Would Holyfield be a world class heavyweight without the aid of PEDs?

Sure. He would be 20- 30 lbs less without peds.
But then again the rest of the division would have been 20lbs lighter as well.
You really think he fought top heavies back to back for 15 years and all of them were too stupid to suspect anything and level the playing field?

He was probably abusing Growth hormones in the mid 90s since it was so obvious once he went above 210lbs.
But the standard PED 205lb Holyfield is still a top heavyweight.

 

I think that he would but he'd have had to box more and brawl less.

 

I voted no, but if every other boxer was unable to use PEDs too, then it becomes much more likely.

 

He'd have never been champ without PEDs.
Many here make the mistake of assuming he only took PEDs to get big. But PEDs also improve your endurance, speed and recovery time.

 

The rest of the division were already big, they didn't need PEDs, like him.

 

Performance enhancing drugs wouldn't have enhanced their performances?

 

Correct.

Not only that, but naturally bigger HWs may have maintained their size advantage by also using PEDs to add functional bulk.

 

They would have clearly helped, but most boxers didn't believe in them.

 

The first half of your sentence, especially the use of the word "clearly", explains why the second half is nonsense.

PED's weren't a new, experimental concept in the 1990's and boxing was a mega money industry.

 

They’re all on peds. You know how much money is on the line? Boxing is a big business and peds are a significant factor in how much money people investing in a boxer are going to make and a lot of these people are very greedy and smart. It’s the same with any physical type sport even if there is testing it’s very easy to pay people off and things like that. They’re using peds to the best of they’re ability, at the top of the game its huge amounts of money people get killed over that kind of money, peds is not a big deal for them.

 

Probably would’ve been stopped by Dokes. Holyfield used to get hit so much that things wouldn’t have gone well for him without PEDs.

There’s no reason he couldn’t have fought more carefully and been a solid B lister and maybe brief title holder though.