better legacy: Holmes or Wladimir

Larry by a mile.

 

Holmes, but not by much.

The guy is incredibly overrated in this forum.

 

larry's quality wins:
norton, shavers, jones, whiterspoon, mercer, berbick

wlad's quality wins:
byrd 1,2, peter 1, ibragimov, chagaev, haye, thompson, mccline, brock

i would but byrd on the level of norton, ibragimov on mercer, chagaev on berbik, mccline on jones and brock on whiterspoon. wlad still has a quailty win more in haye, and i didn't count wins like botha, schulz, rahman, peter 2. imo wladimir has more depth in his resumé. he beat equal fighters like holmes but more of this quality fighters.

 

Byrd on level of Norton!?? atsch

 

The general forum is loaded with idiots. It's Holmes, any way you slice it. And no, David Haye is not the best win on both of their resumes. Not by a long shot.

 

1. Holmes never unified the WBA-WBC or the IBF belt.

2. Holmes had a big amount of fights against opponents with less than 18 fights. Most of these green fighters were ranked, but this only reflects the mediocrity of that era. Some other of Holmes wins, like Zanon, parkinson Ali, Leroy Jones, etc., are nothing special. Obviously, Holmes shines because of the Norton win and the Shavers win...But his resume lacks depth.

I still rank Holmes ahead of Wlad, but not by much.

 

norton did **** in the 70, the guy had only a bad style for ali. he had one of the biggest glas chins ever and lost about 90% of his important fights. byrd would ****ing school him to a shootout. byrd is criminally underrated here.

 

As it stands it's clearly larry. He has a decent argument to have beaten everyone he faced bar holyfield and tyson.

It's a shame he never fought the wba champ but he did everything else. He was probably the best heavyweight in the world from 77 to 85.

Wlad can catch up and will catch up if he carries on winning over the next few years.

 

This is another example of overrating older fighters, so Holmes is an atg yet wlad is nothing? By the time wlad retires he will rank above holmes.

 

Larry.

 

I think Norton ranks higher than Byrd.

However, the 1978 Norton was past his prime, and still it was a close fight.

Wlad beat a prime version of Byrd in 2000. Also a prime version of Haye in 2011. Those two wins are better than the Norton win of 1978, imo.

 

norton was a good technical boxer but he could not fight punchers. when he fought punchers he lost brutally. byrd on the other side, could fight all styles and looked always good. he was a defensive wizard with great speed and ability, he hold the title twice and had a couple of defenses. imo he ranks higher then norton.
1995 till now.

1. Lewis
2. Holyfield
3. Wlad
4. Vitali
5. Byrd
6. Bowe

 

Agree. Norton was a contender. He's not on the level of Frazier, Foreman or Holmes. I think his record against other contenders is 5-5. That's similar to Chris Byrd, who has fewer loses.