Larry Holmes vs Muhammad Ali's Opposition ?

Depends. Is he prime for every fight, or does he gradually peak and decline at the same rate as he did in real life?

 

Will think about this and be back.

 

Liston and Frazier beat him, but I think he takes everyone else.

 

FOTC Frazier beats him UD, prime Norton loses a very close decision (I'm thinking 1980 Holmes here), Liston loses a very competitive and entertaining UD, and Foreman (despite scoring a knockdown nearly as scary as Shavers) gets stopped in 8 or 9.

 

Norton's a 50/50 one. Maybe Larry beats Ken two out of three times in three close fights.

 

To match ages, you'd have to re-write Holmes's life. He didn't step foot in a ring until his 20s. Ali was started young.

If you were to match ages, he starts off looking worse than Ali, by 30 or so catches up, and by the end of Ali's career age-wise is a much better fighter than Ali due to Holmes's long gradual decline compared to Ali's sharp decline.

As to fights, I think he has more trouble with Liston and Foreman and might get stopped by FOTC Frazier. (but then again, Holmes would never say/do the things that Ali did to fuel Frazier's hate/anger).

 

Once you get into the later fights where Ali is on the decline, you can't compare them anymore. Parkinsons exaccerbated by CTE is a mother****er.

 

I can’t imagine that Holmes would want to fight as tough of a schedule as Ali. He’d probably end up ducking Frazier or something.

 

Early forties Holmes is a half decent analog for late 70s Ali.

 

Frazier might have been so much money he'd have risked it, especially if they signed for two fights with guaranteed big paydays. Holmes didn't duck fights out of a fear of losing so much as out of a fear of hurting his income potential for not enough reward. Ali got $2.5mil for the FOTC, which is around $15mil today according to google. I think Holmes would have risked fighting Frazier for that. Especially if it was a two fight deal for $2.5mil each fight.

He'd have dodged Young. Not enough money to deal with that. Lyle? If decent money had been there, he'd have fought Lyle three times.

 

He might’ve ducked Norton since the name value wouldn’t have been there. You do make a decent point about Frazier.

 

I think Lyle might have floored Larry and given him hell in the first 3 or four rounds, only to get stopped by the 10th at the latest.