The heavyweight division has had its champions over the years and its big fights and such and sure Monte never was involved in a big fight and he didn't ever capture any world championship but I still think that his contribution to the HW division over the years has been a whole lot bigger than many other more notable HW's. Lets look at this. Monte first came out losing a split decision against Lance Whitaker. Lance was of course a very large fighter and it was a very close fight. His next notable fight was against Wladimir Klitsckho and I for one was very surprised that he didn't offer any real problems to Wladimir during their bout losing by KO7. Barrett reemerged fighting a then up an coming Joe Mesi. I personally haven't seen that fight but I've read that its result was very disputed with many claiming that Monte should have won. Bearing those claims in mind one can say that Monte exposed Joe. In his next fights he took Dominick Guinn's 0 and in the fight after that fight he won by Ko 9 over the much hyped and undefeated Owen Beck. In his next three fights he suffered a loss to Hashim Rahman, a Ko loss to Nicolay Valuev and a ko loss to Cliff Couser. I don't know much about the loss to Rahman but Barrett did very wel in his fight VS Valuev landing many hard shots. His Ko loss to Couser was then avenged in his next fight. Fast forward a year and we have Monte Barrett putting to rest once and for all the rumor of Tye Fields being a serious contender by winning VS Fields by Ko1. Monte lost his next three fights VS Odlanier Solis by Ko, David Haye by Ko and Alexander Ustinov by UD. The latest accomplishment that Monte has achieved is to stop David Tua's rather non credible comeback. But yeah here we have a fight that exposed Joe Mesi, Dominick Guinn, Owen Beck and Tye Fields. Monte Barrett is a fighter that probably should belong in any and all discussions relating to the best fighters that never won world championships. Or atleast that's my opinion.
He lost to Joe Mesi in a pretty good fight, gave Joe some trouble but clearly lost. He never gave Valuev problems and in fact made Valuev look very good in that fight (rare thing).
Monte had one big fight and that was Valuev where he wobbled him in the first round a little bit His worst moment was getting knocked out by that Tyson look-a-like If you were a fraud, typically he beat you like Fields Mesi I thought had won enough rounds before Barret came on, much like the Mesi-Jirov fight where Mesi dropped him and hurt him and controlled the fight before struggling late, good fight though
I forgot to remark on the David Haye fight. Well he started the fight by taking a fall when trying to jump into the ring, probably something that hasn't happened very often in boxing history. But yes, Monte didn't do too well against Haye but he showed alot of heart, it was an entertaining fight even though it was pretty darn onesided. The reason why I am bringing this fighter up is that he's had an abnormal amount of entertaining fights at heavyweight. Also, think about it, these men held heavyweight championsships at one point or another: James Toney, Jhonny Ruiz, Herbie Hide, Chris Byrd, Hashim Rahman, Roy Jones Jr, Corrie Sanders, Oleg Maskaev, Shannon Briggs, Ruslan Chagaev, Sultan Igbragimov, Alexander Povetkin. In all honest I don't see their contributions to the heavyweight division outweighin those of Monte Barrett and I'm pretty sure that Barret could and would have dethroned many of those names if given the opportunity to. Even contenders that never held championships such as David Tua, Michael Grant, Joe Mesi and Ike Ibeabuchi are often thought of much more highly than Monte Barrett yet I don't think that their accomplishments at heavyweights outweigh those of Barrett's by any means. Take all those names of all those past titleholders and contenders and ask yourself, were those fighters involved in as many entertaining fights as Monte Barret was? I think that the answer to that question is no.
Don't get me wrong,I like Barrett.Good fighter,and Im not knocking what you say.But I believe he's not in the same league as non title winning greats of years gone by like Eddie Machen and Zora Folley,not to mention Jimmy Young.
Barrett will always be remembered for making Valuev look like a wrecking machine. [YT]?v=5oaz_B3VeTQ[/YT]
That was pretty much the only time Valuev EVER fought that aggressively, as part of Don King's insistence. Valuev despised King for how he portrayed him for that fight.
