He stopped future SMW champion Richie Woodhall, and Rob Mccracken other than that I don't recall seeing much of him. What was he like.. Strengths? Weaknesses? Was he similar to any other fighters style wise?
There are enough of his fights in the public access, you can watch them and get answers to your questions.
I struggle with time my friend, and isn't the idea of this forum to discuss older fighters and to help ourselves with knowledge from other people
You are partly right. But I understand when questions are about fighters whose fights are difficult to find on the Internet and they are either with collectors or in the archives of TV channels. About Holmes ,big middleweight,southpaw with decent punching power ,but not a banger.He had a solid chin and never been a stopped.All his lose was by decision - Hammond,Karmazin,Cherifi,Hopkins,Mendoza . He had a good wins - Vaden ,Taylor,Cherifi (rematch),Banks,Council (2 times) and Woodhall with McCracken what you said.
Holmes vs Hopkins This content is protected Quincy Taylor This content is protected Cherifi I This content is protected Cherifi II This content is protected Mendoza This content is protected
Karmazin This content is protected Vaden This content is protected Toygonbayev This content is protected Woodhall This content is protected Council II This content is protected
Holmes was a good fighter. Came out of DC at a time when lot's of solid pro's were made their like Joppy and Shambra Mitchell. Pretty much like Vladimir said, he was big for the division and was a tricky southpaw with a good right jab.
As far as lanky southpaw boxers go, He was not quite Michael Nunn - but He was capable. Disciplined, well conditioned, mobile and precise. It was interesting that He was able to drop down to Super Welterweight pretty late in his career and do quite well. He came up short against Karamazin - but Roman was one of the top Super Welterweights at the time, so no shame in that. What I remember about Keith is He was one of the first vegetarian/vegan boxers I heard about. Not sure if it was over the course of his entire career, or just in the later stage.
IMO, he was a decent but fairly rudimentary standup boxer/technician. He did have a bit of pop on his punches, but overall he didn't do any 1 thing spectacularly & he seemed a bit weak/fragile @ close quarters. His unification fight w/ Hopkins (part of a tournament that culminated w/ Hopkins-Tito) was his 1 chance to make something happen on a big stage, but he retreated into survival mode after a few rnds & the fight turned into the mw equivalent of Tyson-Bonecrusher. after that he seemed to quietly fade away.
A thoroughly average standup boxer. I agree. He was an average, generic standup boxer with good range for the style, but relatively soft. Not really any notable qualities technically and his mentality was less than solid. I think there's a good chance he'd have been a journeyman/lower grade contender/challenger like a John Jarvis or Don Lee (who was better because he was...dangerous) had he been around slightly earlier.
During the Holmes vs Hopkins fight, George Foreman was convinced that Keith had some kind of great ability in seeing punches coming because he had very large eyes ROFL. "Holmes can see those punches coming, he's got EYES!"
Keith Holmes never really cared for boxing it was something he did for money. He had 2 local fights with Andrew Council which were very entertaining. He most certainly could punch and he stopped some good boxers. He was extremely tall for his weight class had excellent fundamentals but was not very fast. If you look up his career you can see many periods of inactivity- hell when he meant Hopkins he hadn't fought in almost a year.
