arguments for larry holmes being super over rated or under rated...which do u pick?

Shavers knocked Norton out on the undercard of Holmes' defense against Ossie Ocasio,so Earnie got the fight with Holmes.

Holmes beat the man who beat the man,so to speak,and ask yourself the question - What other heavyweight in the timeframe 1978 - 1985 was more prolific than Holmes was ? Dokes,Page,Witherspoon,Tubbs,Thomas,Berbick etc all cancelled each other out.

 

I think Holmes was better, greater than any heavyweight who has come since.
I rate him above Tyson, Holyfield, Bowe and Lewis. And if the Klitschkos retired today they'd be clearly behind Holmes too.

 

Under rated. The truth is Holmes just doesn't have the fan base of most champs in the top ten. I view Holmes as a top five atg at heavyweight.

 

id say a bit of both while his record of 20 defences is outstanding the opposition wasnt the best of which was probably tim witherspoon still i rate him in the top 6 of all time .

 

I have him at 5 or 6.

I scored the Witherspoon fight for Tim.


And I don't think he could have beaten a prime Ali or Louis.

 

He used to be underrated. Now he is rated just fine, which is a top 5-6 heavy IMHO.

 

I think you're not taking into consideration that many of them blew their own shots at him and that many of them weren't his fault.

He signed to fight Gerrie Coetzee in June, 1984 but the fight was called off by the promoter in May, 1984.

It's easy to say well he didn't fight this guy, this guy, or this guy, so it must've been Larry ducking them. In reality they either were too inconsistent to secure a title shot or Larry was being lowballed in the offers to fight them and was being offered more to fight others.

 

I got him at #7.

Pros
20 title defenses
7+ years as champ
One of the best jabs in boxing history
Went 48-0

Cons
No signature win
Never unified
Could have fought better opposition when available
Lost against a former LHW not once but twice
Barely won the title against Norton

 

Until 1985 no one cancelled Thomas and Smith deserved a rematch much sooner than he got.
Coetzee didn't get a single shot and the ones who did were worse than Norton and less deserving even after Norton got his 1 shot and was KOd by Shavers.
I even doubt that Holmes got good money for his defenses against bums.

 

The promoters knew that Larry would fight whoever they offered the most money for, and they therefore low balled him in fights with guys like Page, and gave him more money to fight guys who were lesser names. The promoters wanted the belts split up because they were making more money with more champions.

Also, when Mike Weaver was the WBA champ, he himself said that Holmes was the true champion of the division.

Another thing to look at is Gerry Cooney was the #1 challenger for both the WBA and WBC, had Cooney fought and beaten Weaver, there would've still been a more money in a Holmes-Cooney fight than any other fight around. Cooney's management decided on the mega fight first and fought Holmes for $10 million. Had they decided to fight Weaver, and Cooney won, Holmes definitely would've unified the titles because he would be paid more money than for any other fight.

Holmes got over 3 million dollars to fight Marvis Frazier.
I'm pretty sure how it was set up for the Frazier/Frank defenses that he signed to fight both of them for 5 point whatever million, and when he was broken down for him, he was offered 3 point whatever million to fight Frazier and 2 point whatever million to fight Frank.

If Sean O'Grady was correct, when Holmes was going into his late 90's fight with Maurice Harris, he had earned over $90 million. He was obviously making some huge bucks as champion.