I think that larry holmes avoided jimmy young and ron lyle.

Both Young and Lyle were somewhat on the down slide by the time Holmes won the title..Lyle just getting old and winding down...Holmes would have had a field day with the spent force that was Lyle..a late tko would have been the result...Young on the other hand..he was basically dispirited from getting screwed over by the judges in the Norton fight...that was a mental thing..but I don't think Holmes wanted any part of a prepared, "negatively motivated" Jimmy Young...Young was poison for all the top heavies of the 70's...if you did beat him, you'd you'd look amateurish and very, very bad in doing so...but more than likely, it would have probably been a case of rotten-to-the-core, crooked judges helping out Larry in getting a decision win, ala the Ali and Norton fights.

 

Young just didn't fit the template of a Holmes victim..he was so defensively gifted...and was able to take and shrug off whatever got through his defenses..he'd have Larry missing and looking so awkward..remember, in Jimmy's own words.."I don't really fight to win...I fight to survive"..but I think he won against every top 10 heavy he went up against, till he sorta "gave up the ghost" after the Norton robbery.

 

I agree he beat everybody, but even after Norten, He did very well, I think even beat Occasio, and Dokes , did well against Page, on the way to a big win possibly against Cooney, even though he was older, heavyer, and probably into alcohale and maybe drugs by then. An in shape and motivated Young, even an older Young, could be ANY heavyweights nightmare. Its a shame poeple and judges didn't apperciate his talants. I thought it was so funny seeing him push Dokes down in his corner.

 

Ey... I'm just glad theres fans like you guys.. haha

 

Although I don't think Holmes would ever duck anyone. Even if his people suggested it, I think he was too good a guy to be like that. He could have easily ducked Cooney by making him fight some more guys, but I think he wanted the biggest and BEST fights out there.

 

I seem to remember in one of Holmes' early title fight post-fight interviews Jimmy Young was actually mentioned and Holmes said he didn't need no part of Jimmy Young.
Holmes respected the hell out of Young's skills.

I think Young was usually a dreary boring fighter to watch, but i cannot deny he beat some of the top heavyweights out there, and was robbed a couple of times too.

 

Good post... But I also remember Holmes saying Young had absolutely no power.. and had a pushing jab.. Which I find to be bull****.

He sure did beat some damn good heavies. I believe he got robbed vs Shavers, Ali, and Norton. Dokes too.

 

A motivated Jimmy Young would be problems for anyone but he really gave up training after the loss to Norton, he could have beaten Ocasio with one hand but he walked into the ring with the largest pair of man-boobs I have ever seen.

Young would have been a stylistic nightmare for anyone if he trained and you could not blame anyone for moving around him.

 

I don't think he had much reason to avoid either by the time he'd come into his own.

 

What did I read incorrectly?

You started this thread, and openly accused Holmes of "avoiding" these men.. Frankly, I don't see any proof that he steared clear of them... Maybe they weren't even on his mind, and he was just fighting the men that his managment was putting in front of him....

Basically, you made a claim and couldn't back it up.. You just tried to ad 2+2, and at the end of the day, came up with nothing...

 

Exactly.

He fought the men who were rightfully placed in front of him, i.e., Earnie shavers, Ken Norton, Roy Williams.. Ron Lyle had basically been reduced to nobody by the time Holmes was on the scene. Jimmy young was losing to men like Ossie Ocasio who Holmes would soon beat... In 1976, Holmes was prospect, while Young was contender... If anyone had anything to lose, it was Young, not Holmes....

 

I remember reading the same thing, but it also doesn't mean that Holmes intentionally steared clear of Young... Young was not a man who Holmes needed to fight to win the title, and had he beaten Ocasio, he surely would have gotten the shot...'

On a sidenote, Holmes get's too much **** for never facing men during his best years... There were REASONS and CIRCUMSTANCES that led to some of those fights not being made

 

If Larry Holmes ever "ducked" anyone, it was because the money wasn't right. A young Holmes was desperate for money and would've climbed over a mountain to fight either Lyle or Young if he could've gotten the promise of a big enough payday to distance himself from the prospect of having to go back to the car wash. I think it's easy to play the hindsight game and figure Holmes might be sweating this or that threat to his "perfect record", when the reality is that he was scraping by and trying to feed his family.

The older I get, the clearer it is to me that Larry Holmes was the ultimate professional and was a complete realist when it came to the boxing game. If you'd have offered him 50K in 1976 to fight either one, my bet would be that his pen would've left a smoke trail on the contract he would've signed it so fast.