I have never posted in this forum, and don't want to piss anyone off, but boxing, mma, wrestling, etc., basically any sport that involves combatives of some sort, always have the most loud mouth, unrealistic, bias fans ever.
Here is the deal, I don't look at who I like, because I don't know any of these guys on a personal level, I look at the fights and the facts, end of story.
I have heard everyone mention everyone when it comes to hardest hitter ever. This is Foreman. Alot of guys hit hard, but not as hard as Foreman. 99.99% of the knockouts you see in the ring go like this:
The soon to be winner throws a punch, maybe a few, and the soon to be loser tries to move, block, basically do anything but open up and accept the hit, but he gets hit anyway. When the soon to be loser gets hit, it is rarely a "clean" hit. It is never a full on, full power, uninterupted hit to the chin. Usually the knock out punch is delivered, and it end up barely clipping the soon to be loser, or it grazes his head.
Now this doesn't look impressive to the untrained eye, but to anyone who knows what they are seeing, we are aware that the hit is MUCH harder than it looks, so even without perfect delivery it causes enough trauma to knock the guy out.
Foreman was different though. He is the only boxer I have ever seen consistantly (not every once in awhile when he gets lucky) hit so hard that he moves a heavyweight boxer with his punch. He would hit someone in the arm and move them one direction or the other. And when he knocked someone out, it wasn't a clip of the glove, followed by a drop to the ground. He hit someone with that knockout punch and their head continued to move in the direction/path that his fist started out on.
Now for the "greatest" boxer ever.
Many people will say that Tyson was the greatest in his prime. Well, he didn't have alot of competition, and most guys were so intimidated by his aggressiveness that they were basically beat before they stepped in the ring. Plus he had, what, like 55-60 fights?
Others will say Ali was the greatest. Again, this is a bias opinion. He was champion, because he was good. He was not the greatest ever. He had only 61 total fights, he won 55 of them.
But look at Archie Moore. Had over 200 fights, won 187 of those fights, and 145 of them were by knock out. He WON over THREE TIMES as many fights as Ali had ever even fought. And with 145 knockouts, he officially knocked out more men in the ring than a majority of pro boxers ever even fight in their entire career.
So Archie Moore is looking like the greatest ever to me. Except he isn't.
Rocky Marciano was. True, he only had 44 fights I believe, but guess what?
Rocky was fighting and winning his fights between his late 20's and early 30's. This is the age when most men in boxing are retiring. And this was in the 50's, when working out, good nutrition, etc were not common, so the fact that he was fighting, winning, and was the heavyweight champion of the world in his early 30's in even more impressive.
Sure he doesn't have the knockouts that Arhcie Moore has, but he did KNOCK OUT Archie Moore when they fought.
He is also, to this day, THE ONLY heavyweight champion to EVER retire with a perfect, undefeated career.
For arguments sake though, a question to the boxing fans out there. If you disagree with my conclusion, then who do you think is the best boxer ever, and why?
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