Is Larry Holmes

You cannot strip the worlds hwt championship. Ali was the champion. Period and end of sentence. Spinks beat him and then Ali beat Spinks. Only the truely uneducated boxing fan follows the corrupt boxing organizations especially during that time period. The paper champions that followed Tate were no more than contenders. The championship they held was worthless.

You stated Thonas, a contender and nothing more, would be favored over Holmes. He would not be and from an ability standpoint there was little chance Thomas, who exhibited massive technical flaws, would be able to keep up to even an aged Holmes.

 

What does any of this cr@p have to do with the men Holmes avoided being better than about 60% of the men he DID face? You call Pinklon Thomas a paper champion and I'll call him BETTER than Lucien Rodriguez.

 

Question is how easy was it to make these bouts occur at that time? The commissions were as corrupt as I have ever seen them....I know this first hand. If you think fights trying to unite the paper titles were easy to make OR that the commissions wanted to lose their own hwt champion you are sadly mistaken. This was the time period where commissions realized they needed to run like a business. All decisions were based upon how the outcome would feather their pockets and nothing more.

 

Weaver did win a fight in 1983. He KO'd Stan Ward.

Dokes lost twice in his first 45 fights. It took a Hail Mary right hand from Coetzee and a prime Evander Holyfield (when Dokes was fading) to beat him when he was anywhere near his prime. He's not losing to Scott Frank.

A Witherspoon win was barely within Holmes.

Holmes went life and death with a journeyman Weaver who had no big wins to his name. That doesn't bode well for him against a more experienced, more confident Weaver. Dokes KO'd Weaver much easier than Holmes and was one point from beating Weaver (just like Holmes was one point from drawing with Spoon). In any case, Weaver and Coetzee were clearly much tougher propositions than anyone Holmes fought in 1983.

How good a year was 1983 for Holmes? A life and death with struggle with a 15-0 rookie, dumping his belt rather than face his #1 challenger, and three wins against set-ups. Absolutely no one was expecting Spoon to be that tough for Holmes, and many people thought Spoon won. The other three fights were a joke. Dokes and Weaver would have beaten Marvis, Rodriguez and Frank too.

It's easy to say Holmes would win these fights, yet you have to ask why he was taking on clearly inferior opposition and leaving his co-champion to take the tougher fights.

 

It was possible to unify titles

1983 - LHW - Michael Spinks
1981 - Welterwight - Sugar Ray Leonard

The middleweight title stayed unified from Monzon all the way through Leonard winning it from Hagler.

Anyway, Holmes could have fought significantly better opposition, even without unifying the titles, especially post ****ey.

Your comment that in 1985, a prime Pinklon Thomas would have no shot at being a declining Holmes is laughable.

 

If Thomas was a paper champ then so was Holmes. Holmes never won a title from someone who won it in the ring. He won the WBC belt which they had stripped from Spinks and then literally handed it to Norton. Holmes later ditched that belt because he wanted to face a couple of no hopers instead of his #1 contender, was handed another belt by the IBF and Thomas subsequently won the WBC belt from Witherspoon.

 

Good post

 

So Bonecrusher was still #9 after Larry Stops him?

and #12 Tubbs inherited #9 from Smith?

So this means Page defends against the #9 the one time against Larry beating the #3 and #11 over the same timescale?as of December 1, 1984)

Champion:
Larry Holmes
1. Pinklon Thomas(WBC)
2. Gerrie Coetzee (WBA)
3. David Bey
4. Tim Witherspoon
5. Greg Page
6. Mike Weaver
7. Michael Dokes
8. James Broad
9. Bonecrusher Smith
10. Gerry ****ey
11. Carl Williams
12. Tony Tubbs
13. Tony Tucker
14. Trevor Berbick
15. Marvis Frazier

 

Silly. He beat Shavers, Norton and then the unretired Ali. Holmes was the true champion. The WBA eliminator was a JOKE.

 

Norton had a case for being avoided by Ali and Spinks, but still he wasn't a legit champion.

Quarry, Lyle, Stander and someone called Bob Stallings beat Shavers years before Holmes. No one ever called them the true champ for doing so. Shavers wasn't even in the Ring's top ten at the end of 1978 but suddenly a few months later Holmes beating him makes him the true champ? In his next fight Shavers got knocked out by Bernardo Mercado.

And an old, Parkinsons addled Ali coming back from a two year retirement? That made Holmes the true champ?

 

It's not the best way to start a lineage but it is fact that after he beat Ali, he was seen as the true champ.

 

Doesn't that make a mockery of the whole lineal idea? A former champ can come back, in whatever condition and state of health, and whoever beats him is the true champ. If Ali was remotely sensible and chose to stay retired, then by definition Holmes could never have become the legitimate champion.

 

Holmes eliminated the leading contenders AND beat Ali. (He also beat former champion Spinks). Once a hwt champion retires only the fighter that proved himself to be the best is crowned the new champion. Holmes was that man. Tate, Bobick, Thomas, Tubbs, Witherspoon, Weaver, Dokes, Smith.....all of these fighters were never hwt champion of the world. If you think they were you do not know the sport of boxing or its history.

 

No if Ali stayed retired, Holmes would have had to fight Tate to have become legitimate champion.

Lineage is often quite **** imo. Foreman v Briggs eugh. Wlad not recognised until he beat Povetkin. DM > Jones Jr etc.

But, it is what it is and it's the fairest way of doing it. Just means when ranking I don't give it to much prestige.

 

Good point

Some people actually still believe Shannon Briggs was the "true champ" because he beat an inactive George Foreman, who had already been stripped of his titles. It was obvious that Foreman was nowhere near the best heavyweight in the world when Briggs beat him, but technically "Shannon beat the man who beat the man"