Would Michael Spinks have been an ATG Cruiser

When you’re beating the heavyweight champ, it screws up your motivation. But yes, I tend to think he could beat a green Holyfield and change the course of that division, but he would retire after a few fights.

 

He could of been very effective at cruiser at the old weight limit or the current one .Unfortunately the division had no money in it at the time so he never bothered fighting there .could of dominated for years

 

He would have been wasted as a cruiser!

 

Yes. I believe so

 

Even now the Cruisers are not drawing the big money but I think he could have been a ATG cruiser I am not so sure he beats Holyfield at cruiser but it is a helluva a fight...Holy matured alot after the Qwai fights

 

Spinks woulda been a legendary undefeated cruiser, the only man to stop him was a prime mike Tyson and that ruined his reputation, spinks was absolutly a atg.

 

Of course he would have been great at cruiserweight.

 

He thought about moving down to cruiserweight after losing to Tyson, but decided not to because there was even less money to be made in that division, than at lightheavyweight.

 

poeple of that time were not geared towards joined the CW division, SPinks and co would see it as a cheats division, an invented one, because it was added when they had formed their idea of what divisions were....and to be fair, its fighters were generally less than stellar.

He'd never have joined it, though sure he would have been a good one IF he had.

 

Had they ever fought (which of course, they never would have, but) Michael would have beaten Leon.

 

DeLeon v. Spinks in '83-84 would have been an excellent matchup.
Holfyfield v. Spinks in '86-87 would have been awesome.

I can see why Spinks bipased it for the $$ and glory at Heavyweight.

In retrospect, it was a brilliant move by Butch Lewis and Spinks to go after a fading Holmes.

It was a bold move and looked suicidal at the time, but it sure paid off ($$$$$).

 

That's not why he skipped it. He skipped it because there was big $$ to be had at HW and Holmes was fading. The timing was right. At CW in '85 there was no big $$ fight for him. He had already beaten Qawi at LHW and Dwight was the best Cruiserweight in '85. DeLeon had lost his title to Ratliff. A Spinks-De Leon fight was talked about in '84 and would have been a decent payday. By '86, Holyfield had beaten Qawi and a Spinks-Holyfield matchup would have been really interesting and would provide good $$$, but Spinks had already moved up by then.

 

You're right. By then, Holyfield was gone from CW. The division became very mediocre.There was no $$$ there and Spinks had just made $12 million in fighting Tyson!!! Absolutely no reason to fight at CW then - or continue fighting at all, really.

The time for Spinks to fight at CW would have been in '84 against De Leon (who was well established then and considered the best CW.) or to jump down in '86 or '87 to fight Holyfield - who would bring a huge payday and was clearly the best Cruiserweight. But if he jumped down to fight Holyfield he would risk losing and blowing a huge payday to fight Tyson.

The way it worked out. Spinks was absolutely right to skip the division and go after Holmes in '85.

If he had lost to Holmes, he could have then fought at CW in '86-87 and made decent money against Holyfield.

It probably would have been a much more exciting fight than Spinks-Holmes I and II as well.

$$ talks, not how exciting a potential matchup is, unfortunately.