Did the 90's heavyweights have as much talent as the 70's?

Ali,- went from past his prime to completely shot
Foreman- the most protected hw prospect ever. why? i have no idea.
Frazier- was shot by 73, only a depleted ali made him look viable. peaked in the late 60's/very early 70's.
Holmes- excellent fighter came on at the tail end of the decade
Norton- b+ fighter on his best day, chinny at all other times
Shavers c-level fighter who could punch. nothing special.
Lyle another c-level fighter who had few tools other than tenacity
Quarry- good fighter, not great. personal demons. wilted against the guys who were better in the 60's.
Bonevena- very small fighter all of whose significant work was in the 60's.
Young- guy with potential but ultimately bad record.

Just using a list from above. The 70's are the single most over-rated decade for talent in the HW division. Why the 70's seem so great is that the fighters available in fact FOUGHT EACH OTHER unlike the 90's.

 

I think the single best fighter who existed between those two eras was Muhammad Ali. The rest can all be debated against one another. We saw that a 40 something year old Foreman was capable of becoming a champion in the 90's. On the flipside the 90's also produced plenty of greats itself in Lewis, Holyfield and Bowe. The real thing that tips the scales for me is that in the 1970's you had the best talent matched against one another more often.. Sure, we saw some great fights in the 90's, but there were plenty that went unmade, and even the ones that did, often occurred when some of the participants were past it, ex. holyfield vs Lewis.

As for Tim Witherspoon, I agree that he's underrated, but I can't see any reasonable argument harboring that he is an all time great. Spoon's best days came during the 80's anyway, which takes him out of this comparison.

 

It is a talking point that we will always be undecided upon.. In my own opinion , i think the 90's heavyweights were a very good technical bunch, Bigger and in many cases genetically stronger.. But as far as a hungrier set of men, i say no.. They weren't paid flash amounts of ready cash until they actually made the grade, where as in the 90's men were dropped $4 M to step aside for larger fights for instance.. 70's era was a hard working era , they earned every crust they made by doing hard rounds .. They were both good era's with the 70's having more memorable fights because they were the true pioneers of what we had in the 90's and today.. But by no means were they a walk in the park either way.. I just have the upmost respect for both sets for many different reasons..

 

Solid post...:good

 

The question asked here concerns talent not excitement. I believe the 90's had more talent, though it was not matched consistently against one another. And if Ali was the best the 70's had to offer, I would emphatically assert that at least three fighters from the 1990's would wipe the floor with him.

 

I agree with this, and that's without even mentioning Chris Byrd who I feel would beat a number of the top 10 guys from the 70's and the Klitschkos, who came on in the tail end of the decade. The 90's were held back from what could've been because the best matchups just didn't get made.

 

There were more belts in the 90s...

 

This post :good

 

Yup.

The Ali of that period and even the one who beat Foreman's ridiculously uninformed game plan would wilt under prime Holyfield, Lewis or a motivated Bowe.

 

and i suppose they all KO Ali. Ali performed better against the best opponents when he got serious e.g. Foreman. The bums he played with and came into not in the best shape - 76 onwards Ali was going downhill rapidly i admit. Manila was his last great performance. Shavers fight showed that he could still take great punches without going down.

 

Foreman had the worst game plan ever devised. Do you really think Holyfield or Lewis would go off at the pace Foreman did? Foreman was a ridiculously protected fighter whose overwhelming physicality took its toll against a depleted Frazier and a frail Norton. He had very little to offer an intelligent fight like Ali, or Lewis or at his best, Holyfield. Other than Foreman, Ali struggled mightily with Norton, whom Lewis would have dispatched in a few rounds. And Shavers was an abysmal boxer who had snap in his punches. Who were the best guy he ever KO'd? An old-ass Norton who was frail even in his younger years? At his best in the 70's Ali was the cream of a not very impressive crop. More testament to how good he was in the mid-60's.

 

I think you would be suprised thatmost of the era's are equal and the 90's could hold there own with the rest

 

I think the 90s fighters were at least equal to the 70s guys.

 

.....an interesting thought!....it would have been very interesting to see where one of these three would have ended up in the 70's pecking order??