Is it unreasonable to include someone like Carl Lewis or Usain Bolt?
This discussion isn’t complete without considering Babe Zaharias, the pride of Beaumont.
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Excellent choice, I don’t think any other woman athlete has come close to the Babe. Even though she’s been gone almost 70 years still quite a bit in Beaumont about her. Glad she hasn’t been forgotten
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Each of us has our choice of great athletes. Don’t forget Fritz and Waldo and Wahoo and Ivan and the like. Oh and the great manager back in the day, Gary Hart ! . Sarcasm… My real favorite to watch… day in and day out was the great …Jose Cruzzzzzz , an amazing talent.
She married Alex Karras, I know, I saw the movie.
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I was just thinking, we get really serious about preventing concussions and head injuries in football, yet we have boxing and the cage fights whose whole point is to inflict them on the opponent. Am I missing something here?
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We like violence.
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7 championships, wow!
Is it too late to say TEAMS win championships. Lol
Anyway Brady is one of the top 4 qbs I have seen play and helped lead Tampa.
Jim Thorpe, Babe Zaharius, Dave Winfield, Bruce (whatever) Jenner, Carl Lewis, Michael Phelps, Michael Jordan, Jesse Owens, Serena Williams, Naim Süleymanoğlu, Bo Jackson, Roberto Duran… to name a few
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I think what you’re missing is that boxing took a pretty hard dive in popularity when we found out about CTE in that sport.
A couple of more for consideration :
Pele
And another soccer player- a tall, skinny kid from Lagos whose name escapes me…
Well, it sure seems that the cage fights, which are far more brutal than boxing, has picked up the slack.
Yeah boxing didn’t fall off because of CTE. Boxing fell off because there was a huge drop off of in compelling personalities, specifically American personalities, especially in the heavyweight division.
If CTE was a determining factor, all three boxing, MMA, and football would be seeing massive blowback. But it’s only boxing that has really fallen off overall, and that started way before CTE being a thing.
Sugar Ray Leonard should be on the list before Duran. He won at least 2 out of 3 matchups between them.
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Duran won world championships in 4 weight classes. No disrespect to Leonard, but I would have taken a young Roberto against a same age Leonard anytime.
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Good to mention Pele too, and yeah, that Nigerian dude was pretty special.
Watered down league??? What is that a joke. Jordan played at the height of NBA talent! Barkley, Ewing, Miller, Malone, the entire Detroit Pstons. Today’s NBA is a$$.
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Have you ever noticed that people will say, “Needless to say” and then say it anyway?
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Naw. I loved that era and grew up on it, but it’s really not even close. That was the golden era of the NBA in terms of cultural popularity. You can definitely argue the NBA was more interesting and more fun back then for a myriad of reasons, but most of the players from back then couldn’t hang in today’s game at all.
KG actually just had an interview as the rare older player saying most guys from 20-30 years couldn’t play today and gave his reasons, which was nice since most players who have been retired for a while are “get off my lawn” types.