Yeah he was great and exciting, but I'm surprised he was ranked higher than duran and Pryor. Even more surprised with Eddie. The guy lost to James Scott just two years before.
Well, James Scott was a good fighter... You have to remember... This is prior to Pryor beating Alexis and this is also Duran after "No Mas" which killed his reputation... This is also Saad before he fell apart... EMM was coming off of beating up Marvin Johnson and Jerry Martin... The list is from the January '81 KO magazine, so we are basically seeing the tail end of 1980...Eddie hasn't fought Mike Spinks yet, Alexis Arguello has not yet fought Jim Watt for the lightweight title, etc.
Very impressive. It looks even better now looking back that far though....because all names are now famous historical names. I'm sure a Top 10 P4P list from the early 00s looks even better now than it did at the time for similar reasons. In no particular order you probably have included: Trinidad Mosley De La Hoya Jones Hopkins Mayweather Morales Lewis That list would be nothing to sniff at either and in 20 years time a similar person would look back at that list and express similar sentiments.
That's true but take out Pacquiao and Mayweather and look at any random P4P list from the past 3 years alone. People often tend to underrate modern fighters but it's not all about nostalgia.