12 "super-human" athletes of the last 50 years

[notin]

Mayweather fought until age 40 and still no one could hit him. That's just incredible.

 

Mayweather has the better career, but Tyson in his prime was pretty damn elite...

[a700hitter]

Mayweather has the better career, but Tyson in his prime was pretty damn elite...

It is definitely a close call, and obviously very different types of boxers. I give Mayweather the nod because he maintained his level of excellence for so long.

[dgalehouse]

Mayweather has the better career, but Tyson in his prime was pretty damn elite...

 

No question . Not taking anything away from Tyson. He certainly was elite . He was still in his prime when he fought Douglas . And Holyfield beat him as well. Nobody beat Mayweather .

[Bellhorn04]

Going back in time , the great champion , Joe Louis , had a couple of good lines . Regarding a particularly elusive opponent , he said " He can run , but he can't hide ." After he knocked out a foe with a body shot , a reporter said to him , " he didn't like getting hit in the gut ". Joe replied simply ( if somewhat ungrammatically ) " Who do " ?

 

Good stuff.

[notin]

We need more threads like this

[Thunder]

Here's a name I'd like to throw into the mix. Not sure if it's already in this thread or not, but I'm too lazy to read through it: Jim Thorpe

[notin]

Here's a name I'd like to throw into the mix. Not sure if it's already in this thread or not, but I'm too lazy to read through it: Jim Thorpe

 

Thorpe is an excellent multi-sport athlete, and if the OP didn’t set a 50 year timeframe, he hopefully would have been brought up by now. A few other older multi-sport names include former Celtic/Red Sox Gene Conley and The Rifleman Chuck Connors. Along with Thorpe, another comp is the Golden Greek, Harry Agganis...

[illinoisredsox]

Thorpe is an excellent multi-sport athlete, and if the OP didn’t set a 50 year timeframe, he hopefully would have been brought up by now. A few other older multi-sport names include former Celtic/Red Sox Gene Conley and The Rifleman Chuck Connors. Along with Thorpe, another comp is the Golden Greek, Harry Agganis...

 

Good one. I'd add Wilt Chamberlain. His NBA exploits are well known (mind-blowing actually), but he was the Big 8 high jump champ at 6'6" (at a time when the world record was 7 foot even), threw the shot over 53 feet (WR was around 62 feet), ran a sub 50 second 440 yd (WR was about 45 seconds); keep in mind he was doing these at the age of 18-19, at 7'2" and weighing nearly 250 lbs, and not specializing in any of them. He also played professional volleyball, and could bench press over 500 lbs (and was doing 450+ at age 60).

 

One last note on his NBA career; while they changed the rules to make it easier for Jordan (carrying or palming violations just disappeared), they changed the rules to make it harder on Chamberlain , such as widening the lane to where it is now and outlawing offensive goaltending (many alley-oop dunks currently allowed would have been offensive goaltending in those days).

 

Alleged bedroom gymnastics were not considered in this evaluation..