Mike Tyson had a better career than Larry Holmes.

Just like Holmes was practically undisputed after beating Ali.

 

Vitali and Wlad would never have fought each other.

What I said was, that if Vitali hadn’t have retired, he’d have held on to that belt until somebody, if anybody, could have beaten him.

What I’m saying is, Wlad’s career would not have played out like it actually did.

Even if Vitali had lost the belt at some point, Wlad’s career would have played out differently.

Yes, it’s my opinion that Vitali would have held the belt for a while.

Yes, that can never be proven.

However, Wlad’s career would still have played out differently.

He could never have acquired Vitali’s old belt when he did.

Wlad was lucky that he had his brother.

Lucky that his brother retired for 4 years.

And considering he was knocked out by 3 non great fighters, he’s also lucky that he fought in the era that he did.

It doesn’t take a lot of thinking to believe that he couldn’t have dominated for 11 years, had those 11 years had crossed over with the 90’s at some point.

 

But Vitali held the WBC belt anyway for 4 years of Wlad's reign. Wlad never aquired it. We don't know if Vitali would be willing to unfiy with anyone else, especially looking at the level of competition he faced during his career. We can do all the wouldas couldas and ifs all we want, but it doesn't change the fact that Wlad dominated the era. Era that wasn't much weaker than the era Holmes dominated.

 

He did.

You’re right.

But after Vitali’s retirement, Wlad was seen as the ‘Man’ of the division.

But he would never have been seen as the main man, as long as Vitali had been around.

Yes, Vitali’s competition was poor overall. But it obviously would have been better had he not retired.

It would basically have come down to who out of them had the best opportunities.

According to Vitali, they literally flipped a coin as to who was going to fight Haye. I don’t know if that’s true.

Maybe it was a good thing that Vitali had to keep retiring. Because if not, we’d have had 2 champions with all of the belts, who were never going to fight.

Yes, I think that in terms of quality, there wasn’t much difference between Wlad’ and Larry’s eras.

 

Well you can say it about a lot of fighters. It doesn't matter what would have been in an alternate scenario, what counts is what fighters did what with they had.

Originally, Haye was scheduled to fight Wlad. Then he switched to to Vitali but the fight never materialized. At the end of the day he fought Wlad, but his camp advised him against it, since they saw Vitali as an easier fight for him stylistically.

 

Yeah, but Holmes already beat Weaver, so with beating Ali he had the lineage of the belt twice over, so the "dispute" had the same merit as disputing Wlad's claim because he didn't have one of the belts.

 

Yeah, Weaver beat Tate for the same belt Ali vacated. So having beaten both Weaver and Ali, the dispute had no merit. Holmes was the universally recognized champion, sometimes described as undisputed. After that Holmes beat Berbick who beat Tate too.

 

It wasn’t just simple to unify the titles.

This has been explained earlier in the thread.

 

They’re not excuses.

Come and have an objective debate

It doesn’t matter what Mike did.

You can’t do direct comparisons between two completely different scenarios.

The landscape was different in the early 80’s, to what it was in the mid to late 80’s.

In the early 80’s, three organisations wasn’t as accepted.

Also, we have both read numerous accounts of where Larry to tried to fight Coetzee, yet the fight kept getting postponed, before being cancelled altogether.

It almost got made 2-3 times.

The fights happened for Mike, because they were available to him.

What if Mike had turned pro in 1980, instead of 1985? (at the same age)

Could he have become the undisputed champion?

He would more than likely have faced the same difficulties.

 

How on earth do you know that he’d have unified?

You don’t know that at all.

If he’d have been in the same position as Holmes, then he too could have faced the same issues in fighting a guy like Coetzee.

It’s like looking at Terence Crawford, then asking why other fighters aren’t 2 x undisputed etc.

The opportunity has to be there.