A big win for Big John

The problem here is Larry Holmes. If Tate would have finished on his feet he would have won such a wide decision that he would have had as much claim to Ali’s vacant title as Holmes. As long as Tate could get past Dokes, Page etc there would only be Ali or Holmes. By now he beats Ali. 2 undefeated heavyweights. There would likely have been a unification. Holmes takes it. Tate may have had a couple of years with 3 or 4 defences but all paths lead to Holmes.

 

Tate was basically finished after he beat Coetzee , he found money and drugs

 

Gatta agree .. sooner or later Tate was going to run into Holmes and would be found lacking.

 

IMO, Page and Dokes would have gotten him. Tate's punch wasn't the greatest.

 

Not sure a Tate vs Holmes unification would have happened. In fact no unification involving Holmes ever happened.

 

It would have happened if the money was there. Holmes signed twice to fight Coetzee, the second time at considerably lower pay than the first, but in both cases the funding evaporated. Same with Holmes-Foreman in their old-man-river stages.

No money = no fight.

It should also be pointed out that Tate, Weaver, Page, Coetzee, Pinklon, Tubbs, Witherspoon, etc., also never fought unifications. It’s hard to set up a unification fight against someone who can’t defend it successfully — both sides expect to get paid more for a unification, which means that the public has to want the fight, and nobody’s clamoring to see a guy who wins an alphabet belt in a unification before he hands it to someone else four months later.

Page and Tubbs, I believe, held titles simultaneous with Pinklon. Berbick and Witherspoon held different versions of the title at the same time too iirc. Nobody asks why they didn’t unify.

 

Tate was a legit monster for a little while, and he wasn’t coddled.

He beat undefeated (10-0) Eddie “The Animal” Lopez in like his fifth fight and the next year blasted out undefeated Bernardo Mercado in two.

Then he cleaned up South Africa all by his self, battering Kallie Knoetze and then beating up Gerrie Coetzee.

When it unraveled, it unraveled fast and hard for Big John, but he was a force for a minute there.

 

Exactly. Hardly treated like Arum's dealings with Ali, huh? Back at that time, Arum was , to me anyway, far more interested in Coetzee and the money he could bring to the sport.

But Tate stayed loyal to his management at a time when he could have made other choices. And John had suffered a couple of bad ko's as an amatuer. You couple that with the way he went out against Weaver--it was downright criminal putting him in another match--on the road of course--only 3 months later. Sure was not a coincidence not too many others were ever signing up with Ace Miller.

 

That was it the drugs..he was top notch before he got into drugs...Ace Miller talked about it often

 

If Tate would've beaten Weaver, he already had an agreement to face Ali. And Tate would've won.

Had that fight come off, the Lineal title would've gone through John Tate and the WBA. Arum promoted Tate. Ali vacated the world/WBA title. Tate won the tournament. And, if Tate beat Ali, Tate is the man.

There wouldn't have been a unification with Holmes (and Don King). Larry didn't unify with anyone.

With wins over Kallie Knoetze, Gerrie Coetzee, Mike Weaver and Muhammad Ali ... Tate is sitting in a great position. Tate beat Dokes and Tubbs to make the Olympic team, so he wasn't sweating either of those guys. After Ali, Tate probably fights Leon (who had revitalized himself with a win over Mercado). Tate wins that, too. Maybe he rematches Coetzee and/or beats Tillis. Then fights Dokes.

Tate would've done fine.

So, really John Tate was about 45 seconds away from becoming a heavyweight superstar.

 

Miller screwed up by putting Tate back in the ring less than three months after being knocked completely unconscious and out for several minutes against Weaver. Plain and simple that was bad managing.

Tate came back in half the time Roy Jones did after getting knocked cold by Tarver, and that return (against Glen Johnson) didn't turn out well for Roy, either.

 

Exactly.

 

Yes… IF the purse was a lucrative one then that fight MIGHT have happened. But it never would have been about unifying or the claim to fighting the best. That wasn’t Holmes MO

 

Got a short list of guys who took sizeable pay cuts to unify?

Yes, like every fighter Holmes wanted to get paid. Guilty as charged, lol. I heard Leonard and Hearns fought each other for free.

Why didn’t Pinklon or those other guys try to unify?