Quote:
Originally Posted by spiderarms
Srehm#1, I agree with you on alot of things, have many of the same favorite fighters and enjoy your contributions to this site but it is clear to me that how we evaluate the Top 10 Fighter rankings is different. You can find my responses below:
What stands Wilson apart from Fotiu, Wensink, Jonathan etc is that he did it crossing over eras, had a better fight card, beat who he was supposed to beat, never lost in a demeaning manor and maintained the highest level of skill til the day he retired with his back injury. This is very difficult to say when Stan Jonathan is one of my all-time favorites.
Wilson fought many of the same top guys Probert/Brown fought and in some cases faired better and because he was so sound both offensively and defensively, I can say that no matter what generation he fought in, when you dropped the gloves with Behn Wilson, you got a top flight performance each and everytime and were always in danger to be hurt. His high intellect would make him adaptable to the 90's and beyond.
I agree with you that Wilson and Probert/Brown were all different in their demeaner. Probert/Brown were more intense, nastier and definitely had more of an edge. This is a style I personally prefer. I also liked their enforcing skills and how they protected their smaller teamates. This is why I like Fotiu, Gillies and O'Reilly so much as well.
But if I'm rating them strictly as fighters for the All-Time NO#1 position then I have to take into account their entire career, and BIG LOSES definitely play into my equation no matter what era they fought.
This is why whether I like him or not, I rate Wilson as the best.
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hey, it's true, wilson may not have felt the need to avenge those fights. he may have been willing to let them slide because they weren't huge beatings. losses sure but very close fights. he might have figured the issue was settled with the one fight. I would have liked to see him avenge them because there have always been some questions there regarding those two fights especially. Were they in his head? was he worried about losing even worse in a rematch-those kinds of things.
I love Wilson. I'm one of his biggest supporters here and I usually come out both guns blazing to defend him when our resident sh!t stirrer is running loose in this forum. So it's not like I have any reason to detract from his great career.
As far as top-10 fighter rankings-It doesn't matter to me who has who at number one and why. It's pretty clear on this site who is the #1 fighter of all time. those who have wilson at #1 are the minority for sure-although i have a great respect for those who i know rank wilson that high like BS25 or 2,5,10. i do think wilson is deserving of his high ranking. I have him in my holy trinity but he has always been sort of the junior partner for me. again his era comes into play. He never suffered a bad loss. some close one's sure but that is part of that era. jonathan wensink fotiu gillies nystrom gassoff etc they lost few fights because the era was weaker. less great fighters fighting much less. lower fight totals, shorter careers. Wilson has the benefit of being ranked according to 9 years in the league. probert had almost twice as long a career and fought in a high volume era. wilson in his 16th season would have been subject to the same break downs and struggles that probert did. people ranking probert on his last few years are missing the point any way. probert's first 9 seasons are very comparable to wilson's-even more so if you consider how much more he fought against some all time comp in that time. plus the fact that he never let a loss go in that time. the first domi loss was slight but because it was domi and the way he threw it in probert's face-the fight became a huge deal and the rematch picked up so much hype. i imagine wilson would have let that kind of loss go-but probert was another animal entirely. probert put together a far greater card than wilson, was the undisputed champ-not just the best fighter for a particular season. he has a few fights that may go down as top-10 fights of all time as well as putting together 2 of the top-5 best seasons ever. i don't think wilson could ever claim anything close to that. Not to mention being considered the gold standard that other fighters are compared to-to this day.
i do agree that wilson and many others from his era would have done fine in probert's era. I don't necessarily count that when i rank a fighter. to me, it's about performance and accomplishment. what did they do? who did they beat? how did they beat them? were they the best? did they beat the best? were they the best for a good stretch of time? these kinds of factors come into play when i try to rate these fighters. wilson might have been able to beat probert in a straight up fight-who knows? but probert's accomplishments far outweigh the accomplishments of mr. wilson in my eyes.
they do have some common opponents but i never saw wilson take out semenko the way probie did. i never saw wilson send mcgill flying backwards from a tko punch the way probert did. wilson never engaged in an all time style fight with mcsorley the way probert did-sh!i i gave probert the win in his only fight with mcclelland-i gave mcclelland an edge win against wilson in their only go.
i've said it before and i'll say it again but wilson fotiu gillies etc would have absolutely had their hands full against fighters from probert's era. obviously this is just my opinion but it's not the size or strength of that later era that makes me think this but the many more pure fighters with so many more versatile styles we would see from toe to toe style guys to machine gun rapid fire punchers to power punchers to technical greats and stamina guys to straight up southpaws-that era had it all in spades and is the reason why those fighters lost more fights in their careers. when you're fighting theses kinds of fighters all the time, night in and night out-you will lose more no doubt. not only that but there was a huge step up in the competitiveness of the second or third tier type fighters as well.
so, to sum up my long winded post-the era they fought in has to come into play when ranking these guys. having few losses is a great accomplishment-but i don't think you jump up
stan jonathan ahead of guys like brown or probert. jonathan has maybe 3 losses in his career but he barely finds a spot in my top-25-and I'm a Bruins fan, born and bred in boston! same for wensink with his few losses. It was good they fought when they did because it would have been far different for them had they played into the late 80's or even the 90's. Imagine wilson doing his thing in '93 or '94? we would have been treated to some great fights for sure. more losses, but some great bouts no doubt about that.