If Larry Holmes Hadn't Been Around..?

I think the title would be changing hands just like the alphabet belts until Tyson unifies.

 

Earnie Shavers may well have been a belt holder. So would Gerry Cooney maybe?

 

Like mentioned above, a revolving door of champions.

Most would be under the DKP banner & I'm not so sure about Arum. Certainly not anyone capable of successful defenses. Probably see Arum backing Coetzee type thing.

Actually might have seen Harold Smith backing a few guys into championships. That might have made things interesting.

 

Wow… a timeline where Mike Weaver is the 1# guy? I mean that’ll depend on a few things, I don’t think he’ll be “the man” but easily the most consistent but not really a champion per say.

 

The WBC and WBA titles would be hot potatoes. If anyone got thru two defenses it would be a surprise. This is a sure thing IMO

 

I don’t think anyone else would have been consistent or disciplined enough to stay champion for very long let alone unify.

 

The only horse to bet on in my estimation is M Weaver but I’ve felt like Cooney would dispatch of my him pretty easily, just a bad match up. I’m uncertain who else? Gun to your head who is the most successful of the 80s “Holmes bunch”?

 

Weaver and Witherspoon are the two that come to mind as being a slight step higher than the rest. But even in the current reality they both lost to some of their peers. Pinklon Thomas and Greg had very short primes and didn’t really emerge as top players until about 1983. Cooney wasn’t a natural fighter . He hated boxing. Wasn’t terribly durable. And like many of his generation fell into the pitfalls of drugs and booze.

 

Absolutely, though as it was Mike Weaver defended the WBA successfully against Coetzee and Tillis.

 

Very true mate. You never know, if Holmes wasn't around Dokes may have been aimed at the WBC title and perhaps Weaver could have added a third.

 

It goes something like Norton/Leroy Jones/Cooney/Witherspoon/Pinklon/Tucker/Tyson/Buster.

The likely champion would be Leroy Jones between Norton and Cooney/Witherspoon. Leroy was forced to retire because of an injury he suffered during the Holmes fight. Jones beat Weaver for the NABF then got his title shot and never got a chance to do anything else but if you look at Holmes early opponents and ask "who would be "the champ" if Holmes didn't exist" hes probably your guy before Cooney.

Leroy Jones career record was 25-1 one of the shortest careers of any 20th century HW contender. Still has more wins then Usyk.

 

Here’s a scenario of how I could see it playing out, starting with the reality of the situation and proceeding without Larry Holmes, who has been removed with a magic eraser.

The real timeline

1. Ken Norton defeats Jimmy Young in a WBC eliminator in November 1977, with the winner earning a shot at shot at champion Muhammad Ali.

2. Leon Spinks, a novice pro with an Olympic gold medal and a 6-0-1 record, topples Ali in a major upset to win the unified title in February 1978. Ali had already contracted to face the winner of a scheduled 10-round fight between Spinks and Alfio Righetti, which Spinks won. The WBC sanctioned Ali-Spinks with the agreement that the winner would face Norton next.

3. Spinks instead agrees to a rematch with Ali.

4. WBC strips Leon for not fighting Norton and awards its belt to Norton, retroactively making Norton vs. Young a fight that decided the WBC championship even though it wasn’t a title fight at the time.

5. Norton faces new No. 1 contender Larry Holmes in his first WBC defense in June 1978 and loses a close decision. Ali beats Spinks in their rematch in September.

6. Everything comes to a head for the WBA belt, held by Ali since winning the Spinks rematch, with three events in June 1979: John Tate stops Kallie Knoetze, Gerrie Coetzee knocks out Spinks in one round and Ali sends an official letter of retirement to the WBA (after accepting $300K from promoter Bob Arum to do so*), thus vacating the belt.

* Arum did this because Ali was going to retire anyway, but he couldn’t proceed with promoting a fight for the WBA belt until Muhammad actually vacated it.

7. Tate defeats Coetzee by a wide 15-round decision to claim the WBA crown on March 31, 1980. On this exact date, Holmes defeats Leroy Jones in his sixth defense of the WBC title — and although he isn’t lineal or unified champ, his high level of activity has made him the true heavyweight champion on the public’s mind.

8. Holmes stops a comebacking Ali — who had never lost his title in the ring — in October 1980 to further establish himself as ‘the man’ (who beat the man) in the heavyweight division in the public’s eye.

Without a Holmes in the world

Now comes my scenario in how this might have played out had there never been a Larry Holmes.

To understand how it would have worked, you first have to understand the power dynamics of the time.

Bob Arum was promoting Ali at this late stage of his career — when he lost to, then defeated, Spinks — so he controlled the heavyweight title. Arum held promotional contracts with both Ali and Spinks.

Don King was on the outside looking in … but only if you aren’t keen on boxing shenanigans. Because King had made his power play by working the WBC to put a fighter he controlled (Ken Norton or Jimmy Young) in line for the next shot at an Ali, with a very good chance that either defeats Muhammad and puts the heavyweight championship under his promotional banner and control.

Not only did King get one of his fighters (Norton by defeating Young) at the top of the WBC rankings, he also staged an eliminator for who would get the next shot at the WBC crown. March of 1978 is the key date here, as that’s when two other King heavies (Shavers and Holmes) fought to be first in line after Norton got his shot. But that shot never came, as Spinks didn’t fight Norton.

So now you’ve got Arum in control of the WBA crown, which gets held up until Ali retires; and King in control of the WBC, which is settled when that organization decides Norton’s win over Young retroactively makes him their champ.

And that brings me to my timeline of how this plays out had Holmes never existed.

The new timeline scenario without a Larry in sight

1. The WBA side plays out the same, with Arum-promoted John Tate claiming that title in 1980.

2. Instead of promoting Holmes vs Shavers in March 1978 to create a mandatory challenger for Norton whom he promotes, Don King puts on an eliminator between Shavers and Ron Lyle.

Why Lyle? He’s the one who makes the most sense — George Foreman has disappeared since losing to Young a year earlier, so he’s out; Arum controls Spinks, Coetzee, Kallie Knoetze and Tate, so King isn’t going to put them in a WBC eliminator and risk an Arum fighter getting the inside track; Young just had his shot at Norton so someone else is going to get the shot here. Lyle makes most sense — two big sluggers going head to head sells itself and both Lyle and Shavers have name recognition.

3. Shavers KOs Lyle in March 1978 eliminator. Ron beat Earnie in 1975 but his age is starting to show. In 1977 he won a split decision over Joe Bugner and beat prospect Stan Ward, but he never gets another meaningful win (unless you count an ugly split decision over Scott LeDoux). Earnie comes through for the KO win this time.

4. Earnie stops Norton in one round in June 1978, same as he did in our reality nine months later. All wrong for Norton — too much power. Shavers is WBC heavyweight champ.

5. While Arum’s efforts to crown a new WBA champ are on hold til Ali retires, Earnie gets busy. He KOs Alfredo Evangelista and Ossie Ocasio — who has toppled Jimmy Young — and faces an unknown guy from the West Coast named Mike Weaver in a marking-time defense … and gets KO’d by the seeming journeyman in a shocking upset.

6. John Tate and Mike Weaver meet in a unification when Arum and King decide there’s more money to be made by unifying the titles since neither champ is exactly a household name at this point. Tate is cruising to a points win when Weaver scores a stunning 15th-round KO.

OK, I’ll let you guys play it out from here with lineal champ Mike Weaver carrying the crown into the early 1980s.