Holyfield vs Mayweather

What are you saying ?

 

Holyfield was a cruiser at his lightest and ended up turning into a heavyweight. Not a light weight turned welterweight in history beats even cruiser Holyfield.

 

Cotto, faded
Manny, faded
Alvarez, green (but great win still)

His best work for me is like Hatton, Corrales, Castillo 2, Hernandez, and putting on a masterclass after being hurt vs. Mosley (faded but still). The De La Hoya fight is probably an underrated win in terms of quality. But Cotto was way past his best and so was Manny. Manny's last bit of prime was realistically sparked out of him by JMM in 2012. 3 years before he fought FMJ.

 

Holyfield. Old ass Holyfield even fought Valuev, giving up ridiculous size. Even lb 4 lb, Holyfield could throw better punches, from more different angles than Mayweather did (probably because Holyfield was the smaller guy and had to throw a looping, curling punch).

 

Holy didn't start @CW, his early fights were billed as LHW contests & he weighed as low as 176.

& no, it wasn't "a much bigger deal" (or even "bigger" at all) for May to move up the weight that he did - he moved up roughly 15% of his starting weight, whereas Holy moved up roughly 23% of his. & again, this doesn't take into account that Holy was outweighed by sometimes massive amounts on top of the weight that he had already moved up.

So did May.

Holy won fights vs. younger Tyson, Moorer, Ruiz, & Rahman while into his mid or late 30s, & was well into his 40s when many people thought he was robbed vs. Valuev on foreign soil, despite being outweighed by roughly 100 lbs.

Yes, it was generally acknowledged that Bowe was taking a big step up for his 1st fight with Holy. It was also generally acknowledged that he enjoyed a 30 lb wt advantage over Holy, whereas May insisted that Canelo further weaken himself by sucking down even further below what would turn out to be his prime weight class.

 

Floyd. Holyfield was amazing but I just can't get past what I believe he must have taken t enhance himself and that bugs me ... I believe Floyd was clean hs whole career.

 

This is just blowing things out of proportion. Canelo weighed in at 153 for his fight right before facing Floyd against Trout. He weighed in at 151 two years before fighting Floyd against Matthew Hatton. You’d think all of Canelo’s life essence was contained in the extra lb he had to cut between Trout and Floyd lol. Floyd was also a tiny JMW fighting a huge JMW in Canelo. Floyd beating Canelo is a great win plain and simple imo.

 

The issue with evaluating Holyfield’s career it seems is that in spite of his inconsistency, he still fits into the romantic notion some fans have of what a great fighter should be. The fact that he fought everybody is, to some, more important than him winning these fights convincingly. He was a warrior who would go out on his shield, the David against Goliaths, the king of kings who will fight any man anytime anyplace. (While also making extraordinary sums of money, fighting with his head, and juicing, but these don’t fit into these romantic notions it seems.) Boxing is a dirty sport filled with horrible people, what else is new? It’s real life, not a story book, people are flawed and do things for ugly reasons. What we’re talking about though is results in a boxing ring regardless of the spirit these fights were made in. Mayweather said it himself, “Shane Mosley said Floyd Mayweather fights for money. Ya f*ckin dummy, I’m a prize-fighter, that’s what I’m supposed to fight for. A prize. Duh.” Holyfield spent his earnings on a massive mansion and ended up broke because he spent the money he made from boxing. It’s a business at the end of the day. Men don’t put their health on the lines for our entertainment for free, every fighter everywhere charges a fee for their services. But when we’re talking strictly about results, then Floyd’s trumps Evander’s considerably.

 

246 lbs was a bit heavy for Bowe, i agree. Though he was still in his physical prime and IMO significantly more dangerous than 2015 Pac.

 

2 years is enough time to outgrow a weight class, & it was obvious already from his performance vs. Trout that the effort to get under 154 was impacting his performances. He was at his best/strongest @ MW & SMW.

 

Mayweather sounding like the cherry picker he was. Can't imagine him fighting somebody 30 lbs heavier, even if he was a light heavyweight. That *****.

 

Be that as it may, that one comparison doesn’t warrant ranking Evander higher that mayweather.

 

Exactly. People love heroes ( and so do I ) but that doesn’t mean much when assessing concrete accomplishments.

 

Exactly. Here we had an instance where a 37 year old former super feather stepped in a with a prime 43-0 junior middleweight champ and future hall of famer ( probably ) and dominated him. Yet some of these guys act like Floyd “ cherry picked. “ I wonder what these guys think of Evander fighting Larry Holmes and George Foreman.