What boxers did Larry Holmes consciously and deliberately avoid, if any?

He wasn't ever hot enough long enough for it to matter.

He went 4-3 in your sweet spot when you say it should have happened. That's not hot in anyone's book.

 

The fight would’ve made sense at lost points in the early 80s, regardless of your nitpicking. The deal breaker is that Larry didn’t want it.

 

You just ignore timelines because they don’t fit your narrative.

“He was No.2 in Ring at the end of the year.” Yet he was 0-2 for 11 months of that year. Etc.

You listed a three-year period where he went 4-3 and said ‘he should have fought him when Greg was hot.’ He wasn’t even lukewarm.

Greg Page won an eliminator and was aligned with Don King, who Larry was in litigation with to get out of his contract. Larry offered to pay Page the same money Don was paying per his bid and fight him as long as King wasn’t involved. Instead he gave up his title because King wanted Page to fight for the vacant WBC — he’d rather have ‘half a champion’ than risk his best hope losing to Larry and having no champion.

To say Larry should have said, ‘OK, I’ll fight for the guy who has stolen millions from me and give him options on all my future fights because someone on the internet will someday call it a duck if I don’t’ is preposterous. He made a decision every single boxing fan should and would applaud to rid himself of being tied to King and yet you think he should have done it.

Greg Page should have fired King and fought Larry for another promoter, but of course that would have tied him up in court and cost him his shot at half a title so he didn’t. Or maybe he liked Don, Who knows.

Funny you don’t mention Page ducking a rematch with Coetzee, who lost his title in the FOURTH minute of a three-minute round, a result that should have been thrown out and called a no contest. Did Page do the honorable thing and grant an immediate rematch? Of course not.

But as with Holmes, there’s a business reason why. Coetzee was aligned with Bob Arum. Page was aligned with King. Page beating Gerrie (however illegal the result may have been) gave King control of a title and took it away from Bob. Page was a pawn — King wasn’t going to let him fight a rematch and lose control of a title to his rival.

Yet since you think fighters should do things regardless of the actual circumstances at the time. Page should have rematched Gerrie and you should consider him a fraud for not doing so. The entire lineage of that title ends with the third minute of that round that erroneously continued until Page won.

 

Larry sued King in 84.

Page had one decision loss between becoming relevant in 81 and early 84. During that time, Holmes fought the distinguished trio of Cobb, Frank, and Rodriguez.

There conveniently must have been an excuse to not fight Page during that entire timeframe. It’s also notable that Page was highly regarded as a prospect due to am success unlike guys such as Witherspoon.

What a shrewd businessman Larry was.

 

Page wasn’t relevant in 1981. He built his record to 16-0 by the end of that year by beating retreads and never-was types. Which is fine, but if Holmes had fought him then you’d be whining about him not waiting until Page was relevant, lol.

In 1982 he lost to Berbick. A Holmes victim. And Holmes was occupied fighting the biggest-money heavyweight fight in history to that time, Cooney. He isn’t going to take a pit stop to accommodate some guy who lost to Trevor Berbick.

The rest of this has been outlined time and again on this thread. No need to go round in circles.

You said 1982-84 is when they should have fought and Page went 4-3 in that period with two of those wins against nobodies. That’s all there is to it.

The thing is, Page had a very narrow window where he was relevant at all and you think Larry was supposed to sit back through the 1980s waiting for these other guys and pounce to fight them in each of their very narrow windows before they lost to each other.

Page had the world in his hands. He had talent but not dedication. If he wasn’t waddling around overweight and instead dedicated himself to training he would have gotten past the Witherspoons and David Bey’s and Tony Tubbs’ of the world and then would have been in position to fight Holmes. Not Larry’s fault that he wasn’t dedicated nor good enough.

 

Thankfully, we aren’t saying [Biggs/Ali/Bowe/Vitali/Fury]was irrelevant and [Tyson/Liston/Holyfield/Lewis/Wlad] had no reason to fight him.

 

You’re the guy who thinks Larry should have fought Page instead of Cooney so I’d rather say ‘Glad Larry fought Cooney/Bonecrusher/Weaver/Witherspoon/Bey instead of Page’ than the other way around.

 

That’s not at all what I said. I alluded to the distinguished trio of Frank, Rodriguez, and Cobb as incriminating evidence that Holmes avoided Page. Btw this is a much deeper issue for Holmes that involves several worthy challengers although you’d like to simplify it to Page only and blame Don King.

 

Holmes went into dispute with King over having to fight Greg Page. Holmes knew Page would never be allowed to fight him outside of King's control that much was obvious. By all means keep blurring the timeline to suit.

King very definitely has one fan in here.

Wasn't it your thread questioning why Benitez never fought Hagler tho they were in different divisions and the possibility was never there as you believed?

One set of rules for Holmes and another for poor old Marv by the looks.

SMFH

 

Do you even read says the guy that can't even quote someone truthfully and honestly.

L-O-freaking-L.

 

They should have left you permabanned Mendoza

 

He should have just fought him when he had to instead of giving up his WBC title which he had held for years and defended some 15 odd times.

 

Yes Wilfred was a junior middleweight and Marvin was a middleweight — and Benitez said after the Duran fight (the point in time I’m talking about) that he was moving up to 160 and was quite willing to fight Marvin.

I guess you’ve never heard of a guy stepping up a division? Like Wilfred did from welter to junior middle? Like Hearns and Duran did to fight Marvin? Like Leonard did to beat Kalule?

What does that have to do with Holmes not wanting to fight for Don King? He offered to fight Greg for the same money King was offering Greg but without King’s involvement.

If Page wasn’t willing to leave King to make the fight happen, he must not have wanted it very much.

Now to combine responses, explain to me how one guy (Tim Witherspoon) isn’t qualified to fight Larry by beating Renaldo Snipes and another (Greg Page) deserves a shot by beating … Renaldo Snipes.

 

I was wondering if you still had the energy for this discussion. Classic's equivalence of Ground Hog Day.

Props for at least trying still. But if that quote after the Bey fight isn't taken at face value (not that I blame Holmes really for wanting to take it easy at that stage, but it's kind of absurd to deny that that's exactly what he said) nothing will.

But everyone who has any inclination to be receptive to actual facts about this and who has followed these threads have been convinced by your arguments. These guys have just taken leave of facts and won't change now.