ATG: Who Ranks Higher? Roy Jones Jr or Evander Holyfield?

Nobody is saying otherwise. All we’re saying, is that we don’t think that beating a 42 year old Foreman was some great feat.

 

He was a natural HW, but he wasn’t a huge man.

He was 6’2, with 76” reach.

 

I'm lost for words. Your brains are simply incapable of comprehending.

 

Really baffling to me how you see Tyson and James as comparable. I've never debated anyone who thinks James was on Tyson's level, even after the prison stay.

Evander was a CW who moved up and proved greatness. So making the case for Jones moving up divisions doesn't sway me. And Evander fought Bowe, Lennox, Tyson, Foreman, etc... not just John Ruiz.

You keep saying Foreman wasn't a great HW in the 90s but what isn't debatable is that Griffin over the course of a career was not a better fighter than George.

Foreman may not have been able to put it together fight-to-fight as he once did in his heyday but the point is, that he had done it. Whatever his performance in his second act, it's still a better account than Griffin, who's greatest claim to fame is holding his own for several rounds against Roy.

 

How is a 6’2 HW with 76” reach, a HUGE HW?

 

Look at his bone density. He's a massive man.

 

Why didn't Roy win a title at CW? Then he could have been a 5 weight champion.

 

Holyfield was a cruiserweight in his peak, who required the expertise of Lee Haney to become a heavyweight

 

TISONLYONEKING,

What exactly is baffling to you?

How can they not be comparable on a P4P basis?

We’re not looking at a H2H fight or anything silly like that.

It’s on a P4P basis

James was a top 3, P4P fighter at the time.

I think you’re rating the win on name value and the magnitude of the fight.

Toney-Jones was a big fight, but Tyson-Holyfield was huge.

Tyson’s name was huge. It still is.

They were scheduled to fight in 1991, before Mike went to prison.

It did mega PPV.

The whole boxing world tuned in.

Mike was huge box office. But he was faded. He’d fell apart in Tokyo 6 years earlier. He’d had 3 years in prison. He was still hugely dangerous, but not the fighter he’d once been. And after Evander had beaten him twice, he didn’t have another noteworthy win for the rest of his career.

He wasn’t a great HW at that point.

Nobody is disputing Evander’s greatness. But Roy was an Olympic JMW who won a belt at MW. Roy couldn’t move up to HW and fight those kind of guys could he.

Can you not appreciate that?

You don’t think it’s great for a former MW to move up to LHW and dominate world class guys with ease?

What I’m saying, is that a great HW beating a 42 year version of George Foreman, isn’t on another level to a former MW moving up and destroying a very good LHW in under 3 mins.

It doesn’t matter if you think that Foreman was a better fighter over the course of his career. We’re looking at where each fighter was at the time of the fights.

Once again, you’re not looking at things on a P4P basis.

What Foreman had done in the past isn’t relevant.

Evander gets credit for beating a 42 year old George Foreman. He doesn’t get credit for beating the versions that destroyed Frazier and fought Ali.

I’m not saying that Griffin was a great fighter. But he was a very good fighter who was destroyed by a former MW.

Were the 42 and 44 year old versions of Foreman who lost to Evander and Morrison, on another level P4P, to Montel Griffin and Virgil Hill?

Was beating a 42 year old Foreman, a better accomplishment than a former MW wiping out 2 world class LHW’s like nobody else did?

Why was beating that version of Foreman on another level?

Why can’t they be comparable wins on a P4P basis?

Why can’t Roy’s win over Tarver, be comparable to Evander’s wins over Holmes and Moorer?

 

Nobody is disputing that.

He was naturally bigger than Evander and he had to slim down. But he didn’t dwarf Evander in size.

It’s not like he was a Klitschko or a Lewis.

 

Naturally Evander was 185 and Tommy 230. The difference is ridiculous.

 

He wasn’t interested at the time. Winning a HW title was more appealing.

In a perfect world, he’d have fought the Toney-Jirov winner and then retired after a fight at HW.

 

I agree.