Dear Stephen, It seems obvious that most of your readers appreciate and value your mailbag due to your impressive knowledge of boxing, but I also personally quite like your sound logic and your way of thinking, and recently I have used two things that I had read in your various mailbags to debate with some friend of mine. Indeed, many people I know were saying that Lomachenko’s professional career was overvalued due to his relatively small number of fights, and while disagreeing, I often struggled to counter that argument, but when I read in one of your mailbags that Lomachenko had more world championship fights than Marvin Hagler, and I wondered how I had not used that argument before. Another thing that I hear a lot is that Salvador Sanchez would have been one of the greatest ever if he had not died so young, and while there is no doubt that he had the talent to be that great, I was always thinking that you never know what could have been. Then one of your mailbags about that issue, you were stating, What if Foreman had died just before his fight with Ali? What if Tyson had died just after his fight against Spinks? And this was, for me, the perfect argument to go back to my friends and make my point that many fighters could have been deemed almost invincible if they had died young at their absolute peak. I would like otherwise to have your views on the 3 following points: 1. Lomachenko. He is one of my favourite fighters of all time. This said, there is one point on which I would kindly slightly disagree with you when you said that if Lomachenko had beaten Haney he could have been considered as an all-time great overall, and you implied that he cannot because he lost. However, when assessing the career of a fighter, if you think that he has been robbed by the judges for an important fight, then surely you should consider whether the result was fair? 2. Mike Tyson. Sometime ago I wrote to you that I did not think that Mike Tyson should be considered an all-time great, because his peak was very short and he never won a fight when he was in trouble (except for Frans Botha), he never avenged one of his defeats, and he looked morally fragile at the highest level when facing adversity. As usual your reply was very clear and thorough, however, probably because my question was not clear enough, you replied to me that Mike Tyson for you was clearly an all-time great heavyweight. I do agree with that, but is there a different between an all-time great heavyweight and an all-time great fighter? 3- There was a recent article on BoxingScene about article about Mosley vs De La Hoya from Eric Raskin. While the article is quite good, I was somewhat disappointed to note that there was never any mention that Mosley admitted to having used PEDs when preparing for the second De La Hoya fight. Should not all boxing writers when writing about past careers of retired fighters, always mention when a fighter has used PEDs? How can we fight against PEDs if retired fighter who used them is celebrated in the same way as those that didn’t? All the best, Chris from France
