was Scott Frank really that bad?

Snipes got dropped 2X by Coetzee n a 10 rd fight so that's 4 points right there, the decision should have been Coetzee but that was a King navigation and control of the judges to get Larry the easier fight against Snipes (almost backfired) Snipes had a style that made for close fights and he was green almost his whole career. Scott Frank was not a bad prospect but was not ready for a title shot but that is why he was chosen

 

Nah Frank wasn't that bad. He was decent as fringe contenders go and a game opponent. The Duvas apparently liked Scott and thought very highly of him.

 

Frank was okay as a fringe contender, nothing more, nothing less.He didn't deserve a title shot.

 

Probably not. But there were far worse men in boxing history who fought for titles.

 

He was, IMO.

Among the very worst Holmes challengers, although maybe not the worst title challenger of all time.

http://www.boxingforum24.com/showthread.php?t=485445

 

Considering that Snipes fought up and down to his level of competition, I think most of them could, yes.

Maybe not LeDoux. He truly was garbage. The rest, though...

 

In p4p terms I rate him well above Jaime freaking Barboza.

(who managed to compete twice for world titles, somehow)

 

Don King didn't have anything to do with the bad scoring in the Snipes-Coetzee fight. The New York Commission did.

At the time, the state of New York scored by rounds, not points (like nearly everyone else in the world did). Coetzee dropped Snipes twice, but it only meant that those rounds went in the column under Gerrie's name.

At the end of the fight, two judges had it (in rounds) 5-4-1 for Snipes (the other had it for Gerrie). If the fight had been scored by points instead of rounds, Gerrie would've won a unanimous decision across the board.

People were so outraged by the scoring that shortly after New York changed to the points system.

Also, King didn't have anything against Coetzee. (Black boxing fans in South Africa liked Coetzee. They hated Kallie Knoetze, but they liked Gerrie.)

King gave Gerrie a title shot against Dokes. He promoted Coetzee's title fight in South Africa. He tried to convince Bey to go to South Africa to challenge Coetzee for the title, but Bey backed out and Page replaced him. King also worked with HBO to get Holmes and Coetzee to agree to a unification battle, but they could never get together all the money Holmes demanded. The financing kept falling thru.

Jesse Jackson and Arthur Ashe pressured black promoters to boycott South Africa and wanted them to pledge not to promote white fighters from South Africa. King said he would go along with the boycott, and then he pissed them off by working with Coetzee and promoting in South Africa anyway.

 

Greg Page was Larry Holmes' mandatory contender in 1983, and Holmes didn't want to fight Page. That's why Larry vacated the WBC title. Holmes considered Page too tough, and he wanted to break Marciano's record. That's when Larry started fighting guys with 10 fights and 14 fights. The "greener" the boxer the better.

So Page fought Spoon for Holmes' vacant title and lost.

If Page got the nod over Bey, I don't think Holmes would've changed his mind about fighting Page. Even when they were old men, and Holmes, Weaver, Bonecrusher, Spoon and Page had those "old-timer" bouts, Holmes wouldn't fight Page. He fought two guys he'd already beaten - Weaver and Smith.

I just don't think Holmes wanted anything to do with Page. Stylewise, he posed problems.

 

I just realized, in your book, he never actually challenged for a world title so much as once, let alone twice.

Interim; bane of your existence. :!:

So we can leave poor old JFB alone. His only sin was being a shitty fighter that got cast by some men in suits in the role of being in a "world title bout" when really, he never came anywhere close to doing so.