Larry Holmes (Cooney Fight) V Mike Tyson (Spinks fight)?

He was favored to beat Spinks, but he just wasn’t that good. Let’s say he found paydirt in that fight….He’d end up getting destroyed by Tyson a year or two later.

 

Tyson was groomed from his inception to beat Holmes. As stated in the past, Holmes doesn't have the firepower to keep Tyson at bay. Holmes is also an opponent that Tyson would be at his 100% best and dialed in for. And vice versa, of course.

Tyson KO 9 Holmes

 

By the time Cooney fought Spinks he was semi-retired plus having all sorts of issues with alcoholism etc.
So Cooney's abilities and potential can't be judged on the Spinks fight.

 

Didn't stop Tyson Fury.

The loss had to do with him not knowing how to deal with angles that Spinks gave him. He was near his physical prime even if he wasn't at his peak. The alcoholism angle is a cop out.

 

Cop out ?? No,it really isn't.
Fury is an exception.

 

Who is Tyson? Who is Tapia? Who is Chavez? Who is Oscar? Who is Whitaker?

Substance abuse might make a great fighter like Whitaker burn out before Floyd, but it won’t make a protected fighter like Cooney have gaps in his fundamentals.

 

No please,let me make this clear.Nobody,least of all me,is suggesting that Cooney was a potential
ATG.What I'm saying is that Cooney,had he avoided the curse of alcoholism and had sufficient
ambition to find a genuinely first-class trainer,could have achieved much more in his career.
Cooney could definitely have captured one of the belts.This is undeniable.

 

He had great management. They guided an incomplete fighter to several huge paydays that guys like page could only dream of. And Cooney never even was a world level am. He was domestic.

 

'If that was the real Larry Holmes in there, I wouldna stood a chance'. A quote from the incredibly knowledgeable, incredibly analytical student of the game...Mike Tyson.

 

Nooooo......of course he didn't have great management.He had terrible management ! They kept Cooney from
fighting guys like Mike Weaver,the sort of guys who could give Cooney the confidence to fight an ATG like Holmes.
Nobody here is talking about money or purses,the subject here is career development,and quite frankly Rappaport and Jones made a dreadful mess of Cooney's development as a fighter.

 

Money talks. He got paid. Legacy doesn’t really matter in boxing.

 

Tbh Fergy, whilst I see it as 50/50, I was expecting a c.60/40 split in Tyson's favour. It may well end up that way yet.

 

Really ? I thought legacy was the topic being discussed.