Holyfield argues he should be considered the GOAT over Ali

No fair person judges Willie Mays by the work he did with the Mets, the work Michael Jordan did with the Wizards, and the work O J Simpson did with the 49ers.

 

He tested positive for at least 4 banned substances after the Holmes fight, which he then tried to claim he'd ingested all @ once immediately after the fight & then voluntarily gave up his license to fight in Nevada in order to avoid further investigation by its commission.

"Former World heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali was given painkillers and antidepressants immediately after his Oct. 2 title fight with Larry Holmes."

"A physician who once treated Muhummad Ali and a boxing executive close to the former champion expressed surprise yesterday over a report that he took four drugs immediately after his recent defeat by Larry Holmes in Las Vegas, Nev."

"Two weeks after the fight, the Nevada Athletic Commission reported that Ali had failed his post-fight drug test. A urine sample revealed codeine and phenothiazines — painkillers and antidepressants — in Ali’s body. The boxer claimed that he had taken the drugs immediately after his loss to Holmes, to speed his recovery. Even if that were true, however, it would have been a violation of the commission’s rules, as Ali and his team no doubt knew.
On December 29, 1980, the Nevada commission began a hearing on whether to strip Ali’s boxing licence. Ali appeared at the hearing, but before it began, he voluntarily gave up his license. By doing so, his lawyers argued, Ali was no longer subject to Nevada’s rules and could not be punished."

 

A tranquilizer, an antidepressant, an appetite suppressant, and a painkiller he took after the fight. That's different than anabolic steroids, no?

 

Both constitute cheating, & if a willingness to cheat (even @ the tail end of a career) is all that's needed to retroactively cast doubt on Holy's entire career, why exempt another fighter from the same standard?

 

Do you believe painkillers, antidepressants, and appetite suppressants confer the same advantages as anabolic steroids? And I don't rate Holyfield below Ali because he took anabolic steroids. I rate him lower than Ali because Ali's resume is so much better.

 

No, but they still confer advantages nonetheless.

The issue isn't that 1 fighter's cheating was "more" or "less" than the other's, it's that 1 fighter's cheat has been retroactively applied to his entire career while the other's hasn't.

 

By his own admission, he used drugs in an effort to hasten fat loss during training.

 

I said outright that it wasn't in the post you quoted.

Neither, you're just a shameless liar.

 

Ali was so far gone for the Holmes and Berbick fights. For the former he used drugs to lose weight and consequently lost strength and for the latter he came in at a 236 1/2 pound blimp. Berbick wasn't a can. It's amazing Ali made the fight competitive.

 

b/c he used it to assist in achieving a target weight that he wasn't willing &/or able to achieve by training alone.

I brought it up in the context of washed up fighters cheating in a desperate attempt to revive their careers & whether that should retroactively cast a cloud over their earlier careers (which I argued that it shouldn't).

 

The Mets retired Willie Mays number and his last at bat was a game winning hit in the world series.