Now that I think of it, if Larry got beat by a light heavyweight twice (on an official level), than it's not surprising to anyone he got badly beaten by Tyson. But when I think of Holmes against Weaver, Shavers, Norton...a different fighter from '84-88.
Memory tells me I scored it a draw...but it has admittedly been in the ballpark of 10 years since I have watched it. And my memories deceive me from time to time lol
Well I don’t really think he gets rated very highly, so if he is overrated it is only marginally so. To me he is similar to Tunney (and Tunney May be slightly overrated in contrast but both pretty fairly) in both moving up from LHW to wrest the crown from a champ. Both had a limited tenure at HW, with the difference being Tunney retired as champ. I don’t see any/many put them down as top 20 HW’s and it is generally in the 21-30 range that they drift to. I don’t see many pick Spinks H2H to beat many or any prime greats, so no I don’t think he gets overrated.
I don't believe a valid argument could be made that only Tyson and Holyfield beat Holmes. Oliver McCall beat Larry Holmes. I've never heard of anyone who gave Holmes that fight. If they did, they were wrong. A valid argument could also be made that Larry Holmes lost his title to Carl Williams before he ever fought Michael Spinks. I also thought he lost to Maurice Harris when he was older. Most thought Holmes won the rematch with Spinks. But Holmes got the benefit of the doubt more times than not in his career.
McCall beat Larry, but I thought that fight was won from the ninth round on. Holmes had nothing to be ashamed of before the ninth, I know plenty of people whom had Larry ahead before that, including myself. I agree that the Carl fight was close, but even though Truth did a fine job and almost pulled it off, I thought Larry deserved the benefit of a doubt.
Spinks was pretty damn excellent as a light heavyweight imo. As a heavyweight he struck at both the right and wrong times.
I enjoy this post because you've completely misunderstood my agenda and actually proved my point. Cheers mate.
Well my personal fave light heavies were guys like EMM, MSM. MSMs story in itself was so irresistibly charming to me. I need to probably catch up on that division though.
Nah, he had to move to heavyweight. It was the right time to catch a declining Holmes. I don’t think he would have moved up to face Thomas, Witherspoon or even Tubbs.