Did Holmes have a bum of the month?

He didn't fight Tate, Dokes, or Coetzee (excused, I guess), or give rematches to Williams and Witherspoon. Page and Thomas were relevant fighters relatively early in Holmes' reign, but he never fought them.

 

Wlad had three belts when the WBC was vacant. Nobody was disputing him. Holmes never unified. Tyson did that.

 

Holmes never unified because of how shitty boxing politics were in the early 80s. Tyson did manage to unify only cuz don king managed to put the HBO heavyweight tournament together

 

Holmes didn't even want to fight Pinklon Thomas. Politics wasn't holding him back.

 

I did mention Greg Page and Pinklon Thomas. But I did not hear some of the challengers that you mention calling out Larry Holmes either. Also there was no public demand for bouts against Dokes, Goetze, or give Witherspoon and Williams rematches, the last two were towards the very end of his title reign. The Williams fight took place on May 19 1985and was televised live on NBC. The Williams fight was right before his Sept 21 1985 loss of his IBF belt to Michael Spinks. You did not read what I posted. As fighters age they begin to realize their limitations. I do not believe in making excuses for any fighter, that includes my favorites.

 

This does not change the fact that against the background of average opposition you can look great and you can look the same as the rest. Lewis had non-prominent rivals whom he couldn't dominate. Compared to Mavrowic, Briggs, Tucker, Holyfield, Mercer, Klitschko did not look like a great champion. What about defeats by ko? sometimes you have a bad day, sometimes your opponent doesn't like you, but it happened too often for Lennox. He had a great punch and sometimes shined, but he had a lot of flaws that discredited him when compared to the biggest ones. I thought if he had beaten Mercer and Holyfield more clearly, we could have turned a blind eye to it, but I guess he was just never able to do it.

 

That's a convenient set of excuses, but other than Ali and Cooney, we know that Holmes took a bunch of fights against guys who didn't bring money to the table.

 

There's validity in what you're saying, especially when it comes to admitted tomato cans Scott Frank and Marvis Frazier.

And the case can definitely made for Zanon, Ledoux, Rodriguez being not exactly deserving of a shot.

That's five out of twenty (the rest were considered at least dangerous contenders).

There were plenty of people who thought even Ali would win.

I can't remember anyone being thrilled at the prospect of Holmes fighting Page (the latter kept losing to guys considered well beneath him). Or Dokes (who had a terrible early "championship" stoppage and a bad decision at the hands of Weaver to his "credit").

I'll give you Thomas, though let's face it he really wasn't on top for long, either.

 

Evangelista and Spinks were also pretty bad.

Thomas first saw a Ring rating in 1982 and stayed undefeated after that including the draw with Coetzee. There was plenty of time for Holmes to fight him.

 

Strictly your words not mine. As I said, I don't make excuses for any fighter even my favorites. Maybe we should ask Larry Holmes himself why he did not fight Michael Dokes, Greg Page, Gerri Goetze, Pinklon Thomas,or even give Tim Witherspoon a rematch. I am not going to argue over something that happened over 40 years ago, it's a waste of my time. You can carry on and believe what you may.

 

I sympathize with the your views on the Thomas duck.

Evangelista was indeed not good...not sure Leon was such a corpse, though.

 

Leon was a cruiserweight fighting a full sized heavyweight, at best. Ditto Ocasio.

 

Coeztee was signed and it fell through over a crappy job by the promoter.

It makes no difference if Holmes has excuses for not taking these fights. He's a barely top 5 heavyweight all time at best, not bad, but should have no case for top 3 because he didn't take and win those fights. I have him at 6.

 

This.

I think a core disagreement here is how much we value the WBA belt of Holmes day. Some think its an outrage he didn't unify others can not care less.

Like you I think Pinklon was a worthy adversary but there wasn't much time. Him being ranked from 82 doesn't mean he stood out at that time any more than the guys Holmes was(usually) picking.