Should Larry Holmes be given a pass for missing out on Page, Thomas, Dokes, Coetzee?

After watching all those fights I think he deserved the nod over Tim, Carl, and Michael in the rematch, if only barely. His record against these men could look 3-1 or 2-1-1 if you gave one of them a draw. I think 0-4 is a stretch.

 

Yes but what if Holmes asked for one extra voluntary defence before taking on Page? We don't know that he didn't. Holmes only wanted to take on Marvis because Frazier Jnr was hot there and then. is there any harm in making page wait one more fight? Maybe Holmes could argue with an extra win page might have been a bigger draw further down the line?

How often do champions ask their governing body's for one extra voluntary and are granted to do so because it is a big fight? It happens all the time.

Sometimes the mandatory guy may be a mandatory but he's not such a draw. Page had plateaud some time before. Beating Snipes was no great shakes. It was not like Page did a better job on Snipes than Holmes did and Marvis was getting a good press. I don't see why the WBC couldn't have gave Holmes a break on the condition he meet Page next.

I think Holmes had been an active champion. The WBC took their percentage from all those defences and just from the Ali fight and the Cooney fights alone that would have been quite a pretty penny for the WBC.

As far as I know Holmes had met all their mandatory chalengers up until that point. Shavers, Leon Spinks, Ocassio, Berbick, Weaver, Snipes, Witherspoon...

 

This is one of the main reasons I place Holmes #7 ATG on my list while others have him a little higher (anywhere from 3-6 typically).

He needed to unify the belts. Even if he had unified only one of the other belts it would probably make me bump him up to #6.

 

A lot of it is a shell game: he fights (and beats) one guy and since he won, he gets little or no credit ... but we imagine this series of guys who kept losing to each other somehow would therefore look better on his record.

If he had beaten Page but never fought Witherspoon, for instance, and the rest of Page's career had gone the same as it did, people would be crying that he beat the easier page and ducked the more difficult Witherspoon ... and on and on.

I don't think he actually 'ducked' anyone ... because no one put themselves on the top of the heap long enough to make a case that they were being ducked.

At the time people are pointing to when Page was supposedly being ducked, after he beat Snipes, Page was less than a year removed from losing to Trevor Berbick ... who Holmes dominated. Snipes was 1-2-1 in his last four fights going into Page. Now what kind of revisionist history does it take to make Page some kind of deserves-a-shot-right-this-minute bogeyman?

So 10 months later, after one marking-time knockout of a can, Page loses again ... to Witherspoon ... who Holmes had already beaten ... and what does Tim do less than six months later? He loses his next fight to Pinklon. And on and on.

The easiest mistake to make is discredit the wins Holmes (or someone else) has and assume that if he had fought the other guys instead his resume would be better. It wouldn't, because if he fought Guy A instead of Guy B -- instead of beating B and not fighting A -- you'd be singing the same tune about why he never fought the other one.

And to not even look at the context of how things actually played out at the time -- for instance, insisting Page was a duck when the reality is Page couldn't hold court long enough (and also ignoring the fact that Marvis was as big or bigger of a payday for an easy fight, and that all Page had to do was not lose for another few months) and that these guys he is supposedely ducking were just trading losses with each other -- shows a lack of understanding of what was going on.

 

Now that's a good post.

 

Holmes missed fighting the best of his era and never rematches a tough or disputed battle. I have been saying it for years on ESB. Holmes was my favorite fighter of the era but when he fought Weaver the guy was a 18-9 journeyman and Weavers best fights were after the Holmes fight and Mike knock Larry all over the ring. It was that fight that guy Weaver confidence and Weaver should have gotten a rematch and then when he beat Tate it became a unification fight. I can not rate Holmes above the top 8 because it would only be speculation to think he could have beaten the best of his era. I as a fan wanted to see a unification with Tate,Coetzee,Weaver,Dokes,Thomas, gave up a title not to fight #1 contender Page...also on the rematch subject Larry never rematches Norton,Witherspoon,Williams,Weaver

Spinks was KO'd in 1 round by Coetzee 2 years before Holmes gives him a shot instead of Coetzee and Spinks was 10-2-2, Marvis was 10-0, could you imagine Vlad fighting a guy with 10 fights, Bey was 14-01 and lost like 14 of his next 20 fights after Holmes, Smith had 14 fights,Ocasio 13 fights, Witherspoon and Williams 15 fights.

I don't blame Larry for them all King was a devil as well but I have to take away points

How could I rate Larry above Tyson,Frazier,Walcott because IMO if Larry fought the best he would have had a few more losses on his record because certain styles were trouble and those are among the many he avoided

 

For some a lack of understanding as in SQ, for others revisionism like Bummy ... either way from Norton to Witherspoon Holmes defeated everyone .. after that as the above were either drugged out, losing to each other or inactive, Larry at the very least beat the man who beat the man each time out and in his mid thirties was still fighting and defeating large, strong, talented, dangerous young fighters and not blown up light heavyweights or old warhorses like the iconic Rocky did.

 

That is an excelent point. :good if ever there was a result that warranted an automatic title shot Coetzee v Spinks is right up there with Johansson v machen. Holmes should have fought Coetzee right there in an ideal world. Absolutely. But is it Holmes fault it did not happen? The WBA should have offered their recognition of Holmes once Ali retired on the condition he beat Coetzee. Had that been the case and Holmes refused then that would be more of a crime. But instead the WBA decided to bring Tate into it. This was silly. The WBA were at fault.


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Bey was not a match to decide who was the best heavyweight in the world where as Holmes v Thomas might have been. I see what you mean.

However, Thomas v Weaver was not a fight to decide the best either and neither was Thomas v Berbick. Pinklon was going over Holmes victims and lost. If Thomas got past Berbick Holmes ducking after that would have been outrageous. As it was how big was the Holmes v Thomas window? I still think Thomas could have won though.

Marvis was a money fight. It was like Patterson v rademacher just novelty value. I don't think it was worth giving a belt up over to be honest...but I don't think in light of all those defences Holmes was having that the WBC would not let him get away with it. Was page really that much of a worthy #1 contender or did King just want to promote more titles?


Ocassio beat Jimmy Young in an eliminator. Young even got a rematch because he flunked the first fight.

Smith won an eliminator with Bruno and later knocked out Weaver and Witherspoon.

This is a fair point. I think Larry may have lost too but then I think about the consistency of these chalengers. Losing and regaining his title could have enhanced Larry's resume. It did wonders for Patterson and Robinson.

 

Seems a bit selective: Frazier notably did not face Norton and missed a few others (Shavers, Lyle, Patterson among them) but you don't hold that against him; Walcott accumulated 18 losses and still missed a few notables of his day (Archie Moore, Nino Valdez, for instance); Tyson skipped Witherspoon and Dokes, not to mention Bowe -- and only took on Lennox Lewis as a payday on his way down.

As for Holmes-Spinks, he "choose" to fight Leon Spinks because Leon beat Mercado in an eliminator so was a mandatory contender.

And someone mentioned that Coetzee had put himself in position to fight Holmes when he beat Leon, but the truth is that Bob Arum had sewn up Coetzee, Knoetze, Spinks and John Tate for a mini-tourney to create a WBA champion ... with Tate winning. Coetzee was bound to fight for Arum and, thus, for that vacant WBA title, rather than Holmes (although Holmes later did reach an agreement to fight him but it never came off).

And Holmes did not rematch Norton, but he would have had Norton beaten Shavers as expected (less than a year after Holmes defeated Norton) rather than getting bombed out in their eliminator ... so he rematched Earnie instead. Norton was at no point after that a viable contender.

So there's so much more to it than "X didnt fight Y." Look at what was going on at the time. I don't hold it against Frazier that he didn't fight Norton, but it is just as blatant an omission as some of the ones you mention for Holmes.

As I noted, selective.

 

Had some of those fights came off Holmes might not have won them all so this can effect Larry's legacy. Bummy has made a good point.

 

But the same is true for the fights I mentioned for Frazier, Tyson and Walcott, who he says he rates above them BECAUSE of fights that didn't come off for Holmes ... or at least that's what he seemed to be saying.

So it's a wash.

Norton is a perfect example of rewriting history: Holmes was going to rematch him after he beat Shavers, but he lost -- that's less than a year after the epic Homes-Norton war. Now in 2014 you can look back and say, 'Wow, Norton took him to the limit and he didn't rematch him,' but it ignores what actually happened with Norton. If Holmes had fought Norton instead of Shavers again after Shavers beat Norton, the revision would be 'Wow, Shavers iced Norton and Larry ducked him and took the easier fight.' Or if he gave Norton a rematch after Scott LeDoux had him draped over the ropes for the final three rounds of a 'draw,' it would have looked at the time -- rightfully -- like Holmes was ducking more worthy contenders to cherry-pick a shot Norton. And history would judge it that way, too.

Fact is, pretty much everyone Holmes is accused of ducking managed to lose almost immediately upon reaching the "top" of the rest of the heap.

If you don't rate Holmes near the top as an ATG heavyweight, that's subjective and fair, but if you're going to look at his long period at the top and pick holes in who he didn't fight without consideration to why or the reasons behind those fights not happening, at least do that for everyone else.

 

I agree with all of this but the point is had there been just one title then Holmes would have been forced to take more fights that could determine who was the best in the world. Because it was not like this and there were two, sometimes three titles (despite Holmes being more consistent) Larry did miss out on at least one fight that could determine who was the best that he might not have won.

The whole thing was a mess but at one point Pinklon looked a better fighter than Holmes was ...albeit for a short time. If that fight could have been made Pinklon would have started as a Favorite.

However, had there been one title Holmes might not have had to defend against Pinklon until Thomas had already beat Witherspoon and Weaver. When, as it happened, Thomas had already peaked.

The beauty of the diluted title means Thomas got to fight for a belt before he made a name for himself. A draw with Coetzee was about all the resume he had going into the Witherspoon match. Would that have been enough to challenge an undisputed champion when other contenders wait in line? or would he need Witherspoon and Weaver too? If he did, then there is the argument that pinklon gets a shot at Holmes with his Berbick performance.

 

dokes lost to coetzee not larrys fault....page lost to berbick not larrys fault...then page could have had a shot at larry but lost to bey and bey got the shot,,,coetzee lost to page...the only guy here that may have beaten holmes by 84 or 85ish was pinklon thomas

 

We don’t hand out passes here.

The only place you can prove your ability to beat somebody is in the ring.