Is Evander Holyfield one of the all-time top 10 heavyweights?

Sorry, but no it is not. Bowe's so-called legacy comes from the hype surrounding some fights between Evander and Bowe. Bowe had all the advantages and still couldn;t do what for example Burt did. They had even fights and outside of the US (away from the spin of the US boxing media) most of the world's fans were shaking their heads at these fights.

Noone outside of the US were fooled by those fights anymore than Lacy's fights with Sheika and Reid did. In the US however, the media managed to blindfold many fans. Look how Golota (who is a decent HW) pretty much outboxed Bowe until Bowe had to have the ref disqualify Golota. Just like was the case with Lacy, there is a huge difference in the perception of US fans and fans from around the world regarding Bowe.

 

I have Holyfield around top 6 greatest HW of all time.

 

Patterson below Bowe. :rofl

That must have been a joke dude. Good you corrected that.

Otherwise the list looks ok. Marciano could of course be ranked higher, but the fact that he never lost, actually makes it a bit harder to rank Rocky. Lennox could probably also be ranked as high as 4, but anywhere between 4-9 is reasonable.

 

Burt?

His legacy is that of a fighter who didn't realize his full career potential due to his lack of motivation and proper management, even though he had all the talent in the world in his short peak, and was one of the most skilled HW's of modern times. Holyfield was the smaller man, but you seem to be missing the point that not only was he the HW champion of the world, but one of the very best HW's of modern times, so does a size advantage really negate Bowe's accomplishment here?

Not to mention that was not the end-all be-all of Bowe's career, as he also held wins over Dokes, Cooper, Coetzer, Hide, Tubbs, Biggs, Thomas, etc. Not a great resume, but a good amount of work put in for such a short reign.

Would you please elaborate? The fact that the rest of the world was shaking their heads doesn't really tell me anything, especially considering their love for the Klitschko's, who've yet to build up any kind of a career as good as Bowe's was.

So you're telling me Bowe was nothing more than a Lacy, while Holyfield was nothing more than a Sheika or Reid. Be very careful how you answer this question, I wouldn't want to lump you in with a certain other poster contaminating this thread at every opportunity.

If the rest of the world sees it as you do, then clearly the rest of the world doesn't understand out of ring issues or the difference between a well conditioned, motivated fighter at his peak and a lazy slob who's lack of motivation and out of ring issues have made him a shell of his former self.

 

You're becoming too obvious. Your subtle trolling was more convincing.

Anyways, I'm off to bed. Will read you fellas's responses tomorrow, aside from Haglerfans, who will hopefully be perma-banned by then.

 

Here's mine

1. Ali
2. Louis
3. Dempsey
4. Foreman
5. Holmes
6. Marciano
7. Holyfield
8. Johnson
9. Liston
10. Frazier
11. Tyson
12. Jeffries
13. Lewis
14. Walcott
15. Charles

 

This is unacceptable, Zak.

 

Good lord, Zak must absolutely loathe Jersey Joe.

 

You are something else. This is honestly about the most immature, conniving schtick I've ever seen on this board.

 

Holyfield has a granite chin therefore Holyfield > Lewis, is that how it works? Holyfield is definitely too high in your list, Lewis too low, especially having him worse than Tyson, thats unfair on him. Decent list other than the obvious predictable errors.

 

You did, but this guy isn't playing with a full deck.

To the thread, yes I think he does belong, but he's such a difficult guy to rate sometimes.

He beat Bowe (a prime Bowe too) and a still very good Tyson, beat a fairly dangerous Foreman pretty easily all things considered. No mean feat.
Holyfield could be inconsistent though. He sometimes struggled where maybe he shouldn't have, like going life and death with substitute Bert Cooper, being made to look ordinary by an old Holmes, being given the fight of his life against Michael Dokes who was faded, and also struggling a fair bit with Alex Stewart, a guy who lost to every big name of the period.

When he was good, he was very good. When not on top form, he looked decent but nothing special.

All things considered though, he belongs.

 

I think people are too harsh in their criticisms of Holyfield sometimes.

He gets rubbished for losing to Bowe, because of Bowe's overall career legacy. But that legacy is irrelevant to what a brilliant fighter Bowe was on that night in November 1992. Going in to that fight Bowe was the kind of young undefeated contender that many champions avoid anyway, and when the bell rung Bowe proved he was even more than that.

Did Larry Holmes defend against any challengers as good as a 31-0 Bowe ? Maybe Witherspoon, but Tim was a lot less seasoned than Bowe going in and not expected to give Holmes much of a fight. Gerry Cooney was not as well-rounded as Bowe either. Carl Williams was another guy far less experienced and figured to be an easy match for Holmes. And Holmes refused to fight Greg page in 1983, and barely scraped past Witherspoon and Williams. Yet Holmes gets no doubts cast on his legacy, where Holyfield gets rubbished for losing his title to an excellent young challenger.

Bowe fought a heck of a fight, used a better strategy than Holyfield and won the title, in a fight between two undefeateds. And I wasn't aware of any "American media hype", the performance stands as one of the best in heavyweight championship boxing.
And Holyfield stood up and fought back the whole 12 rounds.

Considered finished, Holyfield defied all expectations and won the rematch, a fight everyone thought he's lose, probably by KO. Sure, the fight could have been scored close but I thought Holyfield won, and so did most people. Sure, Bowe's conditioning wasn't great, but he was still an excellent fighter over 12 rounds. Whatever way you look at it, Holyfield boxed a better fight in the rematch, when everyone expected Bowe (despite being 11 pounds heavier) to KO him second time round. But some people dont like to give Holyfield much credit for that, just as they backtrack on the Tyson issue and discount the wins over Mike, despite the fact that we all thought Tyson was going to beat little old Holyfield.

Holyfield could have gone into a fight as a 1,000,000-1 underdog against the undefeated genetically-engineered mutant offspring of Godzilla and King Kong, outboxed the monster and knocked it out, and there would still be talk about how Holyfield somehow "got lucky" against a post-prison, out-of-shape, unmotivated blah, blah, blah.

I dont understand why there's that much resesntment towards the man's achievements.
No one does that with Muhammad Ali.
The records shows that Ali beat the over-confident (under-trained) Sonny Liston and the over-confident (and technically sloppy) George Foreman - two guys who hadn't fought past 2 or 3 rounds in YEARS, and were entering the ring as massive favourites expected to win quite easily. Yet Ali's reputation stands on those wins more so than any of his other wins, and they ARE great wins.
I'm not saying Holyfield's wins over Bowe and Tyson are on a par, but they are up high, and the same principles should apply.

People talk about Holyfield losing to Michael Moorer. His performance was awful, but still that was a fight that could have gone either way. Muhammad Ali was GIVEN decisions in fights that were of that nature, 2 against Ken Norton. Larry Holmes got past Carl Williams on a close one.

Some of Holyfield's fights go totally unrecognized. His 3rd fight at heavyweight against Michael Dokes was a WAR. And Dokes was not a washed-up fighter at that time, he was active and on an impressive comeback, clean from cocaine, and he looked awesome quick and sharp against Holyfield. In fact, following the Holyfield-Dokes fight many people were saying Dokes deserved to be considered top 3 and would give Tyson a better fight than the men Tyson had been fighting (eg.Bruno, Spinks, Tubbs).
Holyfield fought Dokes in a non-title fight before he became champion. Dokes was in good form and had something like a 44-1-1 record, and was 30 years old. Not a bad fighter to beat in his 3rd fight at heavyweight. Most of the men Holmes or Ali defended against weren't that good.

Holyfield gets rubbished for fighting Foreman too. But the fight was a great exhibition of great combination punching, accuracy of punching, and smart boxing. Foreman was dangerous enough. People say a young Foreman would have beaten Holyfield, but who knows ? Foreman fought a lot of second-raters, Frazier walked straight into him (didn't box him), Norton didn't know how to box on the retreat, Ali knocked him out, Lyle almost beat him, Young beat him. Foreman never beat a boxer like Holyfield.

 

All good points, Unforgiven.

He lost to an excellent Bowe in '92, but gave the man a heck of a fight. We must not forget that. He lost yes, but he gained a whole lot of respect in that losing effort.

Almost any heavyweight champion's record can be ripped apart if one is so inclined. I see a lot of people rate Jeffries very highly, but was beating much smaller men like Choynksi (165 pounds) Corbett (maybe 180) Fitzsimmons (167) and Sharkey (183 or so) really such a great achievement for a guy who weighed well over 200 pounds?

I'm not knocking Jeff; he was a dominant champion, but surely Holyfield taking on and beating bigger men than himself is a far more impressive feat?

 

Well, I would agree. But many dont. They want long strings of championship defences and more "dominance" and "consistency". In that case, perhaps they'd rate Holyfield higher if he'd ducked Bowe and even Moorer as he past 30 years of age, and avoided anyone with more than 17 or 18 pro fights who could fight, and defended the heavyweight championship with a string of novices or journeymen or men smaller than himself.