Manny Pacquiao 2nd greatest boxer ever?

by Marv Dumon, Examiner.com

 In the World's Greatest Ever Boxer website, fans worldwide were able to vote for who they thought are the sport's all-time prize fighters.  Nearly 500,000 votes were cast, and voting ended in December 2009.
By Weight Class  >

Wilfredo Gomez (44-3-1) was voted as the greatest ever bantamweight.

Pacquiao (50-3-2) was voted as the greatest ever featherweight.

Roberto Duran (103-16) was voted as the greatest ever lightweight.

Roy Jones, Jr (54-5) was voted as the greatest ever light heavyweight.

Muhammad Ali (56-5) was voted as the greatest ever heavyweight.

All-Time Greats ?


   Fans voted Muhammad Ali as the third greatest boxer ever.  Manny Pacquiao was voted second.  And Sugar Ray Robinson (173-19-6) was voted in the poll as the world's greatest boxer ever.

Most expert panels list Henry Armstrong (149-21-10) as ranked third on the all-time list.  Ali, second.  Robinson, first.

   Polling are inherently biased when assessing current fighters against retired fighters.  First, it is more appropriate to assess a boxer throughout an entire career.  A voter can only do that after the boxer retires.  Therefore, the poll would have more valid results several years after Pacquiao' and Roy Jones' retirement.


  That is why to be inducted into the basketball and football hall of fame, retired athletes must wait a few years in order to become eligible for induction.

 Waiting a few years after retirement allow voters and panelists to sober up in order to make their professional assessments.  Additionally, media coverage and hype will have become more objective with hindsight.

Finally, ideally all-time lists in any sport should be era independent.  That is not possible of course.  Athletes are reviewed even though they fought or played in different eras, with different game rules.

   That distorts the comparison.  Additionally, athletes that played before the 1960s often enjoyed less media coverage.  Thus, there tends to be less video footage of their feats which makes it harder for voting panelists to evaluate their accomplishments.

Top athletes today have much more media coverage.  Their athletic performances on the field are well documented, and videos of their accomplishments proliferate on sites such as YouTube.

source: examiner.com