For those who believe that having a "0" at the end of your record automatically makes you an all time great..?

My friend let me tell you my opinion but i would like to answer ur question with my personal lil story!

I do not wanna insult nobody i am done with insults!

Actually i have set an unbeaten record in my high school i am a hall of famer, an All American like you would say there!(lol)

Anyways i was champion (state and national in High school level) in 3 different sports!

Now one of the sports i was champion in was Pankration (MMA for you ) and Kickboxing as well!

in High school level i stayed undefeated in state and national level!

I had guys who were into Metal music and Rave (huge in Europe at the time) they smoke pot,ate junk ,partied hard ,they fukced from age of 14 (in bordellos i guess lol) and they had 0 connection with any sports! At the time i did not do any of this, i was dedicated as a stone on earth to sports!

LET ME TELL YOU ,every time they saw me training in gym or even in games, THEY WERE THE HARDEST CRITICS!

"MAN THAT BOY AINT SERIOUS CHALLENGE" "MAN U AINT ALL THAT UR WRESTLING IS WEAK" "MAN WITHOUT STRIKING YOU NOBODY" "MAN YOU ALL DEFENSE NO GROUND GAME" "MAN UR 0 MEANS **** U AINT FOUGHT NONE SPECIAL" etc etc u get the picture!

Other co-Athletes ,they never ever ever said such things!

yeah they had their opinions but with a very respectable way and with points to make during the convo!

Now most fans of sports, life has teach me,their connection with a sport is from the couch of their house, with a big plate of chips and a bottle of beer, CUSSING AND JUDGING DEDICATED ATHLETES!

Now Media ,not just in sports,in art,in music,in movies, u know why they became critics???they became critics to take out all their poison and jealousy vs the athletes or artists, simply because they failed to be ones! (i think many artists of music specially, would agree with me on this one)

u r a very smart guy and u can have ur own opinion based on ur judgment kerian !

If u have compete 1 minute inside a ring ,then u would acknowledge as great, anyone who step in a ring !period!

Now if u keep a 0 during ur career, to me personally, u r an all time Great !

Rocky-Ottke-Floyd-Joe they were world champions,they fought so many challengers WHO WANTED BAD THEIR BELTS!

they were not Arkansas state champs ,or California state champs,they were WORLD CHAMPIONS AND THEY FOUGHT GREAT FIGHTERS !they all great !it is easy for me saying from the couch of my house,floyd did not fight him or him or him or him ,well i can make a list for anyone,point is WHOEVER HE FOUGHT (and none of these 4 fought clowns, but A LEVEL FIGHTERS) he found a way to win over !

That is greatness period!

When you are a world champion you fight high quality opponents!Specially in modern times than boxing becoming more and more worldwide sport!

So of course Floyd is very Great!Like anybody who was a world champ and kept his 0!

He fought some high quality opponents but didn't fight all of them, I think he is a great fighter, but not an ATG. He fought an old DLH and an undersized Ricky Hatton when he should of been fighting Miguel Cotto and Antonio Margarito. There is talk now that he is going to be taking on Juan Manuel Marquez soon, a natural featherweight, that is not what makes you an ATG, he doesn't make competitive fights, he makes fights that seem competitive, he makes sure that his opponents are a little too old or a little too small.

I want to see him fight the top guys in his division, not guys coming up for a crack at him. I want to see him in there with the Cotto's and the Clottey's and see what he is really made of because those are the guys who are really going to test his greatness.

His record is something that is holding him back in the all time sense, he has had only 39 fights, that doesn't come close to the amount of fights that the real ATG's have. You can't (and never will) be able to compare his record with guys like Greb and Armstrong or even guys like Ruben Olivares and Jose Napoles.

What is ultimately going to hold him back is that he doesn't have enough fights, he hasn't fought the true best in his division and the fact that there is and probably always be questions to how great he could of really been and how great he really was.

No. I like to go deeper than the record. The 0 can be very deceiving. For instance Duane Bobick when he fought Norton had an 0 at the end. He got knocked out in 1 round and was exposed several times later. The quality of opponents would be of utmost importance. Many times a loss is a wake up call and blessing in disguise. Ali and Leonard actually became better after there first losses.

The debate about quality of opponent is an interesting one. Its more about who they didnt fight rather than who they did fight.

Marciano was in a fairly weak era of heavyweights but he is great because there was never a fighter he avoided. The same goes for Calzaghe in a lot of ways, he Kessler, Hopkins, Lacy and Jones, all the guys everyone wanted to see him tested against, all be it Jones was past his prime.

I still rate Calzaghe's rap sheet as stronger than Mayweather but there isnt much between them. The thing that really works against Floyd is the guys in the golden era of welterweights that he didnt fight, (Mosley, Cotto, Margarito, even Cintron).

Castillo, De La Hoya, Hatton, Judah, Corrales makes a good rap sheet and if they were the best light/welterweights of the era Mayweather would be greater, but unfortunately there were better guys that he never got to fight for one reason or another and this fact works against him

Being unbeaten is not as important as "who" you fought in terms of a historical legacy. It is one of many factors that need to be taken into account before you can claim historical greatness. Ike Ibeabuchi was unbeaten, a terrific puncher and had the potential to be "great", but never realized it because of the manner in which his career ended. Ricardo Lopez along with Rocky Marciano both took on the best of their era's, approached 50 fights and in my opinion met the requirements for historical greatness.

The intangibles matter, guys like Salvador Sanchez and Lazlo Papp have something that names like Joe Calzaghe and Sven Ottke simply do not have, call it creditability if you like, but what ever it is, you almost immediately recognize it. Being unbeaten is a small (but important) thing to an over all historical legacy, greatness requires a much larger scope that includes level & quality of competition, length of career, skill and ability, championship(s) won, career accomplishments, and like it or not the conduct of the individual in and outside the ring as well. Modern media impacts on the public "image" of a fighter, and is partially to blame for the problem that arises with modern "greats".

Below 140 Floyd Mayweather had it (what ever "it" is), even though he avoided a couple of name fighters, he took on almost all of the best of his era prior to venturing into the Welter weigh ranks. The questions he left at 147 (Margarito, Cotto, Clottey, and most notably Shane Mosley) hurt his over all legacy, but I still consider Floyd great by modern standards. I consider DeLa Hoya better (an ambiguous term chosen intentionally) than Floyd even though Floyd beat him, and consider Pernell Whitaker better than DeLa Hoya, but I was there, and I know Whitaker beat Oscar, the judges botched that one pretty bad. Under this definition of "greatness" Shane Mosley is superior to both Mayweather and Calzaghe "0" or not.

The manner in which I judge "historical greatness" really doesn't take being unbeaten as a major element, that "0" is one of many factors. I consider a guy like Ricky Hatton far superior to a guy like Sven Ottke, simply because Ricky took risks, fought the best he could find and ducked nobody. Ottke rarely left his German backyard, and still had about 6 very questionable decisions that ranked up their with the Chavez draw and DeLa Hoya loss on Whitakers record.

Floyd Mayweather was a "great" fighter, as was Joe Calzaghe, but not as "great" as quite a few others in history, many fighters of the past, and even possibly a few today were better than both Floyd and Joe. Each era is what it is, and those who live in modern times will have trouble measuring up to the "greats" of the past. It would be almost impossible to find another heavyweight among today's fighters that could measure up to Rocky Marciano's legacy, truthfully not even Holyfield can, but for all of Evanders losses, Holyfied's legacy is superior to Ike Ibeabuchi's "0". Each individual fighter has their own particular form or share of greatness, and some get more of "it" that others. Fame, ability, accomplishment and historical impact all play larger roles than that "0" on an undefeated fighters record when all is said and done.