Is there any heavyweight that Holmes couldn't beat once in a trilogy?

Foreman, Louis, Liston, Lennox, Wlad, Tyson?

 

Prime for prime...

Louis, Liston, Ali, Foreman, Lewis, Vitali


I think they would probably sweep a trilogy.

 

Only Joe Louis but even that’s iffy.

 

Based on how Ali dealt with guys who fought negative you think he sweeps Holmes in a trilogy?

 

Yep.

1966 /1967 Ali beats 1978 /1979 Holmes decisively.

(Those years are the best versions of both men, IMO).

Two Wide UDs and a stoppage....

Or maybe two stoppages and a wide UD.


That version of Ali loses to no-one.

 

Absolutely not. I see Ali getting a tough but clear UD in the 60s, winning again in (besides Frazier) the hardest fight of his life SD 1970-1973, and getting plainly UD'd by Larry 74 on.

And no, I don't see the Zaire Ali beating Holmes. Holmes wouldn't have fallen for the rope a dope long, and at that stage in his career Ali just plain couldn't keep up with him.

 

60s Ali isn’t unbeatable at all - Louis even wrote the perfect game plan for him before Norton beat Ali.
How does Ali fight Holmes though? I’d think based on the fights in his career fighting someone like Larry would be a very cagey, boring but otherwise close bout.

 

Norton never fought the 67 /68 Ali.

And if he had, Joe could have written all the plans he wanted, and been in Kennie's corner.

He would have swept the marine.




That said, in non-hypothetical, real-life fights, IMO Norton won their trilogy by taking the first and the third fight, despite what the official cards said.

 

The same flaws are there regardless.
Joe Louis saw them in the 60s watching Muhammad Ali he was a great heavyweight but he had his share of faults no one is unbeatable.

 

Despite how they matched old vs young, I feel basically the same way about both Holmes and Holy in trilogy scenarios. Both men are just too good at too many thing and have too much grit to not more likely pull one off against even some pretty bad stylistic mach-ups.

 

I always thought a prime Tyson is Larry's kryptonite, Tyson whups him every time.

 

Lennox comes to mind. Then Vitali or Wlad. I like Frazier as a sleeper pick. All would be difficult fights for Larry. Holmes has some crazy aspects to his game, but also had a lot of close fights, close calls and some dubious opponent choices.

Stylistically Norton gave Holmes fits, you could say it's because Holmes was green but Norton wasn't at his best either. Norton's style of neutralizing the jab has a lot of similarities to how Witherspoon was able to do it. Witherspoon, Norton and Weaver fights make me think Frazier would have done better than people think as he was able to get rid of Ali's jab pretty effectively in FOTC and just eat it and land his own stuff in Thrilla in Manila. If he mixed it up with Frazier, which he did a lot with most of his fights, and Frazier lands like Weaver I think Frazier would be able to land some fight altering blows. Frazier was able to deal with Ali who had a lot of the same gifts as Larry but with more speed.

Wlad/Lennox make sense to me bc Larry could eat huge rights over his jab when it returned low, Snipes and Shavers come to mind. Larry could win anything, but I think those are some hard matchups for a guy who handpicked a bit and had some close calls (Holmes is like my #3/4 all time fwiw)

 

Tons more wear and tear fighting these opponents than the opponents he fought. Cannot help but see a big subtraction in the Holmes effectiveness once you start factoring that into the equation. There would be more wear and tear from just fighting Smokin Joe 3x than all those title bouts added up.

Another thing I do not like is the fact the guy lost his last 5 title fights. Who else makes that claim?

 

There's a few issues here for me my friend.

You seem to be matching a peak version of Holmes up with three differing aging versions of Ali. That's not how a trilogy would work.

You'd take the peak version of each and match them from there. Your trilogy is taking 7-8 years. It wouldn't take that long.

If it did however lets do it fairly.

Ali's best is 66-67. I think I've seen you yourself claim Holmes was around peak in 1980?

So lets say you're first match pits 1967 Ali vs 1980 Holmes

For the second fight you talk a 70-73 Ali. Lets meet in the middle and say that's Ali 4 1/2 years later. That's equivalent to a 1984 Holmes which is when he fought Bonecrusher Smith. It's less than a year prior to Spinks beating him. Noway can i see Holmes winning that. His fans claim he showed decent slippage against Witherspoon and i am inclined to agree.

If we go to the 74 Zaire Ali, well he'd be 2 1/2 years forward again which takes us well and truly into Holmes - Spinks territory. Holmes was past it at this point and wasn't beating Foreman version Ali.

You could take earlier versions of Holmes but Ali had been fighting at an enormously high level from the time he beat Liston in 64.

I think Ali even in 65 was good enough to beat a peak Larry. Foreman was 27 fights from there.
If we took Holmes 27 from Shavers 1 we are talking him vs Michael Greer.