Ingemar Johannson in the 1980s....how does he do?

You can throw out any hope of his ever becoming the division Champion, unless absolutely pitch perfect timing & management is involved (I would pick Johansson to KO Spinks). The only other reigns were Holmes & Tyson’s, two men not just a lot better than Johansson, but too durable to be surprised with a sudden KO.

However, how he does in the mix of the alphabet soup is more interesting. There is a wide range of possibilities here, IMO. Johansson’s poor attitude to training & putting in the hard work fits in very well with the crowd of Heavies at that time, but that also means he gets no advantage from putting in more work than them to better himself.

Its very possible he wins a belt, & equally plausible he doesn’t. But his chance to be the Champ is a very narrow window, indeed.

 

As hot and cold as he was with the training, he would fit in surprisingly well in the 80's, and yeah, if he got the right obese drug-addict on the right night, he could have joined the one-shot-as-WBA-champ club.

As far as beating Holmes, not without a baseball bat. Tyson...maybe with a .38 special.

 

Not very well.

 

Not good at all.

 

I do think he gives Holmes a tougher than expected fight. Holmes always dropped his hand after throwing a jab, leaving him completely open for Ingo’s best weapon.

 

Probably establishes himself as a top 5 fighter at HW

 

Do the '80s fighters get a chance to watch his films from the '50s and '60s? If they can watch films of his fights, they will know what kind of threat the right hand poses and how to minimize it and attack him. But anyone who fights Ingo with no knowledge of him has a chance to get nailed with the right and knocked out. Mystery was key to his success.

 

I don't see him getting lucky against in that decade, he may not even win the European title?

 

Ingo way too small. He probably would make it as a ranked cruiser or lightheavy.

 

It would, and Ingo verse Gerrie Coetzee could be interesting.
Bionic hand v Hammer of Thor!!

 

Way more successful if he fought at cruiser.

 

True, but I think he could have had success with most of the top CWs of the pre-Holyfield era of that weight class.