Best Decade Ever For the HW Division?

I say this is third best, and your boy Parker is one of the top names. Hope he does Dubois like he should and him and Usyk get down.

 

The sheer length of this list proves you wrong. To quote Napo, Quantity has a quality all its own.

Comments such as calling Tyson, the most dynamic and incendiary heavy in history, "disappointing" goes further.

Dismissing Larry Holmes, the third or fourth best heavy ever, just shows the intellectual bankruptcy of your stance.

Calling fighters alcoholics or drug addicts can be done in any era and done deeply.

Fail.

 

I actually doesn't. 100X0 = 0

Tyson was disappointing. He could have been the best ever. He fell well short.

Holmes contributed to title proliferation by refusing to fight his #1 contender, throwing a belt in the trash, and excepting an upstart belt from the gutter, just as I said. Nor is his record anything special. His two best wins are 35 year old Norton and 13 fight Wistherspoon.

Him and Tyson were both great, but at the end of the day, the big wins just weren't there.

The 80s was the era of the crack epidemic, and a lot of guys on this list availed themselves. A wee bit silly to ignore that.

You COMPLETELY ignored the greater point that a lot of the big fights just didn't get made because of guys washing out from drugs, and Holme's refusal to make them.

 

He was Dempsey and Marciano combined but with a deeper resume.

He is the third best heavy ever, or possibly the fourth. Not much more you can ask for.

How many drunks were there during Dempsey's or Louis' reign? How many cokeheads in the 90's and 00's and 2010's? Monzon and Duran, two of the very best ever in their divisions, indulged in lots of illicit substances. Hell, Sugar Ramos one the title WHILE high on heroin.

Or maybe you just don't recognize what the big fights were. I would hardly classify Tyson-Spinks or Holmes-Cooney as small fights.

 

I am not Dempsey fan. His legacy is not Marciano's, because he had a number of losses.

Holmes does not have the resume to be the 3-4 best heavy. The big wins aren't there. That is simply delusional, and yes, I understand that a lot of people share that delusion. But there is simply no justification for it.

Look, Dempsey is not my metic, so I don't care how may coke-heads there were. The 80 was the crack epidemic, and a lot of guys flamed out from drug use. No one disputes that.

 

I'd go with the 70's. the fights, the talent, the popularity.

 

HW's have always been a bit crap.
All you have to know is that Ruiz beat AJ, who would smash most of these old HW's.
Ruiz is just a game 6ft tops fat man.
Other LHW's have gone up and actually been very successful. Even Adamek went up and did well.
It's very hard to find LW's going up and doing well at MW+.
HW's are crap, that's why much smaller men can go up and beat them.
Yes, it's hard for the small ones to dominate and that's why they usually don't go up to HW, but it's surprising how well they do when it happens.

 

This and the 80s is underrated
Some very skilled guys then

 

I know the boomers on here will say the 70s, but I'm rocking with the 90s.

70s were before my time, but I remember growing up in the 80s and 90s and 90s were just stacked, and they made a lot of great fights too.
Sure there were a couple of big ones that never materialized, but the vast majority of them did.

Buster Douglas started the decade off by reminding the world that anything could happen in the HWs on any given night.
Post prison Tyson was still a feared menace and a top tier boxer for most of the decade.
Lennox Lewis emerged and showed everyone that some Brits could indeed fight.
You had that maniac x factor Riddick Bowe, Holyfield fighting everyone under the sun, the reemergence of George Foreman (who I thought was better than the original), you had respectable guys like Michael Moorer and Chris Byrd, and a whole slew of exciting second tier guys like Mercer, Morrison, Golota, Ibeabuchi and Tua.

Also from a personal preference standpoint, I tend to favor 12 round fights over the 15 rounders of the 70s. Those longer fights had a lot of throw away rounds, a lot of them didn't start picking up till rounds 7 or 8. The 12 round era guys were just getting down to business from bell to bell.

Also from a personal standpoint, I felt the Bowe Holyfield trilogy was more entertaining than the Ali Frazier, so thats another tiebreaker in favor of the 1990s.

Those 70s guys can sit around and tell you all about how great it was back in their day before gas powered lawn mowers were a thing, but they're just jealous. 90s all the way!!

 

So 1990-2003

Lewis
Wlad
Vitali
Holyfield
Tyson
Bowe
Foreman
Holmes

This is crazy you had multiple years to over 10 years of close to top level or top level of what people consider a "ATG".

 

Oh it's golden alright, the color of pizz

 

Tyson was game for 2 years from 1995 to 1997. After that he was banned for a year and never looked the same.

 

It's the 1970's:
Ali
Frazier
Foreman
Holmes
Norton
Lyle
Shavers
Norton
Just to name a few, four of those heavyweights are top 10 all time

 

If not the worst ever, it is right there with whichever is the worst.

 

90s for me.