Ten reasons why Ali is and will always be the greatest!!

First topic message reminder :

1. Beat the baddest Man on the planet twice..The invincibles ...In Liston and Foreman....
2. Transcended the sport like no other..
3. If Boxing didn't have weight divisions like in olden times he kicks everybodies backside on the list!
4. Until he was ill he avenged every defeat..
5. His calibre of opposition was superb...
6. Went 8 years undefeated at the top before Frazier..
7. 15 years at the top.....longevity not seen before or since.
8. Skill, speed, durability, chin, power....all round greatness with little in the way of weakness.
9. He upset the odds and came back to triumph like nobody before or since..
10. Because there was something superhuman about the guy...He had the x-factor like no one else...

9th and 13th on some of the lists I saw earlier.......makes you want to puke.

I don't think it's that much of a stretch, milkyboy. Obviously, you're right in saying that Garcia wasn't a Middleweight of Robinson or Hagler's class, no doubt. But he was, at the time, the man with the best claim to 160 lb supremacy. Armstrong may have been a natural Lightweight who squeezed himself down to 126 lb in the early days, but regardless of that, jumping from Featherweight, up to Welterweight and then down to Lightweight, keeping in mind who he was doing it against, all inside a year is simply phenomenal, natural Lightweight or not. We've seen how going up and down in weight so quickly can have an adverse effect on fighters, even when they return to their natural weight, so for me Armstrong's feat just can't be devalued in any sense.

Though I know it was a bit of a joking comparison, I think you're doing him a massive disservice when you liken his fight with Garcia to Leonard's with Lalonde!

It was tongue in cheek Chris, but it was to some degree a cherry picking of a relatively weak champion who himself was really a natural welter and who he had already beaten... i.e. it was all about the belts.

I'm not sure armstrong did yoyo weights downwards which is what often seems to drain fighters... what to me was impressive was that he beat all those welters whilst still actually fighting at lightweight himself.

One thing we can agree on though is he was some fighter!

these p4p lists are all subjective, i have a bias towards the classy boxers which probably gives me an inherent bias to robinson and ali at the top of the tree, i always seem to have armstrong at 3, but i've no beef with a anyone having him top dog.