Larry Holmes vs Sonny Liston

What do you mean by dominance ?

 

In this case I mean a fighter who might make easy work of one of the absolute elite fighters of the division while he was at the top of his game.

 

Styles make fights.
Liston made easy work of Patterson because of styles. Patterson was one of the weakest heavyweight champions.

Holmes had some very emphatic victories over top fighters too. He just didn't have the punch of Liston to make short work of them.
I dont accept for a second that Holmes didn't have a fraction of the "dominance" Liston had.

 

He certainly struggled with quite a few of them(Weaver, Norton, Snipes, Witherspoon, Williams) while Liston tore through Folley, Williams, Patterson, Harris, DeJohn, Valdes, Bethea.

 

He supposedly didn't make easy work of Machen

 

No..but you can't make easy work of EVERYONE you face. I think Liston proved in the machen fight he can fight 12 fast paced rounds, and that he can outbox an elite boxer. I still had liston winning 9 out of the 12 rounds...which is pretty wide.

 

I think the Cooney fight was one of Holmes' finest performances, but as you say, he would never quite reached that level again. Plus, a lot of people wanted Cooney to win and were not giving Holmes the credit that he thought he deserved. I think that really motivated Larry, although he still didn't receive said credit after a great performance.

 

Holmes schooled Shavers, Berbick, Ocasio, Cobb, L.Spinks, M.Frazier, among others.
He beat Cooney pretty good too.

 

If Snipes is a 'struggle', than Shavers damn sure is too considering he was more competitive and had Holmes in more trouble from the knockdown than Snipes did. In fact I'd probably swap Shavers and Snipes over on the list.

I don't remember Snipes doing much apart from clobber Holmes with that one big right, which Holmes looked suitably embarrassed about.

 

Yes he did. but were those amongs his best opponents?(other than shavers, berbick)? Also liston never ducked anybody. Holmes threw his WBC belt in the trash rather than fight # 1 mandatory Greg Page. He also avoided unifying with Undefeated Champion and RIng Magazine # 1 Pinklon Thomas.

 

Witherspoon/Williams were well past his prime though, and quality. Wasn't he injured against Norton? I haven't seen the Snipes fight

 

Snipes is an underrated opponent, and is all too often written off by some as a club fighter type.. He fought peak versions of Berbick, Coetzee, Holmes and Spoon, and gave all of them hell.. The Coetzee fight might have been a robbery, but Gerrie was at his best, and Renaldo made a war of it...