd...have done it all my life. But Elroy when one pushes it to a point of absurdity it sort of ruins it for all the good people trying to push the envelope. There is great value in questioning assumptions for sure, but imo, and I know I say this a lot..."extraordinary ideas require extraordinary proof."

I bare you no malice. I would hope that my comments can explain the basis for my entropy so to speak. I won't get into it about specific points like how good Ali was, his reflexes, etc exept to say, there are things that Ali did martial arts wise which look extraordinary in the ring. However they are also some of the same things Roy Jones has done...