Pretty Boy Floyd

How does one define greatness? In most team sports greatness goes hand in hand with titles (Jordan or Montana), but even then a player can be great without winning titles (Marino or Malone). However, individual sports are much harder to grade greatness. In some sports like swimming or track we can rely on times or records to show how great a competitor is at his or her sport. If I say that Micheal Phelps or Usain Bolt are all time greats in their respective sports I can back that up with the world record times they have recorded.

The problem comes into play in individual sports that have no standard measurement of greatness. Sports like Golf, Tennis and Boxing have well established history and yet if you ask 10 people who the Greatest of All Time (GOAT) is they will likely give you a variety of answers. Often this boils down to one aspect the level of competition. The discussion turns to debating who faced more difficult challenges in reaching the summit.

Boxing makes this task even more difficult due to the variety of weight classes and title belts. Weight classes fluctuate over time with each going through periods of great fighters and not so great fighters. At least in golf or tennis you have to overcome all your opposition in order to be victorious. In boxing however you are left with the choice of fight the opposition in your weight class or move up or down to find higher level of competition. Therefore the age old question in boxing seems to be "Who did you beat?"

I was thinking about this after watching Floyd Mayweather (PBF) destroy Shane Mosley this past weekend, it was a masterful performance that seemed to further distance PBF from his contemporaries. After the fight though most of the dialogue centered on how PBF had finally fought a top notch opponent and won, which cemented his legacy as an all time great.

The more I listened to this logic the more upset I got. Shouldn't the legacy of a fighter be how he won instead of who he faced? PBF cannot control who was in his weight class, he simply has gone out and dominated everyone who has been put in front of him. It is not PBF's fault that his divisions lack the all time great P4P fighters that they once had and it would be unfair to ask him to jump to weight class he doesn't feel comfortable just so we can watch him fight another great fighter. Yet, somehow his legacy was tarnished by the fact that he was 40-0 with no real great challenges heading into Saturday night's fight.

Would PBF have been held in higher regard if he had lost some all time battles with great opponents like Sugar Ray Leonard? Does a guy, who has dominated boxing to point where no fighter has really challenged him in any match up, have to go out of his way to fight another all time great in order to be recognized as Top 20 P4P fighter of all time?

I say no. In my eyes its about how you fight instead of who you fight. PBF has been dominating force throughout his entire career and has yet to taste defeat or even really come close to it and that to me is much more impressive than any criticism a person has with his opponents. So if a dominating victory over a 38 Shane Mosley is the "great victory" you needed to finally believe that PBF is an all time great. In my humble opinion he was already in that discussion and has been for a long time.