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

What I've seldom heard of is guys ducking guys from lower divisions who didn't even have a ranking in the higher division. At any rate i sorted out the mystery.

So much wrong in there. Why would Page leave his promoter when he was getting a shot at that title no matter what? Holmes either faces him or loses his title after which Page fights for it regardless. How stupid would Page be to renege on a legally binding contract. King had almost all the top heavies and Page wanted to be among them fighting. Holmes at this stage didn't. He wanted to go on a farewell tour against hand picked opposition all the way to 50-0. Near the very end he tried to sell a rematch with Marvis Frazier but was refused and was also working on getting a barely active Cooney for, from memory, his 50th fight.

You need to stop putting words in my mouth Pat. It's the second time now regarding Witherspoon and Snipes. Never have i said Witherspoon wasn't qualified to fight Holmes and never have i said Holmes should never have fought him. Feel free to prove otherwise. I said he was a "Witherspoon is only a good defense in hindsight." At this exact point Holmes was free to fight who he liked within the WBC rankings and he was not due a mandatory until his next fight and that mandatory ended up being Page. They all have their easier defenses mixed in with their others. The problem people have is that Holmes then had hand picked perceived "easier defenses" all the way through until Spinks beat him. In short he sat on the title. It is what it is.



Witherspoon beat Snipes in a controversial decision. Snipes then beat the highly regarded Berbick. Page then beat Snipes easily. He had also beaten Tillis a bit prior. The win over Snipes was an eliminator to fight Holmes. Page had done what he had to do.


Just to put a fork in this here is you, your good self, Saintpat, posting a dedicated thread on Holmes ducking Page all those years ago as George once sang. Ironically you correctly note that Holmes gave up the title not to fight Page and that -

"He talked openly about not wanting to fight bigger heavies in the declining years of his (first) career, and Page at the time seemed like a monster in the making."

And there we have it.

https://www.boxingforum24.com/threads/did-holmes-duck-greg-page.325294/

 

Oh i'm hearing you. Surely the link in my previous post should put an end to one debate anyway.

I've been promising it for a while but i really need to find that interview from 83 and post some of it to end all the innuendo. I mean there's enough already but the best quotes i posted wayyyyyyy back were lost in the big update or whatever it was.

 

If you read what I posted, I posed some questions to start a discussion. You will note there is a question mark in the thread and in most of what I posted there. I didn’t take a stand that Holmes ducked Page.

I gave the perception at the time (hence the words ‘appeared to be’) and also said words to the affect of ‘it’s silly to think of it now’ as in ‘we all know Page wasn’t all that, but there were people who believed it at the time.

In the same thread you yourself concede that Holmes was favored and based any perception of Page’s chances against Holmes on Witherspoon not being good and thus him giving Holmes a good fight means that Holmes must not be that good (anymore at least). So Page beating this not-so-good Witherspoon for a vacant belt (with no interest on the part of boxing fans because everybody knew Holmes was champ whatever the WBC said) is pretty meaningless and thus doesn’t further the idea of him deserving a fight against Holmes in any way.

As for the Holmes quotes, definitely said words to that effect. They are in this thread.

But he also said he will fight Page as long as King doesn’t promote it. Do you deny that he said that, because I can show you newspaper articles that quoted him saying exactly that. That’s what he said specifically about fighting Page. He said he would make more money fighting Page without King promoting and he’d pay Page as much as King was promising him.

The only time Page was perceived as a monster in the making was up to the point he got exposed in his first loss. After that he’s just another of the lost generation of 1980 heavyweights who had trouble putting a few wins together (but no trouble putting on pounds) — that’s why Page couldn’t successfully defend his title (illegally won four minutes into a three-minute round).

Saying ‘it’s OK for Page to duck Holmes when offered equal money because he had a contract with King’ is OK and Holmes not wanting to again tie himself to the shady promoter who had robbed him, who he had finally gotten out from under and who he was in the process of suing is NOT OK is pretty silly.

Page never had a guaranteed shot at Holmes. He had a guaranteed shot at the WBC title. If he wanted to take the easier path and fight Witherspoon, that’s on him.

 

How can i not pay that one

 

This always seems like such a strange topic to me. I'm not the biggest Larry Holmes fan on this board, but two things seem inarguable to me about him. First, Larry was a very, very savvy businessman and looked at the fight game through pragmatic eyes as a way to support his family and build a financial empire. Second, Holmes wasn't scared of fighting anyone that I could imagine.

So if we are talking about "ducking", I don't think we are talking about it in the traditional sense as in "I don't want to fight this guy because I'll lose or get a beating" but rather in the sense of "Why do I have to take this fight if I can make more money taking easier ones?" or "Does this fit my business plan?". In this vein, I can see why he didn't fight Coetzee or Page or Thomas or rematch Carl Williams or Witherspoon. Why would he? His idea of legacy was owning three quarters of Easton, PA.

 

sounds smart.

 

One side thing of note since Greg Page’s name has come up so many times here:

When Page suffered brain damage in one of his fights well past the time he should have hung up the gloves, Larry Holmes went to visit him and stayed in touch with his wife to offer support until Page’s death.

 

World Boxing March 1985
by Jeff Ryan

Larry Holmes: A champion ready to fall?

Promoter Don King, displaying for perhaps the 100th time his ever present flair for the dramatic, dubbed Larry Holmes IBF title defense against Bonecrusher Smith, Countdown to Glory. For Holmes, then 45-0, the bout with Smith would be another step closer toward eclipsing the record of 49-0 that had been compiled by the great Rocky Marciano, the only heavyweight champion to retire undefeated. Considering that the bookmakers in Las Vegas were taking bets not on who would win, but on whether or not Smith would last more than seven rounds, there wasn't really any other way for King to attract attention to the apparent mismatch other than to play up the historic record angle. During the last 6 years, Holmes has been so good and so dominating that he has become boring. He's a story with few new angles. And since he has been choosing most of his opponents from the bottom of the thin heavyweight ranks for the last two years, his post-Cooney bouts have been sadly lacking any prefight drama. Until now. An inspired Bonecrusher and the erosion of Holmes' skills combined to make an expectedly easy defense become a difficult one. And the events that transpired during Holmes' close call in Vegas proved that from now until he retires, each of the champions fights can carry the same enticing nickname: Countdown to Dethronement.

If Holmes had known how much trouble he was going to encounter from Smith, an awkward, plodding, puncher whose style seemed perfectly suited for a smooth boxer like the champion, he probably would have never signed to face the burly challenger. After all, at age 35, Holmes doesn't need to get in any wars like the one he just had with Bonecrusher. Ever since stopping Gerry Cooney in the 13th round in June 1982, Holmes has gone out of his way to avoid difficult fights. Cooney was the number one challenger when Holmes beat him, but Tex Cobb, Lucien Rodriguez, Scott Frank, Marvis Frazier, and Smith, five of Holmes six opponents since then, would have needed to take a long elevator ride to get anywhere near the top of the ratings.

Holmes fought the best competition available during the first four years of his reign and eventually established himself as one of boxing's most respected titlists. Now, however, by avoiding his strongest competition, he is tarnishing the image he worked so hard to create.

 

But can you think of any such instance for any fighter? Maybe Foreman when he won the title back at 45 was realistic about that he likely wasn't beating the likes of Bowe and Lewis, but that will be one of the few. I don't think Jeffries thought he'd lose to Johnson or Dempsey to Wills, I just think they thought it could happen and they didn't want go down in history as losing the title to a black man. I don't think Bowe and Newman thought Bowe would lose to Lewis, but they were quite clear that they'd rather make almost the same for much easier opponents like Dokes etc.

We're talking about whether Marciano steered clear of Valdes in another thread. If his team did, I also don't think they thought Valdes was the better fighter in any way, just that Rocky came off two tough bouts with Charles, and that Cockell, with a very respectable ranking, was a safer option.

A champion thinking he'd outright lose is very rare I'd say. Just about all the occasions of ducking we're discussing is rather risk/reward kind of scenarios.

 

Fans forget that boxing is a BUSINESS! Fans like to blame the fighters for something not happening, but unless you were there, how do you really know?

I don't think Holmes ducked anyone. Many of the potential opponents mentioned in this thread were up and down with their careers and that wasn't Larry's fault.

 

Anyone who was WBA champion (other than a brief interest in Coetzee).
Anyone who was WBC champion (after he Riddick Bowe'd that belt).
Anyone who had already given him a hard fight.
Anyone who was better and more deserving than Lucien Rodriguez, Tex Cobb, Ossie Ocasio, Scott LeDoux, Lorenzo Zanon, Alfredo Evangelista, Leroy Jones, Marvis Frazier and Scott Frank when he gave them title shots.

There are various things to admire about Larry Holmes, but the quality of his matchmaking and his desire to challenge himself against the best competition were never among them.

 

This is a perfect description of Holmes career after Cooney. You were left wanting more.....