After the 70's HW's, what was the general opinion...

Were they bigger and stronger though?
Holmes, Tyson bigger than Ali, Foreman?
I don't think that size debate was even an issue in the 80's. It started in the 90 with the 2 well coordinated "giants" in Lennox and Bowe, then gained momentum with the Klitschkos and peaked in recent times.

 

I lived through the 70s and 80s as a fan and I can assure you we all regarded this as the era of the 'fat' heavyweight. Man, I remember when we all started seeing James Broad, Tony Tubbs, LeRoy Jones and David Bey ambling about. I worked in an area that had a really good boxing fanbase during this time and recall going into work and talking to the guys about the previous day's Greg Page v Jimmy Young bout and commenting to the guys (much to their enjoyment) how these two had bigger hooters than most women I had seen. It was just a jiggle-fest. But I've always blamed the creation of the cruiserweights for this. I said it once in a previous thread that they didn't have to try as hard anymore and the stark difference in the 70s heavyweights to 80s is the prime example. Ron Lyle, who was about 6'3" and about 217 was called the Denver Giant. 10 years later he would have been a small heavyweight and he was really cut. From there on, IMO, they just got bigger and sloppier.

 

This

It was the 90s that kicked off the emergence of "super" heavyweights

Occasionally you would get a 6'4"+ guy in older eras but in the 90s they started becoming champions and there were more of them in general

 

Interesting, scar. I don't know whether I agree about the creation of cruiserweights inadvertently creating fat and lazy heavyweights - it's an interesting point but in the 80s and much of the 90s, the cruiserweight limit was 190 pounds not 200 pounds. Maybe it benefitted the new division that those smaller heavyweight guys had a place to go without being dominated by much bigger heavyweights. Is that what you mean?

 

I don't have a lot of time for the 80s heavyweights to be honest. With the obvious exceptions of Larry Holmes (who was a 70s heavyweight too) and Mike Tyson, they almost all had significant problems with discipline and taking the sport seriously. The mid-80s pre-Tyson had a litany of such fighters where they couldn't seem to wait to get rid of their titles at the first available opportunity: Dokes, Page, Witherspoon, Thomas, the list goes on...

The only other 80s heavyweight I have any time for is Mike Weaver (who got his first title shot in the 70s). He may not have been the most naturally gifted of that era but always came in shape and gave a good showing. He gave a great effort against Holmes, scoring a remarkable last seconds knockout of John Tate and then defended the title well in SA against Gerrie Coetzee. He was then shafted by a terrible intervention by the ref in his first fight with Dokes and was unlucky in the drawn rematch as well.

 

The top heavy's of the 80's were typically seen as fat and lazy with an
exception of a select few. Also most were heavy on the nose
candy.

 

After the 70s heavyweights faded from the scene, the 1980s heavyweights were ridiculed at the time, unnecessarily so.

I think the problem was when many of the top guys started retiring, they were initially replaced by names like Kallie Knoetze and Gerrie Coetzee and Shavers, and people just didn't know the South African guys and Shavers was sort of the eighth-best guy a few years earlier, and then he was all of a sudden the top contender.

Even Holmes wasn't considered the top heavyweight until a couple years into his WBC reign, after John Tate lost. Before Tate lost, Tate was kind of seen as the possible next big star because he won the tournament to crown Ali's successor and Ali was originally scheduled to fight Tate (before Tate lost to Weaver). But even Tate was viewed as flawed on the way up.

It wasn't like in the 80s when Tyson came on the scene and everyone was excited before he even won anything, and then he systematically knocked off all the champs. Tyson was considered BETTER than the guys holding the titles. That wasn't necessarily the case when the top 70s guys faded away.

At the end of the 70s, Holmes was just a guy who had been on undercards forever, and often not even on the televised portion of the undercards, and nobody saw Leon Spinks coming, and nobody saw Coetzee coming when he stopped Leon.

Nobody thought Leon could've beaten Ali at ANY POINT in Ali's career, like they did when Tyson was blowing out the reigning champs of his day.

Leon and Holmes and Tate and the gang weren't viewed as great fighters, until Holmes slowly earned that on his own, one fight at a time, after one of the longest reigns in history.

So, there was some slow going at first.

But the 80s ended up producing a few all-timers. And many 80s heavyweights were still tough outs well into the 90s against fighters who people thought WERE excellent. I still remember when Tubbs fought Bowe on national television, and everyone looked at each other and kind of went "I think Tubbs won." (LOL)

I will say it definitely helps when the "new" champs taking over from the old champs are viewed as better fighters, not just someone at the right place at the right time when a champ got old.

 

The 1980s “Lost Generation” of heavyweights — Page and Dokes and Pinklon and Tubbs and Witherspoon so on — seemed to bounce between the buffet line and the cocaine lines.

Larry Holmes was the one who emerged but it took time. Until he hung around enough and accomplished enough to make people respect him, broadcasters sometimes referred to him mistakenly as “Earnie Holmes,” who was a defensive lineman on the great Pittsburgh Steelers teams and at best the 9th or 10th most well-known player on that team (even the kicker, Roy Gerela, was better known because he had a fan club that would dress in ape costumes and sit in the end zone known as Gerela’s Gorillas, lol). That’s how much Larry was disrespected. After beating Shavers the second time, getting up from that wrecking-ball right hand, people began to say ‘this guy, he ain’t no Ali but he ain’t so bad.’

John Tate was indeed, considered head of the class for a hot minute, then Weaver happened and he was basically never heard from again.

I think Page and Dokes were seen as suspects, if not outright prospects, to be the one to rise and challenge Holmes, but they basically couldn’t put two good fights together once they got past the ‘rising’ stage. Like the rest of the lot, they took out short-term rentals on titles — win it and return within 90 days by losing your first defense. They should have lost their deposits since they always returned it tarnished and damaged.

Coetzee and Weaver and Bonecrusher, to name three, were honest prizefighters who seemed to keep their noses clean (literally) and push away the plate every once in a while.

It was a lot with some promise and a lot of what-if but not a lot of substance. If you got attached to one he was sure to let you down. They were the equivalent of the girl you meet up with when she sneaks out on her boyfriend, but you wouldn’t marry her.

 

Yep, concur with the above. It wasn't an issue of them being bigger, or there being any discussion about super heavyweights, just more a discussion about them being out of shape and much less disciplined.
As said above, a lot dabbled in or abused recreational drugs and booze. Even Tyson did.

But the 80's had some excellent talent. Holmes, Weaver, Tubbs, Page, Thomas, Tucker, Douglas, Witherspoon, Coetzee, Dokes, Tate, Tyson etc.
These guys all had talent and good technical ability. They were just woefully, woefully inconsistent. Except Tyson and Holmes.

 

Really great thread and fantastic posts to a man each with a new slant..fascinating.

 

It's difficult to pinpoint, Jel. I feel they had a 'mental cap', if you will, on staying fit, and once the cruisers came into play, that cap was simply lifted. Years earlier, I believe it was just after his win over Nino Valdez, Archie Moore had his title fight set with Marciano and he had a concern about his weight. He said something about getting himself down to about 181 for Marciano. The thought process here was coming in fit and with speed. Also around this time was Bob Baker. A big dude, with some wild fluctuations with his weight. If he came in over 211, he was branded lazy by the media. These were the perceptions at the time by the media and trainers of heavyweights, which carried over the next two decades until, I feel, the cruisers just lifted that cap and perceptions of the division became bigger is better. It seemed that gone were the days a 195-200 pounder like Jerry Quarry could keep those heavyweight perceptions in check by whittling down the big fellas like Buster Mathis, Mac Foster and Ron Lyle. Of course after that PEDs came into the sport and we have moved further and further away from Archie Moore's 'fit with speed' idealogy. Sorry, I'm being long-winded here.

 

The 80's had better athletes- Dokes, Spoon, Pinky, Tubbs, etc..., and more of them (it is surprising how shallow the top ten lists are from the 70's)... But substance abuse and lack of dedication (a hallmark of the old school) scuttled their careers.

 

For the first part of the 80s it seemed Holmes had no real peers, and the difference between that era and the unbelievable quadrilogy of Foreman, Ali, Frazier, and Norton seemed...well, about what Bowe, Lewis, Holyfield, and Foreman seemed like compared to today lol. Except there's no Holmes around, and hasn't been anyone close since probably Steward-era Lewis. Just my opinion.

Same with late 80s, it was mostly about Mike and that was pretty much it. So, the 80s were dominated by two fighters and everyone else seemed kind of second rate imo.

No offense to fans of today's or 80s fighters. If Fury can get an impressive win over Joshua I'll be sold.