Weakest Eras in Heavyweight History?

Post-Zaire 70's, your 4 active ATG's, I presume are Ali, who I have already demonstrated was a complete and total farce, a celebrity punching bag operating on muscle memory and chin. That version was not any sort of All Time Great.

I presume would be the Foreman who lost to journeyman Young before rightfully quitting the sport.

Holmes? The guy who went life and death with an old, chinny Norton who was immediately waxed by Shavers, dropped by repeatedly by LeDoux before meeting his end versus Cooney.

And who would be the fourth? Frazier? That spent little fighter who went 1-2-1 post Zaire.

It is fine saying that these guys were active but they were nothing approximating ATG's in their incarnations of the time. That is just plain disingenuous. Jack Johnson and Jack Dempsey were still active in some way when Louis was around. Does that bolster Louis' era?

 

Heavyweight seems to have a very high bar, many old articles and headlines and old pre fight hype shows will always cite the heavyweight era as weak

there seem to be so many "weak eras" that I wonder when the good ones were

all kidding aside there have been plenty of weak moments that when someone says today is the worst i usually think to myself that has been said numerous times in history

 

How about the 20's when Jack Dempsey went away for 3 years with the title?

Or late 30's Joe Louis' bum of the month, and fighting only one black fighter who was the
LtHvy champ, and 168 lb Billy Conn.

 

I do believe there are Strong Era's and Weak ones too, and I do think on a whole boxing has declined, however there is much truth in this when comparing stronger era's one to the other and the absolute best among weaker era's. so yes little between them.

but I have always maintained this anyway, Elite, Greats and Excellent fighters are generally about equal with little between them!

 

In practice there are very few weak eras, and the ones put forward as the usual suspects rarely qualify.

The post Jeffries era was more a victim of the colour line than anything else. Marvin Hart deserved to be champion, but the division still contained Johnson, Langford, McVea etc. Big fights could have been made if the will had been there.

The early 30s are often named as an example, but when you look past the lack of great fighters at the top, the division was pretty stacked with talent, and very hard to progress in. In Max Schmeling, there was a fighter capable of defeating a young Joe Louis, and there were a couple of other fighters who were around the same level as him such as Jack Sharkey and Max Baer.

The 50s doesn’t qualify for me either really. Even if you overlook the fact that the decade included Rocky Marciano and Sonny Liston, there was always a strong core of top fighters, with competitive matches being made. Even some of the guys who didn’t quite make it to the top of the division like Harold Johnson, were getting better results against some common opponents than Liston and Ali.

With the early 60s you have a slightly stronger case, though you have got Ali as champion and Liston still exists even if he is being sidelined.

With the late 70s, I would tend to agree that it was a weak era, though I would call it the “post Manila 70s” rather than the “post Zaire 70s”..

With the early 80s you actually have a lot of talent around, though many of the top fighters were ruined by drug addiction, and many top fights did not take place due to politics. The bottom line is that the fights were there to be made, if the will had been there.

I think that you have a good case for a weak era from 2000 to the present, though even in this period Wladamir Klitschko found fighters able to beat him. And that is the most striking thing about these so called weak eras. Even all time greats in these eras, will find fighters able to beat them, and expose every weakness or limitation they have. Perhaps there are no truly weak eras.

 

i am pretty sure that the era of prime holmes was one of the worst ever, norton was in his end after 1978,frazier retired, foreman retired, ali a zombie with parkinson , he never faced jimmy young or ron lyle in 1976-77, shavers was in his end and he never was nothing but a bum with lucky punch chance, alfredo evalgelista, lorenzo zanon, weaver, berbick, ocassio,cooney... horrible era

 

Early 1930's...and today...

 

No, you didn't, mo buchaill.
You didn't demonstrate, you opined.

You (rightly) pointed out the lack of stellar opposition on his resume during his second reign. But you (wrongly) denigrate the man and his opponent in Manilla. You supposed the fight to have been a thrilla on account of BOTH men being shot. While both were certainly past best, both had still a lot left in the tank going into that bout, and both left most of what they had in that ring in Pacland. And neither was ever that great again.


I would venture to say that either one from Manila would clean out today's division with the possible exception of two big Ukranians.

Yes, Manilla was the last hurrah of two ATGs who were faded some, but were still great.

He had lost his aura of invincibility and was psychologically in a bad place.
And on a particularly demon-filled night, he lost to a very decent contender, Jimmy Young.

As I recall he made somewhat of a modest comeback a decade or so later.


And as I mentioned, in the late seventies, he had a fight to remember with Ron Lyle, a very tough contender with a decent resume.

Nothing you've done here that you couldn't do with any resume if you pick and choose what to highlight. We see it all the time, both here and in the venerable General Forum. The threads usually start: Who has XXX beaten ?

All i'll say here is that that the half-decade in question had prime Holmes, who ranks between three and six on most HW ATG lists.

Frazier was there and as I mentioned, still formidable till Manila.

Yes, they were. None (save Holmes) at their peaks, but still ATGs.

WTF ???

Did you mention disingenuous ?

That pair of Jacks were 'active' inasmuch as they were both still metabolizing.

Neither fought in the Louis era.
Both had been out of the fight game for years or decades !


So if it's not a ****-take, maybe the strong waters ?

 

This present era is by far the weakest in decades.

 

No weak era's just , hype by the media and the people of the day , Ali was a very colorful guy, he sold papers and ad space on tv. TV were getting a lot more popular and in colour for the first time and NFL/basketball were not as popular, which helped Ali gain more attention and thus a high ranking, since he was rated so high anyone that did well with Ali in the ring were rated a lot higher , so Norton, Spinks, Oscar, Bugner, Chuck , Henry etc.... all must of been great becuse they did well against Ali , and thus the era gets touted as the best era ever.

This era is crap becuase noone will fight each other and to busy being protected and not risking a potentional big payday.

 

This era is crap, because it IS crap, outside the Klits and maybe Haye, if he pulled his finger out

 

No, this era is crap because of the reasons posted above, the best not fighting the best, record padding, inactivity, undertraining and so on. Pit Povetkin against Adamek, Scott against Mansour, force Solis to get into shape and fight Haye, stick Jennings and Mago, Mitchell and Price, Fury and Pulev in the ring, and you start to go some way to reviving the division. None of those guys are markedly inferior to many of the contenders of past eras. They just won't risk losing a healthy payday or meaningless 0.

 

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