How rosy are them glasses?

I quite enjoyed the 100 greatest heavyweights series which ran a short while ago, and it got me thinking about how nice a boost time tends to give to a fighters ranking. lifted this off Wikipedia, so it might be wrong, but I've seen similar reports on a few other sites, just a little lazy to do stringent research.

Rocky Marciano's All time ranking in 1962
" In December 1962, a Ring magazine poll of 40
boxing experts had Jack Dempsey rated the
#1 Heavyweight of all time, with Joe Louis
2nd, Jack Johnson 3rd and Marciano 7th."

In 1972
" In 1971, Nat Fleischer, perhaps boxing's most
famous historian and also editor and founder
of Ring magazine , named Marciano as the all-
time 10th greatest Heavyweight Champion."

But by 1998, despite the intervening years producing the likes of Ali, Foreman, Listón, Holmes et al, " In 1998, Ring named Marciano as the 6th
greatest Heavyweight Champion ever"

We float around to 2005, and " In 2005,
Marciano was named the fifth greatest
heavyweight of all time by the International
Boxing Research Organization."

We skip to the modern day, and he's just been bumped up to #3. Will he one day be greater than Ali? This isn't a knock on Marciano, gotta love a guy who maxed out talent wise. Just find it an interesting aspect of boxing. That "0" carries a lot of clout, and as his fighting style, and that of his higher ups gets forgotten, will only become more valuable. As 21st century philosopher Jay Z (no hyphen) pointed out in his acclaimed thesis "Tom Ford", "Numbers don't lie, check the scoreboard"

Indeed raf. I think similar points were raised in the seemingly endless rants from az on Marciano. In December 1962, the wise old sages had been brought up on the legend of dempsey, which flattered him over Louis. Marciano was a recent memory so had no nostalgic boost and his flaws were still in the memory.

I have no doubt that in 20 years down the line, the klitschko's will be more highly thought of and that mayweather will rise the p4p ATG lists. Its human nature. I think the 80's were great and always will, despite the miners strikes, Falklands war, the wicked witch, nterest rates at 15% crippling every one etc.

It should be easier to compare fighters with all the footage available now, but it will still happen.

The '0' certainly counts for more these days and probably contributes to marciano's rating. There's always that argument... 'nobody ever beat him, who can say for sure that he wouldn't keep pulling rabbits from the hat whoever he fought' Common sense suggests otherwise but because he never lost you can't categorically disprove it.