Assessing Larry Holmes's all time heavyweight standing

What other heavies were great enough to earn 5 title fights after the age of 36?

 

This is a great question.

 

Sure! It's still a loss (I vary between giving Holmes the fight by one point or McCall...either way I'm satisfied).

Still, I think you'll agree his beating a young, just-off-knocking-the-crap-out-of-undefeated-Morrison Ray Mercer in his forties was no joke. Even coming close against McCall was far from a shame-fest.

But yeah, he coudn't win it back.

You probably won't like this, but I always saw Holmes as a two-time champ, I am befuddled by anyone whom scored the second Spinks fight for Spinks.

 

Top 3-5 IMO, but I don't think Holmes is any lower than 7.

People don't like Holmes because he was just a pure professional. He didn't have out of sight intangibles, he just owned his craft..........

 

In fairness, the Spinks 2 (not 1; Spinks won that first one fair and square), McCall, and Nielsen fights could have gone either way. Also, in fairness, Mercer was the WBO holder and vacated it to fight Holmes.

However, if you want to look at it as simply as possible, yeah, he lost 3 title fights in a row, beat a champ who vacated to fight him, then lost 3 more title fights.

 

Could’ve lost to Witherspoon or Williams. Ref could’ve waived it off for Shavers or Snipes.

 

I need to watch Williams fight but definitely scored Witherspoon fight for Larry by a few points. Tim really p*ssed it away in final few rounds by clowning.

 

I have been reading through the interesting posts and wanted to ask H2H who do you guys have Larry losing to in HW history? I personally don't have that long a list and even those I feel could beat him I think Larry would be competitive. I always assumed assessing greatness was a mix of stats and H2H so I feel what Larry may lack in his opposition he possibly makes up with his effectiveness H2H. Having thought about it I tried to do a breakdown to see if H2H combined with other factors gives me a clear idea how I rate him, which I haven't really done yet.

Off the top of my head I think Ali, Louis, Lewis, Tyson could all beat him, although tough fights. Liston and Dempsey stand a chance even against peak Holmes. I also feel the Wlad Klitschko, Fury, Usyk have a solid chance, You can't discount Charles, Walcott or Marciano either. I left out guys I really don't know enough about like Johnson.

As far as talent some of the 80s guys like Page, Tubbs, Thomas etc could pull off an upset but as they had zero discipline and feature in no-ones top 20 list I feel we can leave them out.

Apart from Tyson or maybe Louis, Liston, there is no-one here I see having the potential to blow him out. I can't see any of the other proposed matches being less than competitive. So my list has around 12 champs with varying likelihood of beating peak Holmes and varying level of statistical evidence as far as opposition and longevity for example compared to Holmes.

Depending on your prejudices and how much value you place H2H vs other factors I think it reasonable to have him comfortably in the top ten, purely on H2H I feel top 5 or 6 which is probably where I have him, but without much confidence!

 

I don't know about Witherspoon, he gave it away in the last rounds. I agree with your thoughts on the rest.

 

not top 10, considering that he never fought Foreman even though they were pretty much the same age and both had careers into the 90's speaks volumes, he beat Parkinson's Ali, got absolutely dominated by Tyson, lost to Holyfield, and never fought Bowe or Lewis

Cooney is by far his best win, then Mercer but starts to become a tossup pretty quick between his wins against Shavers x2, Norton, and Berbick

 

My point is that he already had some things go in his favor, so you can't say he had bad luck in Spinks 2 and McCall. Just too many close fights.

 

Just watching Greg Page vs Gerrie Coetzee, entertaining fight but based on this performance the idea that either of these guys would beat Holmes is pretty mind boggling.

 

That's an extremely good point.

 

Agreed, Larry had a really good run and some close calls. However I never felt the Witherspoon fight was that close, I think it was viewed as closer because Tim was a relative novice and no-one expected him to do as well as he did. A fine performance from a young fighter, but he showed his inexperience and youthful arrogance by coasting when it mattered. Despite a few rocky moments Larry won and pretty comfortably on my cards, definitely not a robbery. A return may have been nice but Tim got his shots, not really Larry's fault none of the "other guys" could stay off the cheeseburgers long enough to seriously challenge him as the "the man".

 

Yikes! Only one man avoided that clash- and it was the one with the peanut allergy.