Which Heavyweight Is Possibly Overrated Because Of Nostalgia?

So he tried once, in reality.

 

The only reason Coetzee held the title for any length of time was that he didn't fight for 15 months. He was knocked out by Page in his first defense. Weaver held the title for over 2 years and knocked out Coetzee in one of two successful defenses. He'd also given Holmes a great fight prior to winning said title.

 

Yes.

I never claimed that he tried to unify earlier.

Only that he did try to unify several times.

I was responding to Catch, who’d said that he hadn’t.

 

Correct.

As I’ve said, it would have been nice to have seen him unify.

But I get why it wasn’t such a big thing at the time.

My initial point, is that the landscape was very different back then.

 

I've heard all of this before. Holmes not only didn't unify, he contributed to title proliferation by accepting the belt from the gutter. And there was ALWAYS public demand for a united champion. If you want to forgive that...sure. I don't.

 

I mean, after all that, Liston is still probably too small to be a dominant heavyweight champ today, and his best opponents are stil guys who would not be big cruisers today. We can agree to disagree, but nothing that I have said is objectively wrong.

 

Jack was most frank about avoiding Sam Langford who was nearly 10 years older, half a foot shorter and vet of 200 fights by the time Jack was making headway

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Not sure if there's ever been a cult around Cleve versus a bit of somewhat morbid intrigue he survived a point blank .357 in the gut from a cop and went on to get a (charity) shot at the heavyweight title (no less versus Ali). On the other hand Jerry's longer and deeper Steinbeck saga has made for a cult following.

 

I think there are a lot of things going on with this question. One, the word 'overrated' by who? and in comparison to what? By 'who' I am asking if you mean overrated in this forum, overrated in other boxing circles, overrated by the general public, etc. By 'comparison' I mean are we saying relative to other heavyweights they're overrated or relative to other divisions?

Then after those problems we get to 'because of nostalgia' and I've given it some thought (perhaps not enough) and I think fighters are overrated for three main reasons and none of them seem to be nostalgia or at least not directly.

- Potential reason one for someone overrating a fighter = They like that fighter a lot. This seems to me to be the most obvious and common reason. If someone ranks Marciano higher than you think they should, they probably like Marciano a lot. I mean have you seen a fanboy for a fighter underrate their favorite? It could be the case that nostalgia plays a role in what someone likes but really I think it is indirectly affecting the rating at best.

- Potential reason two = It benefits a fighter that they're already overrating or a fan of. Think of Jersey Joe Walcott in relation to Marciano or Ken Norton in relation to Muhammad Ali. It should be said that this also applies to underrating in relation to fighters you dislike

- Potential reason three = They have an odd criteria for greatness. I've already discussed this before and it got slightly heated so I won't go into the details here but there are people who sincerely believe that popularity should be a factor in greatness. Naturally these people will overrate certain boxers compared to someone who doesn't consider that important

 

True. And if Dundee hadn't yanked the glove seam apart after Cooper dropped him and had him in the twilight zone it's possible there would not have been a Liston title shot in his next fight. Henry rang his bell a lot harder than Sonny Banks did the year before.

And of course I'm talking 60s Ali when he was "untouchable." Needless to say as to taking shots his 70s chapter a much uglier story. Ferdie Pacheco said "Ali doesn't have Parkinson's syndrome, he's got Frazier, Norton, Shavers and Holmes syndrome." See the study commissioned by Ali's biographer Jonathan Eig that captured the regression of Ali's speech rate over time. After the Shaver's fight alone his speech permanently regressed 16%. A friend of mine did his neurology residency under Mahlon DeLong who was the primary specialist evaluating and treating Ali once it was clear his prob was a lot bigger than intermittent hypoglycemia from often eating a tub of ice cream at a sitting.

 

It does look like the footage has been doctored or possibly cut during the glove change and what not too. It wouldn't surprise me if the glove change took longer than what's shown in the footage available now. The Liston fights were shady so I wouldn't count them as legit. Liston-Ali 1 was investigated by the FBI for matchfixing, and we know what happened in the 2nd one.

Quarry, Frazier, Bonavena, Bugner, Lyle and Foreman were legit good wins though. Especially Foreman.

 

I’ve no issue with this.

Again, my only issue was where you’d said that people in other sports don’t have an issue with evolution, thus implying that us boxing fans are nostalgic and not objective etc.

That we don’t want to admit it etc, for whatever reason.

Yet that’s simply not the case.

Again, the sport is a stand alone sport that cannot ever be directly compared to others. And although there’s clearly been evolution, again, there is certainly no evidence of continuous evolution.

There is however a ton of evidence to actually prove that there hasn’t been any.

 

I will give him a pass.

Simply due to the specific circumstances.


Again, the landscape was different.

Larry not unifying, was not like Bowe throwing the belt in the bin to not fight Lennox.

It wasn’t a situation like if where Usyk had come up to HW and beaten AJ twice, but then not have fought an active Tyson Fury.

It wasn’t a Manny-Floyd type situation.


You can see how and why it didn’t happen.

He was a King fighter where he had the kind of relationship with King, that most fighters had with him. King could be both good and bad. He could never be fully trusted with money or contracts, and arguments about purses always occurred. A lot of fighters used/needed him, but they were very wary.


Again, King had put his little WBA tournament together. And the winner of that was John Tate. Now apart from winning the tournament, Tate had hardly fought anybody.

Then in his very first defence, he lost to Mike Weaver, who Larry had already beaten.

Dokes then beat Weaver, but held it for less than a year, before losing to Coatzee.


Again, efforts were made to fight Coatzee on 3 occasions that I’m aware of.

Coatzee then lost it to Page.

Page was then Larry’s mandatory, but he fell out with King over the purse that he was getting.

He then broke away from King, to fight for the new IBF title.


So my point stands.

The landscape was very different.

King was a huge issue for him.


I don’t believe that Larry was unambitious.

I don’t believe that Larry specifically ducked or feared anybody.


There was no huge clamour for him to fight Tate.

Again, he’d already beaten Weaver.

He tried to fight Coatzee.

You can maybe criticise him for Page. But then you’d have to objectively look at his relationship with King, and his reasons for turning down the fight.


Again, my initial point, was that Larry was universally accepted as being ‘The Man’ at HW back then, where there was no public demand for him to fight a specific rival.

It was not in any way the same, as becoming the undisputed champion today.

The landscape and the circumstances were completely different in every way.

 

The glove was not changed,the extra time was 6 seconds,6 extra seconds for Danny Holland to work on Cooper's cut eye.Ali came out the next round, got serious and beat up Cooper.

 

Ali was 35 when he fought Shavers. Not only did he beat Shavers on all three cards he also beat him on the UPI and AP cards; UPI and AP had scored fights against Ali in the past. So they were scoring what they had seen. I can provide receipts. I watched the fight yesterday afternoon for the umpteenth time. The first time I watched it live at 19. Earnie did this weird thing where he would come out, stand ring centre, go into a defensive shell, and not throw. That didn't score any points. In any case, that was a great showing by a cooked fighter.