David Bey vs. Greg Page Aug 31, 1984

No, he didn't do like Ali. But he didn't have any particularly sound head movement to speak of either. His defense wasn't much good, tbh.

 

I'm not denigrating. Parodying maybe.

Actually the claims (and implications) being put forward by JT (and perhaps yourself) are that Greg Page only lost to Berbick, Witherspoon, Bey and Tubbs because he wasn't "at his best" on those days, and that his best was better than their best.
All of those fights he is said to be either "flat" or "unmotivated", "out of shape", "unfocussed".
When he's fat and he loses its said that he is "out of shape".
When he's fat and he wins the story becomes "his weight never mattered".
When he's light and looks fine he was "out of shape, nevertheless", he was "flat" because it's "his mind".

Page was good. He won most his fights ..... but he lost a few ..... so the story is "he blew hot and cold" more than anyone else.

But the truth is he always had glaring holes in his game and his losses during those years were to fighters who WERE on his level as professional fighters.
So let's not denigrate those opponents by implying they "got lucky" when they met Greg Page. Let's do away with the favouritism and the excuses.

Like I said, "most talented" isn't even a thing, it's an irrelevance, it's incredibly subjective. There's probably some gym fighter or journeyman who was "THE most talented" ever, and we've never heard of him.
I prefer to talk about proven ability. Something we can discuss with some degree of objectivity.

In my opinion, Greg Page didn't look "a different fighter" against Coetzee than he was against Berbick and Witherspoon. Styles make fights. Page was doing what Page does in all those fights. Berbick was an awkward bast&rd. Witherspoon was strong and cagey. Coetzee had a less rugged style and was powerful hitter but was not as strong and display less stamina down the stretch. There was no great change in Page, in my opinion. He beat a couple of top fighters and lost to a few. The alibis and the mythologizing is unnecessary.
But that's just my opinion.

 

All good, i've written him off. He's trolling most of the time nowadays anyways.

 

Greg lost because he wasn't aggressive enough. Personally, I thought the fight was a draw, but Greg not being aggressive enough, and the fight being in Las Vegas, was enough for David to pull it off. He beat Coetzee because Gerrie's style was made for him, and he probably knew it was his last chance at the belt, with Don King being behind the reins and all.

 

Understand that Greg's first love wasn't boxing, it was basketball, his father pushed him in it. He was even inconsistent as an amateur, he even admitted in an interview that some of his amateur duels with Tubbs he didn't train for. So the necessary dedication wasn't totally there from jump.

 

Page looked better vs. Bey, at least to me, than he had against Witherspoon where he turned up looking like a tub of goo. He lay on the ropes throwing pitty pat punches for most of the Witherspoon fight. What a waste of a chance.
Funny thing is, the 239.5 he weighed for that fight seemed ridiculous, but fighters in the heavyweight division have been tending toward the bovine more and more as the years go passing by, with some notable exceptions of course.
I remember Page vs. Coetzee being closer than it seems to be suggested here, and certainly more back and forth. I will have to watch again. Both of those guys had the gift to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, so I wouldn't put it past either one of them to pooch it in a rematch.
Always bothers me when fighters get title shots after a loss, somehow something in the process seems, broken when that happens. For all I know there may have been reasons.
David Bey was a decent fighter for a period of time, and did ok vs Holmes, but he was pretty limited. I would bet on a motivated and in shape Page beating him more often than not, but I would be a foolish man to bet on a motivated and in shape Page arriving with any more frequency than Halley's comet.

 

Bey didn't want to go to South Africa, because of the apartheid around that time. So Page stepped in and got the title he originally would have won in mid-to-late '82.

 

On top of that apparently King asked insiders who would Coetzee least like to fight out of his stable and the answer was Page so over he went. King wanted that title back in his lap.

 

Gotta say that was a smart move on Don King's part. And it worked out for Greg, especially since him and Don were beefing strong back then.