Does anyone here think that Larry Holmes is sometimes underappreciated?

Has become ******ed.

 

Why are you critzising.. OF all people... Ali's opposition. Just stop :-(
Ali had great oppositon. Sure he could have fought Machen and mathis, but he still has one of the deepest resumes you could find
Much much better then holmes

 

Tommy,

Yes I agree wth 100%, no one can match Ali's resume.
I'm not criticizing his over-all boxing stats, just trying to match his early career with Larry Holmes.
6 of one, half-dozen of the other, they are pretty equal.

 

Well even in his early career he fought sonny liston twice and floyd patterson once. Holmes didnt fight anybody like that

 

Yes, that I will agree completely.
Holmes didn't fight a real good fighter until Roy 'Tiger' Williams.

Sonny Liston, who knows what the truth is on those fights, but that is another story.
Floyd a very good fighter, but in his defense, he had a 'bad back' for that fight.
Didn't matter though, Ali was far superior than Floyd.
A 6' 3" 210 lb. Ali versus 5' 11" 190 lb. Patterson

 

I agree the Liston fights were suspicous but they are excellent wins nevertheless.

Yeah I heard about that.. Still, we're talking about quality of oppositon here, and those two trump anyone holmes ever beat
Terrell was well was a decent contender

 

On Holmes fight with Norton and Shavers.
Both of those fighters are more dangerous than a 'bad back' Patterson, and
a Terrell who got thumbed in the eye early in the bout, don't you think.

 

On this board I don't think he's underappreciated, except his defence. If there is a head to head match up thread involving a fighter with a right hand that is even remotely good, 99.9% of the time there is more than 1 person who will predict Holmes being dropped or badly stunned, despite Larry only being down in 4 of his 75 fights.

 

Yes Bill1234,

Thats one-point that the Holmes-detractors state.
They forget that Roy Williams (one-mean-motherf***er) hit Larry with about a dozen good rights in their fight.
Larry shook a bit, but took them and won the fight.
Roy 'Tiger' could knock down buildings with that right hand.
He had some size on him too 6' 4" 230 lbs.

 

I agree and look to this sort of reasoning to mark the greatness of a champ, because sooner or later even a great boxer will come up against the wrong style match up, even if the other boxer is not that great and will either lose or be made to look not quite themselves.

Who do you think did the most towards cleaning out all the top oponents around them? and how much stock would that go into making up your ranking of a fighter?

Right or wrong I put down a loss or a big question mark for a boxer when they blantently duck an oponent, but not a 'win' for the guy that was ducked, ie Bowe gets a loss for ducking Lewis etc.... would you think anything like this sort of thinking could work? or just to dame hard?

 

Good point,

How about this.
Do you remember who was cleaning-out all the top heavyweights in 1958 thru 1962.
Not champions Floyd Patterson or Ingemar Johannsen.
Sonny Liston.

 

A couple of the guys here rank him pretty high, SuzieQ and a couple others.

 

The most overrated underrated HW champ?

 

Uh oh. Pete's on. I may have time to edit that ABBA comment I made earlier. It was all lies.

 

If Jones had looked good against Ali he may have forced a rematch, so it certainly wasn't unimportant to him. A good perfomance in the exhibition may have given his only title shot.

But he was dominated according to reports.

Have you watched it yourself? Clay won that one.

Look at Janitor's rankings. Machen wasn't particularily deserving of a title shot. Spencer would have been ahead of him. Yes, London wasn't a great defence, but he couldn't get a fight in the US then so he cleaned up what was in Europe.

And I personally doubt that Machen would have lasted the distance. Very few did against Ali in those days. But that's only speculation.