Anyone Else feel Holmes Should have Been Better Then He Was?

Everyone knows that I am the biggest Holmes critic, so it is pointless for me to chime in too much...so I will go a little the other way, and say something positive....wait for it.

This is Larry's top ten consensus wins, along with runners up, and vote totals. As boxing largely comes down to wins, this is what you are working with as a Holmes fan.

https://www.boxingforum24.com/threads/name-holmes-ten-best-wins.719448/

Norton-5
Witherspoon-5
Shavers 2-5
Cooney -5
Berbick-5
Leon Spinks-5
Bonecrusher-4
Mercer-4
Shavers 1-4
Weaver-4
Ali-1
Williams-1
Bey-1
Cobb-1

Now here is the positive part: some of these have a good context. Cooney is a bit of a joke these days, but we all know that at the time he looked like a stone killer. Mercer is of course in the context of Larry being post-40, and even Leon was very respectable AT THE TIME as an Olympic gold medalist, former champ, and victor over Ali and Mercado.

So, there it is. I will never be Holmes biggest fan, and I definitely think that those of you ranking him 2-3 are very misguided. But yeah, good fighter and top ten guy.

 

Holmes was fighting hungry challengers at the rate of about 3 a year, for about 7 years running.

 

Larry Holmes was signing contracts to fight guys in a few months he possibly had never even seen before. Men who had his title in their sights. After beating Renaldo Snipes, he still thought his name was "Bernardo Snipes", no doubt confusing him with another guy who fought Tex Cobb on the same show.

 

Neither do I.

 

I am talking about number of wins over elite opposition, not the quality of those wins.

 

Hitting harder. Wlad hit hard so was able to win with greater ease. Also being able to endlessly lean on shorter fighters and resting yourself while wearing them down helps. Helps to be a 6'6 guy who can lean on shorter fighters with impunity.

 

I consider him to be a 3-5 in his weight class' history. So, I feel like he got there. I don't see how he could've actually gotten rated higher, honestly. He didn't have quite the freak athleticism of Ali or the bone-snapping power of Louis and still came somewhat close to them, to me.

 

Yeah Uysk is very strong. Fury and AJ weren't having there way in the clinches which totally took me by surprise even a Fury who was like 40-55 pounds heavier and strong himself.

I wonder if genetics plays a part as well.

 

He could have been better yet he's still one of the greats

 

If Holmes HADN'T had those flaws, he wouldn't hae been half as interesting.

Yeah, at his peak he had trouble against Weaver, Shavers, Snipes, and Norton. But then, those were terrific fights. So what are we complaining about? lol

I thought the Cooney fight was really good, Cooney fought like a number one contender. But I thought Larry had that one wrapped up in the second, he erred too much on the side of caution when he floored him. Should have finished him.

I scored the Williams and Witherspoon fights for Holmes, though only by one and two points. Those fighters showed their inexperience by hot dogging, thinking they'd already won.

 

Check out the Berbick fight. Not really considered the best snapshot of Larry's career, however it does put on ample display the profound effectiveness of a great heavyweight jab. Berbck was foiled at seemingly all turns, despite being supremely game throughout.

That jab discouraged, confused, and as the announcer mentioned "ruined Berbick's whole day". It was fantastic application of a direly essential punch. You could tell it really sucked being Berbick that day, and I have to say that Berbick was both younger and probably hungrier than the stiff that fought Iron Mike.

 

He is top 5 for me.