Larry Holmes as #1 Heavyweight of All-Time???

I said could not would. Ali would be the favourite but slightly. Same with Louis. Holmes-Marciano is a 50/50 fight for me. I can see everything in his fight, from Marciano beeing absolute hell for Holmes to Holmes having an easy night. Very hard to pick here I think.

 

But here is the crux of the matter.

Louis beat the best of his era and Holmes did not beat the best of his era.

Holmes alowed other title claims to exist alongside his championship and Louis barely alowed an outstandig contender to remain undominated.

Louis put every close fight of his title reign beyond doubt with a rematch and Holmes did not.

Even iy you thought that Holmes fough in a better era, it would be a prety hard sell that the best fighters Holmes actualy beat were better than the best that Louis beat.

So no I don't think they are comparable.

 

Only you would find an opportunity like the one in your avatar

 

Holmes managed his money better though.

 

I can't disagree with this argument.

 

Holmes had very weak defenses but fought on well and stayed competitive but I can not put him in my top 5 because he did not fight the best combo punchers of his era.

I have him in my top 10 but can not speculate that he would have been the best of the bunch if he did not fight them. Where Louis,Marciano,Ali relished to fight the best of there era Holmes never rematched a tough fight Holmes,Weaver,Witherspoon,Williams and never unified the title, in fact he gave up a title not to fight the talented but really ordinary Greg Page. Louis,Marciano,Ali,Walcott,Patterson fought the best of there era and were the lineal champs.

If you are the type fan that can say well I speculate Holmes would have beaten them all Coetzee,Thomas,Page,Dokes,Weaver,Tate, despite the fact he did not fight them fine. Larry was my favorite fighter of his era but it was a 1st for me with these split tittles and corruption.(Don King paying for Holmes rating at Ring Magazine.

I was frustrated at the time because having watched Holmes in the amateurs and following his career in the pros liked his development under Richie G. Holmes went on to prove he had a lot of heart in his fights with Snipes and Shavers2 and Norton but his greatest win was over an unproven Gerry Cooney.

I am not a hater but you must attempt to fight the best of your era. Even though Larry had a lot of defenses the challengers were very weak 10 fight Marvis, 10-2-2 (Spinks (who was KO'd already by Coetzee in1, David Bey(who went on to lose 14 of his next 18 fights. Holmes other defenses were over guys with 13 and 14 fights and 16 fights. I remember watching Leroy Jones take a beating off middleweight Tom Bethea at the 28th st. gym in NY. just before getting a shot at Holmes.

I have softened a lot listening to a lot of good points by posters on this board but there is nothing in Holmes career that would make me forget it all and top 10 is more than enough IMO because its not fair to the champs that fought the best of there era.

 

Larry is a top three heavyweight of mine, and the one I give the best chance of upsetting the mythical Ali of 1968 and 1969 to. How? He was bigger and stronger than Folley, had the same smarts, and Eddie Futch in his corner during some of his peak performances. Muhammad was a fast starter for his style of boxing, but Zora had some success against him in winning two of the first three rounds, by standing his ground to take Ali off his toes, and scoring from the outside with singular body shots as well as successive right hand leads. Beyond that, Futch would have instructed Holmes in how to use his jab to throw Ali off his rhythm. The only thing I would put money on is that peak Ali-peak Holmes would have gone 15 rounds with no knockdowns.

I'm confident that Holmes would have decisioned Louis. Larry was a boxer first, and would never go for the kill against Joe. He had the legs to stay away for 15 rounds (especially as he showed in Cobb and Shavers I), outscoring Louis from long range most of the way. Joe was a lethal counterpuncher waiting patiently for his prey to come after him. Holmes wasn't "thick" like Billy Conn, and would have kept his cool to the final bell.

The heavyweight champion with the best shot at pulling off a stoppage upset over a peak Holmes would have been Max Baer. Like Shavers, he was a free swinging slugger with a lethal right hand. Unlike Earnie, Maxie also had 20 round stamina and a steel chin to go with an unpredictable, almost crazed attack. Larry would not have worn him down or knocked him out, and Max would be dangerous until the end.

While Larry did not give rematches during his tenure like Louis did, he did not have the "benefit" of a WW II hiatus to extend his reign either, and successfully defended his title for eight consecutive calendar years. He was the first undefeated boxer to win 20 consecutive title defenses, and he did it against 20 different challengers. (Matching Joe's record here. Even with rematches against Buddy Baer, Simon, Conn, Godoy and Walcott, Louis still defended against 20 different challengers.) Nine of them were undefeated. Five of them were future champions. Leon Spinks was a former champion who earned his shot at Holmes by stopping a big, powerful, red hot and deadly Bernardo Mercado. Leon would go on to a CW shot at Qawi before his final descent. Carl Williams eventually earned a second shot at the title by beating Berbick and Cooper. (Leon was expected by many to regain the title in an upset decision over Holmes. Larry blew him out in three. As the press kept underestimating him, his stature grew.)

Louis and Ali were the greatest heavyweight champions of all time. (During the 1960s, Muhammad gave long overdue shots to Williams and Folley, and sometimes gets overlooked as a great fighting champion. He defended the title five times in 1966, and four times in both 1975 and 1976. Without that exile, he might easily have been the first champion in boxing with 30 title defenses. Liston, Frazier and Foreman would have never been that active with the title.) But a case can be made that Holmes stylistically would have had the best chance to beat the most of history's other great heavyweights. He was smarter and more technically sound than Ali, and was able to adapt to competition in middle age when they were not. He had the consensus best jab in heavyweight history. Combined with his speed, reach, toughness, mobility and intelligence, it can be argued that he was the best equipped to defeat anybody else.

"Holmes never unified the title." It's a red herring. A credible case has never been made that Larry was not the best heavyweight in the world during his reign. For months before Hagler officially became a champion at 160, Stanley Weston's magazines were ranking him as the number one middleweight in the world, and this was at a time when the middleweight title was the only undisputed championship in boxing! These publications never rated Thomas, Dokes, Page or Coetzee over Holmes though. Mike Weaver, the best of the WBA champions during this time, made it clear after upsetting Tate that Larry was the number one heavyweight, and that never wavered as long as he remained undefeated.

 

It's a bit of a stretch to say that Holmes allowed this state of affairs. It wasn't completely within Holmes control, with the split in the title and the beginning of the Don King era of deliberately avoiding unification fights on financial grounds. Joe didn't have to deal with as much of that kinda stuff.

Holmes only had one close fight in his title reign and that was to Witherspoon. (BTW, IMO Larry lost that fight)

And Tim went on to shortly after pick up the other half of the title, which he soon lost, and went into rebuild mode. By the time he was a name again, Larry's reign had ended.

Debatable.

A bit of an overstatement.

I think they are definitely comparable, in a lot of ways.

I am a big Louis fan and rank him second alltime, and I've stated in earlier threads on a number of occasions that I think Larry was a *****.


If we just look at the title reigns, IMO Louis' was better.

But if you look at the entire careers, the gap narrows.

Louis' stoppage at the hands of Max must count against him, despite its eventual avenging.

And Larry's 'second life' was better than Joe's. His defeat of Ray Mercer and very competitive showing against a prime Holyfield at age 42, and Oliver Mc Call at 45, were particularly impressive.

As I mentioned, I have Louis at #2 and Holmes at #5 or 6.

 

Larry "The Homer" Holmes was a serious bad-ass mutha' from 1978 to 1983........ He's up there in the ATG ratings, etc....

MR.BILL

 

H2H I think Holmes could have beaten Louis and Ali even in a series. He was a superb fighter, however, his lack of great opposition does hurt his status imo. He was more than capable of being the greatest of all time, though.

 

And which one of his wins convinced you that he could beat the all-time greats?

 

Holmes' problem are his defenses he made.

Shavers and an older Norton were common to Ali's defenses.....and of course Ali who was finished as a serious fighter at the time.

Cooney was actually pretty good, as was Weaver.

But the rest were either very young at the time of the fight....or actually not very good fighters at all.

Spinks of course "beat" him twice.

It was not Larry's fault...but he just missed the "Golden Age of the Heavyweights", and didn't have a serious rival to build his legacy from.