On a different thread some posters referenced a Larry Holmes auto bio that had some good insight and quotes. I looked online and saw Against All Odds and Don't Tell Me I Can't. Any insight into the quality of each? Is one better than the other? Can one be read without the other?
Just checking the shelf matey and I have “Against The All Odds” is there anything you’re looking for in particular? I’ll check for you if you want. I think it was a good book that felt like a career recollection read to you by Larry Holmes can’t speak for the quality of the other one you mentioned.
The discussion that made me curious about the book had to do with Holmes outside the ring and financial decisions and business/investment of all things also wanted to get his perspective on the race to 49-0 and his treatment by press and fans
Against All Odds - available on Internet Archive to borrow - just register and borrow, it’s free - https://archive.org/details/larryholmesagain00holm
Been a while since I’ve read it, but a few things I think I remember on the financial/business end were: 1) There’s a difference between having money and having income. When you have money and spend it, it’s gone and you have less money. This is how fortunes are lost (especially by athletes who make enough money in their careers to last a lifetime but they keep spending when they retire at the rate they did when they had the big paychecks coming in). He addresses his ‘second career’ comeback this way iirc in terms of investment. Fight a few fights on the comeback circuit, get a few paychecks to replenish the bank account … and buy another property to invest for the future. Rinse, repeat. And those investment properties being their own income via rent and such. When you spend income, you have more coming in to replace it; when you spend money with no income, it starts to run out. 2) He explains his decision to stay with Don King so long sitting in a booth in a restaurant. Every payday for a title defense is like another packet of sugar. So he’d take a packet out of the dispenser and stack it in front of him. Yes, there are always people coming to him saying they can give him a bigger packet of sugar, but they don’t have the track record he trusts to keep coming up with those packets and figures eventually they’ll run out of sugar and then where is he? So he says he knows they aren’t the biggest packets, but they’re steady and they keep coming — each packet is say $2-3M and those add up. He relates Harold Smith — the promoter who would soon after be imprisoned for embezzling like $20M (in 1980s money) from Wells Fargo bank — coming to his office with a satchel full of cash … like $1-2M or something like that … all cash, just take it as a good-faith signing bonus and you don’t even have to report it or pay taxes on it. He calls Don King to tell him Harold is on his way over and Don beats the bushes to Easton to run Harold off. Larry talks about how hot he is in the office thinking about that money but knowing something isn’t right. In the end, he decides that everyone knows there’s something fishy about Smith (nobody knows what, but the speculation at the time is he was laundering money for a drug cartel) and decides ‘better the devil you know’ and sticks with Don King (but also using Smith to pressure Don for some bigger paydays) because he suspects that Harold’s house of cards would eventually come tumbling down some way. 3) He also talks about investing in his town, building the biggest office building in Easton PA and then leasing the entire bottom floor to the U.S. Post Office. Then other government agencies come in to put offices there and it basically becomes the city’s federal building with all the offices except one for Larry filled by U.S. government agencies. I think he goes into how he probably could have gotten a bit more rent by renting out each office one at a time to different businesses, but if they go out of business he’s got to find a new tenant. Or worry about collecting rent from this company or that if times get tough. With the government, it was like a 25-year or 50-year lease and something like ‘the checks always come on time, you can set your watch by it, as long as there’s a United States he’s going to get those checks like clockwork every month and never have to even pick up the phone to say ‘hey your rent’s late, what’s up with that’ or anything. Never lifts a finger and the rent money goes into his bank account automatically without ever a worry. Larry was not just a smart businessman — he was a smart man. Built his own home off his earnings (with the only indulgence being a swimming pool shaped like a boxing glove) without borrowing a penny. Still lives there today, never had a rent check or mortgage payment. Still married to the same woman, I believe she was his high school sweetheart. Didn’t spent extravagantly on silly things. Would trade in his car every few years for a new one but didn’t need a fleet of sports cars or limos to show off, just a nice regular car he could drive to the office and back, basically. I wish all boxers who had success would be able to live like Larry and prepare for their futures like Larry did.
Great write up. This was the type of information I was curious about is that all in the book? And yes, Larry does still live in Easton to my knowledge. I don’t live too far from there and ran into him at his bar and got to sit down with him in his office, pretty nice guy in person and then a few months later we ran into him at the sands casino in Bethlehem PA met his wife too, still together
In one of those books, he claims to be illiterate and in the process of learning how to read. There are probably better finance gurus out there even if Larry did well for a retired athlete.
That's all in there. I also recall discussions about how screwed some fighters got by King (I believe he describes a really egregious example of Witherspoon getting like $100k off a 7 figure purse). This is in Against All Odds. It's a great book, shows you his financial savvy, shows you his attitude on everything, also makes some pretty eye raising claims about entering fights with injuries. It also contains some **** talking about Butterbean, which I found funny, given that he later fought him. Makes me wonder if he took Bean as his last fight as a "I'll expose what a chump this guy really is when the world watches a fat grandpa kick his ass". Which, I mean, is what happened. Was like a replay of his first fight against Shavers, except for the part where Larry tries to dance a bit too much for being 53 and 40lbs over his prime weight and trips over his own feet. His later book, Don't Tell Me I Can't, is ok. It does gives a nice run through of his later career, and I recall makes some more wild claims about entering fights with injuries. Supposedly fought Mercer with a detached retina, Holyfield with a broken and not fully healed hand. He gets salty in the book about his losses to Spinks, McCall, and Nielsen. Zero salt about the loss to Holyfield, he gives him his due there (which is sort of rare for Larry to do). He said something along the lines of "I fought well. I tried everything, but it just wasn't enough. He was too good."
I've only read 'Against All Odds' which I found quite good. I was surprised that only a couple of lines were inked on Larry's fight with Oliver McCall as he came pretty close to winning it. Just one or two more rounds in the bank and we would have had two forty-somethings ruling the heavyweight division,albeit briefly. Big George being the other.
The funnier one would have been if Holmes had beaten Nielsen. Had he done that, we'd have had a 48 year old belt holder and a 48 year old lineal champ. We'd have had a decade where TWO old men from an earlier era had returned and won titles, held them (assuming you count the lineage) simultaneously. A fight between them definitely would have happened then. The marketing for that one would just write itself. Given that Foreman's power seemed to finally be going by that point, I think Larry would have won. He looked pretty damn good as an old man when he didn't have to move around the ring much -- reflexes were still decent, hand speed was still decent, and he still seemed to land his right with some pop (look at that beautiful right he one-shotted Mike Weaver with in their old man battle).
I’ll check out the 49-0 question and some stories outside the ring with a skim. The rest would be a bit trickier to find. Did you want sparring stories? General life? I’m not sure where to start for you.
Again, as per above, the book is there for all to read. Strangely, the amazing resources provided by Internet Archive still seem to be somewhat under utilised. I’ll be knocking Larry’s book over soon myself. Norton’s auto bio “might” be available there also - I’m not sure but an on-site search will provide a quick yay or nay answer.
