Michael Spinks @ heavyweight in the 60s and prior

You have a point.

 

Spinks was the most underrated fighter of my lifetime. He would have beaten most of those guys except maybe Ali, and Frazier. He was better than Foster or any of the other LHWTS moving up.

 

I doubt many boxers in the pre-Tyson/ Holyfield era were roiding. Spinks was a stringbrean in his prime; at 6'2 he usually came in UNDER the LHWT limit. I think Norton was the guy juicing in the 70s.

 

I hate to do this because I am a Spinks fan, and I have to emphasize that this doesn't lessen his standing, but there's a lot of flags...
-he put on 25 lbs of muscle in 3 months while simultaneously lowering his body fat from over 9% to the 7's while moving up for Holmes I. For a young fighter that's one thing, but Spinks was 29 years old. That's a massive red flag in a sport where 15 round conditioning is required.

-Shilstone wasn't an old school guy. He's on record admitting steroids worked and never played dumb about them. I see no reason he would have avoided them, especially given the need to put on as much good muscle mass on Mike as quick as possible.

-forget testing- they weren't even banned in boxing. None of the witch-hunt stigma attached to them after the Ben Johnson fiasco existed.

For a heavy underdog moving up and an unconventional boxing trainer, it'd have been folly NOT to be on anything legal that would help their cause. They'd have no way of knowing people 30 years later would judge them for it, and frankly, I doubt they'd care if they did.

I agree with you on his 175 career. It didn't look suspicious to me until the quick move up.

 

Williams did better defensively against Liston in their 1st meeting until getting caught than Cooney did against Spinks, Spinks wouldn`t have landed as many punches on the big cat partly because Williams was a sharper puncher than Cooney and would constantly be ready to catch Spinks as he attacked, the same way he did for a while against Liston except Spinks didn`t have Liston`s power at heavy and that`s what saved Liston against Williams, if Sonny had MS`s power the match would have been close, Williams was a more competent boxer than Cooney who was very easy for Spinks to read.

 

you beleiving farmboxer sparred him in the 20th century is all I need by way of answer.

 

It's certainly possible. But Spinks was 199 against Holmes, and he really had no muscle tone. He looked like a guy who had been eating a lot.

I don't think there were many boxers on steroids in the 70s. Boxing really didn't even adapt modern athletic training methods until Holyfield, and then his shots were like pea shooters, hit Holmes 1000 times and never backed him off for a second.

 

No but a lot of fighters don`t have organised training camps, during the 80`s when former world champ Nigel Benn was first being noticed he didn`t really bother sparring, rumors were at the time Benn`s defense was so bad they didn`t want him getting decked during sparring and ruining his rep to the British press who were comparing him to Mike Tyson!