This content is protected A lot of old school skills on display from Holmes here with the parrying, right hands to the chest and doubling up on jabs and hooks; I think he sweeps the first three rounds. He’s a little too stodgy carrying the extra eight lb. though at his height and the awkward, counter punching Eubank is able to claw back the points deficit like he did in the Benn fights. Holmes was always that avoided guy in the 80s, I think Don King kept him in the middleweight #1 spot with WBC from 85-90 for the best part! Not a big enough name and could really bang. Holmes and Toney sparred eight rounders for six weeks for their respective fights with Eubank and Iran Barkley; Holmes said after he felt Toney would edge Eubank in 93 being slightly younger and craftier. However he thought Nunn and Eubank would be an ‘interesting’ fight.
I saw Lindell Holmes fight Steve Darnell at the Forum. He hit him with a shot- a left hook, I think- and Darnell was literally horizontal in the air before he hit the canvas.
I’ve heard about that shot over the decades! More than a few times. But seems the fight wasn’t on TV. People say it was the hardest punch they ever saw thrown. Left uppercut I heard, clean high off his feet and towards the ropes?
Yes he was and he spent an awful lot of time at Kronk and I think he was even on the team at one point. He had a weird career where he is losing to Graham and Kalue and then stopping Williams and beat Drayton.
Looking through his record, he turned pro in the 1970s! Fought the very best amateurs in the world before then…. Billy Gutz said all those losses abroad for Holmes were ‘screwjobs’ one way or another and how he had to travel because nobody in America would get in with him, how much of that is exaggerated I don’t know.
