How do you feel about Holyfield's legacy?

I’ve seen some of your other posts and you seem like an inquisitive person who wants to know more about the sport so don’t take this the wrong way but I think your view of Holyfield as ‘unskilled’ is in urgent need of reassessment.

If you don’t like the guy and that dislike is born of his PED use, that’s absolutely fair and up to you, of course. He may not have had the same success if he hadn’t taken PEDs, I’m not disputing that part… but he certainly who would never have had the success he had at a higher-than-natural weight class without the skills he brought.

 

Holyfield rounds out my own personal list of all-time top 10 heavyweights.

His initial title reign was good but he got very little credit for it because:
a) he had old but tough oppositon in Foreman and Holmes that made people think he should have dispatched them clinically (which vastly underrates Foreman and Holmes at the same time) and he got seriously wobbled by Bert Cooper. Plus, he didn’t fight Mike Tyson, which was in no way his fault.
b) he wasn’t Mike Tyson. Like Ezzard Charles after Joe Louis or Larry Holmes after Muhammad Ali, Holyfield wasn’t either a bomber who took out opposition with one punch or a transcendent superstar like Ali - he was a boxer who could punch hard enough to get respect but not hard enough to flatten fighters as durable as Foreman and Holmes. That led to people questioning him a lot during his first title reign. His losing effort against Bowe bought him a measure of the respect he deserved when outgunned by a highly skilled big man who was at peak fitness and focus.

But he also holds a rematch win over Bowe in a fight he shouldn’t have been able to win and a KO over a Tyson who people were starting to believe was untouchable again. Both were remarkable victories. He also avenged his defeat to Michael Moorer and he took Lewis very close in their rematch at an age and stage of his career where he shouldn’t have been as competitive as he was. He also holds wins over decent opposition when he was a challenger post-Cruiserweight against the likes of a focussed Michael Dokes and Alex Stewart.

The PED thing does hang over him, though, more so I think than his reputation among some boxing fans that he was a dirty fighter (headbutts) but he was a never-say-die warrior who people grew to respect over the course of the 1990s.

 

Actually even more. You forgot about Hasim Rahman

 

Wish there was a Moore/Holy trilogy.

 

yea im ngl i am EXTREMELY bias against holyfield... realistically hes a very good boxer but hes definitely a cheater which makes me feel justified and saying hes bad. Thanks for prompting me to reassess my view.

 

In terms of just watching his skills as a fighter, I think he's one of the most interesting fighters I've ever seen. And his reproductive organs work really, just extremely well. I don't know that I put a lot on being the number one cruiserweight, and I basically shove it all together, in historical terms, and I still think he's one of the greatest to ever lace them up. His punch mechanics and the way he moves, it can be awe-striking. There's something about him, that he has a way of displaying more skills to do roughly less than or equal to what many other fighters did against the same opponents. And that's weird. But I don't know what to make of it. He's the most inefficiently over-skilled boxer I may have ever seen, in some ways. But he's awesome. He has always been awesome. He will always be awesome. I don't care that he took it easy on Romney.

 

PED use aside, he's an easy fighter to like, so probably ends up overrated. Warrior heart, willing to fight anyone, doesn't insult fans by showing up out of shape, goes to war if he has a willing opponent, doesn't act like a jackass outside of the ring (having 8,000 kids with 7,000 different babymamas aside), acts like the consummate professional any time he's in front of a mic or the press, etc. You could totally picture him as a Roman gladiator.

He's an easy top 10 of "god damn I like this guy". At least that's how he's always been to me. He's less impressive off resume alone, especially when you consider how it was boosted by him getting a bunch of big fights he didn't really earn due to the "god damn I like this guy" factor.

 

I voted "6-8".
To me he is easily a top 10 HW of all time, I can't see it any other way, there simply isn't 10 guys who accomplished more than he did.
For the PEDs, I am assuming everyone from 1980 onwards was on them in some capacity. Was there more servere/blatant cases than others? Was Holyfield in this category? Maybe. But where are we going to draw the line? We are entering muddy waters when we are trying to factor PEDs in.
Dirty tactics? Well, maybe. But then again, Holyfield wasn't the first or last guy to employ them. And last I checked you'll have points deducted and eventually be DQ'ed if you don't fight within the rules.

 

Did anyone need to be told that Heavyweight Holyfield was on drugs? I mean just LOOK at him. The man went from 190lbs 10% body fat to 220lbs 10% body fat in a matter of WEEKS. His muscles started limiting his shoulder mobility ffs.

https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-fc2f8bec41b58d58b5e2f1eb4e971160-lq

They're all on drugs anyway though so it makes no difference to his legacy.

 

Tyson was over 200lbs as a teenager. In no universe would he fight at light heavyweight.

 

This is one of the best summaries I've seen of Holyfield. The only thing I'd add to his "cons" section would be how incredibly inconsistent he could be with so many good or bad performances regardless of the quality of his opponents. KO King did a good job elaborating on this issue.

 

Maybe everybody was on drugs, but Holy was in a class of his own; he looked like he had just raided CVS...

 

I used to raid CVS for cigarettes and candy bars.

 

He fought to the level of his competition.

 

Top ten.