If Holmes retired after Cooney

And even guys like Lopez and Denis weren't terrible. Gerry went on to giving Holmes a respectable fight.

 

If Holmes retired after Cooney....he would have been insufferable...an obnoxious *******....he needed to hang around,...cop a few losses...get KTFO by Tyson.....as character builders....to make him humbler.

 

Hard to say.

His best performance for me is against Spoon so without that I'd probably rank him slightly lower than I do today.

Although a large bulk of what makes him great had already happened by then.

He'd still be criticized for not unifying the titles though.

 

Jimmy Young had been defeated twice by Ossie Ocasio, an 11-0 fighter. He'd also already lost to a 14-0 Dokes.
Ron Lyle had been knocked out by Lynn Ball in two rounds. Yes, the great Lynn Ball.
Ken Norton had been destroyed in one round by Shavers two years before Cooney did the same, and had been lucky to get a decision over LeDoux in the meantime.
Sorry if you think this is "picking part" but I think it's important to acknowledge these facts.

No one said Tucker was a good contender for Tyson based on the Jimmy Young win 3 or 4 years earlier.
In fact Tucker was largely ignored and his resume was thin but he did become a leading HW and the IBF title holder when he beat Douglas, who was a top 10 contender already.

Lots of Tyson's challengers had better records than Cooney. Cooney beat some old guys who didn't belong in the top 10, maybe Jimmy Young was hanging in by the skin of his teeth. Whereas Tyson beat some former title holders, guys who had beaten top 4 or 5 HWs in their careers to win belts.
Few of Tyson's challengers had particularly good recent form and I've often stressed this when people try to inflate Tyson's opposition, but if we include the title holders (Berbick, Smith, Tucker) it's obvious they were coming off career best wins over ranked opposition.

Surely Earnie Shavers, who had KO1 Norton when it was relevant.
Trevor Berbick was coming off a KO over John Tate, a young contender who had looked like a pretty decent WBA champion for 14 rounds until losing to Weaver. Berbick's win over Tate is better than anything Cooney did.

There are others that are entirely debatable.
(and I'm not including Norton 1978 since we're talking about Holmes's challengers).
Even Leon Spinks coming off a win over then-ranked Bernardo Mercado stacks up well against anything on Cooney's resume, and I know that will upset a few people but it is true.

I don't think Cooney beat a single top 10 contender, certainly not a "live" one. Maybe just about by RING magazine's ratings, guys who were on the edge, probably slipping away. Perhaps Norton and Young were hanging in their at #10 or something. Not sure they deserved that.

If a fighter is 25-0 and it's debatable whether he beat a genuine top 10 contender at all, nevermind a "live" contender in the top 5, or he beat one or two guys right on the lower end of the top 10, and the three "big names" on his resume are old guys who'd been beaten by up-and-comers or journeymen already and recently ..... I'm not sure how we can describe him as "an outstanding contender".

 

Outside of Larry Holmes himself, Ken Norton should be regarded the best heavyweight out there going into the Shavers fight. He'd narrowly lost to Holmes, beaten everyone else, and Ali and Spinks had been ducking him.
It's unequivocally a far better win than Cooney's win over Norton, and better than anything on Cooney's resume, and it's a good heavyweight win.

Tate going into the Berbick fight was top 5, probably top 3. He done well against Weaver for 14 rounds and his win over Coetzee was well within the last year.
Berbick's win over Tate is far better than anything Cooney ever did, even with Tate coming off a KO loss.

You want to mention previous losses against Berbick and Shavers, but that's not how credentials work. Being unbeaten is not the be all and end all. Fighters prove their contendership credentials by defeating top ranked fighters, not by merely having avoiding a loss since turning professional.

Obviously Mike Weaver was the correct choice for Holmes's #1 contender, but assuming we're not counting him (on account of his WBA title), I believe it would be totally acceptable to have guys like Mike Dokes and Greg Page and Gerrie Coetzee "contesting" Cooney's status at the least.
There's no way Cooney is an "outstanding" contender.
It's easy to check the records and timelines of the fighters and fights around at the time.

Beating up carcasses of Norton and Lyle "in style" means next to nothing. I don't think anyone denies Cooney could punch.
His best win is the win over Jimmy Young, who had already fallen behind Ocasio and Dokes in the pecking order.

Cooney's defeating some men who have clearly already been knocked down in (or out of) the rankings, by fighters (Ocasio, a ' novice' Dokes, Shavers, Lynn Ball, and, imo, LeDoux ) who you probably don't think are much good anyway.
So I really can't see how you can extract much value from his win column.

 

Cooney was a hyped disappointment, and Holmes would be retiring at 32 years of age with only 40 fights and the WBA Champ, Weaver still calling him out.

Holmes' best wins at this point would have been Ali era holdovers Norton and Shavers. He beat Weaver of course, who went on to do a mini-clean up and wanted a rematch. He wouldn't be rated that highly and regarded as a bit of a mystery.

It would also look like he was stepping aside for fellow King stablemate Dokes, which would be ugly too.

 

Earnie Shavers entered the Holmes title shot coming off a 1st round win over a top 2 contender.
It's not about having "a clean slate". It's about defeating top ranked fighters recently.

I'm not sure Norton did enough to win that one with Cobb. And his previous fight against LeDoux was definitely a gift.
If not for his name he probably would have been 0-3 in his last three going in against Cooney.

Lyle was a carcass, certainly. Lyle wasn't even top 20 at this point.
Young had something left but he was already a proven stepping-stone for young prospects.

By all means, let's give Cooney credit for stopping Young on TKO. It's his best win by far.

Lyle had been KO'd by Lynn Ball* the previous year. Lyle hadn't been in with any of the real top fighters in over 4 years.
He was just shy of 40 years old.
We don't know if he was "at all easy to KO" because he didn't test himself agaisnt any of the top guys.

* Note that Lynn Ball went on to loss to Marty Monroe soon after, and Monroe went on to lose to Greg Page in 1981.
Ball, Monroe and Page are just 3 of the many HWs ranked above Lyle in this period.

Your original statement implied that Mike Tyson didn't face "an oustanding contender such as Cooney" in 1986-89.
Now you seem to be saying Cooney was a contender, a top contender. And that sometimes top contenders become so without beating other top contenders.

Tyson beat top contenders, number 1 contenders, some of whom had much better past victories than Cooney ever had, some even had them in the recent past .

I can't be bothered to go through all the examples you pull up (Holyfield, Bowe, Ruddock, whoever) with a fine tooth comb. These are not fighters I've made any claim about on this thread.

I haven't disputed that Cooney can be rated "number 1 contender" in 1982 (barring champ Holmes and WBA "champ" Weaver).
I'm primarily disputing the suggestion that he was some sort of stand-out type that Tyson never had.
I've also disputed that he must be rated "number 1" above Page, Dokes etc. in 1982. He perhaps should be behind them.
I've disputed the suggestion that Cooney did more (or as much as) all and any of Holmes's challengers 1978-82 to earn his shot. Others earned their shots with convincing wins that were unequivocally better.
On these specifics I feel my case is solid.

 

1982 was the last that we saw of a 'great' Holmes. He started his slide after that so most of his legacy had been established by this juncture.

 

I think I was highlighting the point you made that he beat them "in style". I don't necessarily put that much stock in the fact that he destroyed Lyle and Norton, and stopped Young.
There's a definite limit to what doing it "in style" can add to wins over such low-ranked and/or washed-up oppoistion.
Like I said, there's no denying Cooney had a powerful punch.

Yes, this is a clear difference of opinion.
I think both Holmes's wins over Shavers, as well as his win over Berbick, are better. His win over Norton is clearly better. That's four wins.
There are a few others that could be on a par or better, debatable.

Tyson's wins over Berbick, Tucker and Smith are better than Holmes-Cooney.
Not as "events" but in strict sporting terms.

 

Cooney really wasn't the outstanding challenger in 82. Weaver was the closet thing to that.

He already gave Holmes a tough fight, and there was interest in a rematch.
After losing to Holmes, Weaver put together knockout wins over top contenders John Tate and Gerrie Coetzie that saw him claim the RING#1 spot and the WBA title. Those two wins far outweigh Cooney's run.

What Cooney had was hype and promotion. It was a huge fight, but Cooney was not the outstanding contender.

The winner of Cooney/Weaver would have determined a true outstanding contender. But there was all sorts of screwiness that prevented that fight, namely the desire to sacrifice Cooney to Holmes for megabucks.

I think had Weaver/Cooney went through, Weaver would have defeated Cooney by a late stoppage and killed the money train.

 

Yes, manner of victory can make a clear difference. But there's a limit to how much it can enhance wins over unranked, low-ranked, borderline top 10 and washed-up opposition. At the top of the rankings it counts a lot more.

If Liston's best win was Nino Valdes in 1959 and he'd missed the likes of Patterson, Machen, Folley etc. he wouldn't be considered in Terrell's league, no matter how many unranked guys he crushed or whether he remained unbeaten.