1. PEDs. You mean Evan Fields. He was caught having HGH delivered to his house, and yes, that is all the evidence needed that he was on one of the most powerful of PEDs. We just don't know if he would have been successful at heavy without them. 2. Most of his best wins were against guys that were less than great when he entered the ring with them. Holmes and Foreman were post-40, Tyson in his post-prison drug spiral, Douglas a beached whale, etc. 3. Losses to lesser fighters. Moorer, Ruiz...even Bowe is only special because of his tautological winning against Holy. 4. Relatively low and poor quality of heavyweight title defense. He managed, I think, 6, which is not bad, but some of the names on there are Vaughn Bean, Bert Cooper...again, the old guys. His CHAMPIONSHIP work was very poor. 5. Some hold his extremely dirty head-butting and testicle punching against him.
I have been involved with, active in, and around, sports for many years, decades really. Personally, I think most, if not all, great Heavyweights, then and now, are using whatever they think will give them an edge, allowed, iffy, and not allowed. And, basically, I believe it has always been that way. So I do not think badly of Holyfield for him doing it, too, even though he was not as good at hiding it as some were, and still are, for various reasons. I rank Evander Holyfield at number 4 on my current all time Heavyweight Boxing list.
I've always struggled to rank Holy, to be honest. Obviously his cruiser run was terrific but he spent most of his time at HW. There, he was capable of great wins, punctuated by occasional losses and poor performances. He is a great fighter no doubt, but with my 90s hat on, was too inconsistent when compared with the sheer dominance of a Roy Jones, for example. Or even the impressive 90s runs of Trinidad or ODH. Probably a slightly unpopular take, but I view his inconsistency at elite level as one of the reasons why he's lower down on my ATG HW list.
I rank him very highly H2H, but on the ATG list he is further down. The best version of Holyfield can beat any heavyweight in history but we didn't see that guy every fight...
Do you have to be the best heavyweight to be the best pound for pound? Everybody and his dog knows that Lewis was only better than Holyfield because of size.
Holyfield was 28-0 when he first faced Bowe. RJJ and Tito got KTFO and never avenged any of their losses either.
Loving people riffing on Holyfield the PED cheat. Never failed a test whereas many contemporaries did. Of course he roided. So did the rest of them. Doesn't alter the fact he was a better fighter than basically all of them despite being undersized. And cry me a river about the headbutts. He roughed up Tyson primarily who wasnt averse to filthy tactics himself. Somehow Tyson gets a pass for it but not Evander? Double standards are a boxing tradition like baggy trunks and dodgy judging.
And how exactly does that refute anything I said in regards to the other fighters having much better world title records and more impressive longer runs ? Holyfield didn't revenge most of his losses either ? And in actual fact RJJ did revenge one of his losses to Montel Griffin. Tito only had 3 losses with all 3 of them being at Middleweight and above. Pretty hard to revenge a loss to an ATG Middleweight like Hopkins in his prime when it isn't your best weightclass. Holyfield revenging losses against the likes of Ruiz and Moorer who he shouldn't of lost to in the first place isn't the flex you think it is.
I think Holyfield is easily the #1 heavyweight of the 90s, but in P4P he's not as good as Jones or Whiteaker, and fighters like Hoya, Trinidad, Lopez, or even Morales or Hamed could have also competed with him in the 1990-1999 period.
Holyfield didn't "avenge" the loss against Ruiz. He won the first fight, lost the second one and drawed with him in the trilogy bout. We can say Ruiz avenged his loss to Holyfield.
Furthers my point even more then. I don't understand how this guy thinks revenging a loss to Moorer is a plus when Holyfield shouldn't of lost to Moorer anyway. And whilst Holyfield did revenge the loss to Bowe he lost trilogy overall.