He wasn't close to his prime Holmes had been slipping since 83 after the Witherspoon fight, that's why he stopped taking risky fights after the Witherspoon scare. He refused to fight Thomas, Page, because he wanted to break Marciano's record and deemed those fights as too risky. A 38 year old Holmes coming off two losses a two year lay off, with 3 uninspiring performances in a row vs Williams, Spinks x2, is not Holmes "close to his prime".
As i said before who knew beating Joseph Parker was the benchmark to beating ATG's in H2H match ups. I must be mistaken but this is the same Joseph Parker who lost to Dillian Whyte right ?
You have to remember, in the general forum the perception of the fighter and the image people have of them are far more important factors than the eye test, resume, etc. No one had ever clobbered Joseph Parker like that, which is impressive, but we're still talking about Joseph Parker here. Went 0-2 against Whyte and Joshua, arguably lost to Ruiz and had a very close call with Chisora of all people. His ceiling is very low. The guy is on his way to becoming the Tony Tucker/Joe Bugner of this era: a tall, quick, cagey safety first guy who rarely goes out of 1st gear and has few world class wins. It doesn't matter that Parker's actual resume is nothing to rave about, Joyce being the only one to KO a slippery safety first guy validates Joyce's "juggernaut" nickname. They really think he's unstoppable and would wear Tyson down with non stop pressure. Joyce's 2nd best win being against the fragile and overrated prospect Dubois doesn't change anything. You almost have to have blind faith in Joyce like a religious fanatic. He's what they perceive to be a fight fan's ideal HW: tall, strong, durable, hard puncher, let's his fists do the talking, never stops, etc. Every couple years fans desperately project these lofty ideals onto the next hot prospect. They did it with Joshua, but quickly abandoned him the moment he lost. They did it at light heavyweight with Kovalev (remember the vs threads vs Marciano? Comedy gold now that we have the benefit of hindsight). They're doing it right now with Beterbiev and they never learn their lesson. I even saw people bringing up Tyson's losses to Lewis and Kevin ****ing McBride as proof Tyson can't handle a big strong guy who applies non stop pressure with roughhouse tactics. There is so much to unpack there and Im not going to bother getting started.
This aged like wine crafted by Dionysus. I tried telling these idiots Joyce was overrated. Tyson TKO round 3.
I mentioned in the Zhang v Joyce thread that all these idiot fan boys that don't know anything about boxing would have egg on their face after this result. The thing is they will start saying Zhang is now unbeatable and would beat all the other top heavyweights except for Fury! The deluded fan boy conveyor belt is a gift that keeps giving
And then people will say the guy who beats Zhang is a top 5 boxer. Then they'll say the guy who beats him is an uncrowned king who would beat both Fury and Usyk. Then when that guy loses...
Sorry to bring these posts back up but I just need something cheerful to start the day off this morning.
