The Greatest...

First topic message reminder :

OK.

There was a post from D4 saying that if Khan became a 5-weight world champ he'd be the greatest Briton ever. I agree he'd be up there - but IMO Fitzsimmons, Lewis and Wilde are still ahead of him.

SRR is almost universally accepted to be the greatest fighter of all time. Or Burley. Or Langford. Or Jackson (just for Dave). Or Ali.

Other sports still allow modern fighters to achieve "greatness" - Tendulkar, Federer for example. But can a modern day boxer become accepted to be "the greatest".

2 questions:

1. Could Manny become "the greatest"? Who (ideal world) does he need to beat?

2. We have an undefeated world champion called 606face. 606face has just won a title at 140 - but reckons he can be effective all the way to light middle - he ways 152 on fight night and rehydrates well. Who in the current scene does 606face need to beat to be "the greatest". Even if he beats everyone - could he still become no.1?

prettyboy1304 wrote:Sparring is training and should be treated as such. Sparring should be used for fine tuning your skills and practicing new things or working on things that you don't do well. This should be put into practice in the ring that's why I feel prospects especially should fight more. Once a month imo, the emphasis placed on their 0 is ridiculous and the reaction to a shaky performance is poor.
For example Groves struggled against Anderson but came through and got the win but was slated in some corners. It should have been looked upon as good experience and something he will learn from.

Yes but its all well good saying a loss is ok and shouldnt be a disaster but in reality its seriously damaging. Especially if it were to come to a guy like Anderson. If Groves had lost he could have kissed goodbye to a fight with De Gale and had to rebuild his career almost from scratch. Hand on heart if Groves actually had lost to Anderson would you really rate him highly at all or would you actually just shrug and say its just part of learning?

You will get out of sparring what you put into it. If its rubbish, half hearted and uncompetitive then its just as useless as fighting some walking punchbag. If its good quality and competitive then it will provide good experience and development with the advantage of not putting your career at too much risk.

Ideally there should be a balance of the two. Getting high quality sparring but pointless fights isnt going to allow you the neccessary platform to capitalise. But being overmatched or risking defeat wont do your career or development any good either.

some people will pick floyd some people will pick manny- most people acknowledge that its one of the two who will be remembered as the ATG of our age. personally i think floyd has the skills but not the right mind set, whereas manny has the right mental attitude but isn't perfect boxing wise.

where never going to find out who's better unless they make the fight which isn't likely. nobody has the facts or inside knowledge to prove whos better worse its all just opinion, so why people get so distressed trying to convice other people there wrong is beyond me.

personally i think energy would be better spent discuss whos got what it takes to become the next ATG instead of arguing why manny/floyd is/isnt better. for me khan has the ability but is skating on thin ice with his attitude and he's teams decisions behind the scenes. i think gamboa has what it takes to be remembers as an ATG

manos de piedra wrote:

prettyboy1304 wrote:Sparring is training and should be treated as such. Sparring should be used for fine tuning your skills and practicing new things or working on things that you don't do well. This should be put into practice in the ring that's why I feel prospects especially should fight more. Once a month imo, the emphasis placed on their 0 is ridiculous and the reaction to a shaky performance is poor.
For example Groves struggled against Anderson but came through and got the win but was slated in some corners. It should have been looked upon as good experience and something he will learn from.

Yes but its all well good saying a loss is ok and shouldnt be a disaster but in reality its seriously damaging. Especially if it were to come to a guy like Anderson. If Groves had lost he could have kissed goodbye to a fight with De Gale and had to rebuild his career almost from scratch. Hand on heart if Groves actually had lost to Anderson would you really rate him highly at all or would you actually just shrug and say its just part of learning?

You will get out of sparring what you put into it. If its rubbish, half hearted and uncompetitive then its just as useless as fighting some walking punchbag. If its good quality and competitive then it will provide good experience and development with the advantage of not putting your career at too much risk.

Ideally there should be a balance of the two. Getting high quality sparring but pointless fights isnt going to allow you the neccessary platform to capitalise. But being overmatched or risking defeat wont do your career or development any good either.

That's the problem though their shouldn't have been that sort of reaction if Groves had lost.

The Mighty Atom wrote:Have to disagree with that 100%

In the Anderson fight Groves had to dig deep to pull out the win, he simply won't have to do that in sparring and it enabled him to react in the heat of battle which again he wouldn't have to do in sparring. Sparring isn't wishy washy but it is largely manufactured, for the large part it isn't done on the spur of the moment and you are directed as to what to do. Dirrell in my opinion is a terrible choice of sparring partner, he's at the current time a couple of notches above both Groves and Degale and is far more elusive, he would have to contain himself in sparring which devalues it.

Thats just one aspect of it though. Is it going to make his skills sharper?

I think Dirrell is a good choice because being told to try go after him and try get him is better preparation than fighting a guy like Anderson who is easy to hit.

Most gyms now will vary their sparring between instructions and open sparring where they just let the two fighters go at it.

You cant practice things in a fight with the same effect as sparring. If you want to fight off the ropes or practice your inside fighting then trying to do it in a competitve fight is far too risky. Fights are there to be won using what you have learned in sparring.

A competitive fight will be better for heat of the battle elements but it wont neccessrily fine tune skills or tailor a strategy to a particular style any better. And the trade off is you run the risk of a serious setback!

Dirrell is the perfect sparring opponent for Groves. World class, south paw, slick, it could make all the difference. It must be quite rare to spar with someone who is probably considerably better than the opponent you're facing.

Sparring helps to teach certain skills but you also need an enviroment to test them fully. Anderson wasn't a nobody, he's a good domestic level fighter whom Groves should be beating if he has high aspirations, the fight highlighted how much work is still left to do something you can't gauge properly from sparring.

The Mighty Atom wrote:Sparring helps to teach certain skills but you also need an enviroment to test them fully. Anderson wasn't a nobody, he's a good domestic level fighter whom Groves should be beating if he has high aspirations, the fight highlighted how much work is still left to do something you can't gauge properly from sparring.

I dont see why you cant gauge it from sparring. If your defence is open and your getting caught this should be evident in sparring. If it isnt then your arent training properly.

I agree with you that you need the right platform to take sparring to the next level and weak opposition isnt the way to go.

Its about a striking a balance.

Sparring is what it is, in an actual fight things like nerves are going to effect you and you can see what's going wrong far better and what really needs addressing. You seem to be suggesting that sparring is full on which it isn't at all.

It's difficult for any modern fighter to match up to the old time greats sheerly down to the number of fights/activity levels (which was mostly a necessity back then because they didn't get the same type of money). SRR had roughly 200 fights - so it's difficult to compete.

SLR gets up there because he fought the top guys in their prime - whereas Pacquiao has a few asterisks next to some of his big wins. SLR is also perceived as having very few weaknesses, whereas Pacquiao is perceived as being easy to hit, not great on the inside, etc.

For me if Pacquiao were to beat Mayweather at 147 and Martinez at 154 then he'd be in the top 10 of all time.