Tyson, Bowe, Lewis, All these guys landed some serious shots on Holy...In the firtdy fight with Tyson ( even though Tyson got dumped on his ass )....was hittin Holyfield with some huge shots that barely fazed him...I rank his chin top 2 if not the best in HW history...Id give his defense ( minus the headbutts )...in his prime a 9 outa 10..what do you guys think.
His defence was never that great, mostly due to his willingness to engage & fire back when hurt. His chin was very good but he could be stunned/hurt & dropped, however his insane toughness & fighting spirit meant that finishing him off when hurt was extremely difficult.
His defense is the reason we got to see how sturdy his chin was over and over. Mediocer defense and a p4p chin.
This is how I see it. Holy was a solid counter puncher as well. But the bigger punchers could hurt him. Holy had issues issues with a larger fighter's jab ( Bowe, and Lewis ) or a faster fighters jab ( Moorer ). On a scale of 1 to 10, his chin was about an 8 to 8.5, and his defense about a 6.5.
For a fighter with such a highly thought of chin, he sure did get rocked a lot, and bad. Same with his stamina. Sure got winded very quickly and often for someone whose stamina is so highly touted. Then again, given the nature of his fights, it's understandable.
His stamina was never quite the same at heavy when compared with his prime at cruiser. Even then Holy often needed a breather.
I feel you mispercieve Holy's chin big time, the fact that Holy was rocked so much and could keep FIGHTING right through it and MOST often rock his opponent right back is the PROOF of how great Holy's chin was. When fighting Lewis Holyfield ate way more POWER punches right on the chin and kept coming than Lewis did. Lewis fought to WIN, Holy fought to create war. In the Holy and Bowe fights, same again, Holy took more huge shots than Bowe and kept coming. Against Tyson in that first fight the amount of clean power shots Holy takes in the first many rounds from Tyson while walking right through those shots is UNBELIEVABLE. Personally, i would bet Holy was on steriods for that fight, REGARDLESS, Sterioids dont help your chin and Holys chin was so good fighting Tyson that it seems to be forgotten how many power shots Holy just walked right through before finally turning the tide of that slugfest. Thus defense i would score him above average but nothing special as Holy was a fighter that was not very defensive. Yes sure sure he was a good counter puncher but its not like he was a defensive counter punching wizard, not even close. However, CHIN WISE i would rank Holy as one of the ATG's at heavyweight or otherwise. He had some special kind of chin that could recover from shots that others simply would never recover from.