Nineties heavyweights

Yeah I totally forgot about Mercer. It was for all intents and purposes also a title fight.

It's too hard to picture Old Holmes schooling Shavers or Lyle. Foreman has a punchers chance against anyone even at that age.

 

the post thriller era wasn't too bad. It had Ali who was receiving gift after gift but still fighting the best around. It had young, Norton and Holmes mixing at the top level. Shavers found his stride.

It doesn't compare to the 95-99 era though with Bowe, Tyson, Holy and Lewis. all putting in dominant showings year by year.

 

I think 90-94 was better than 95-99.

Prime Ruddock, pre-prison Tyson, peak Holy, peak Bowe, young Lewis, prime Mercer etc.

There was a dip in the quality in title fights in the mid 90's when the belts were fractured.

 

McCall and Moorer are hardly the nineties equivalents of Ali and Frazier, now are they?

 

It certainly was not Ali at his best, I just found it to be an exciting fight! Had Ali been at his peak it wouldn't have lasted longer than six rounds.

 

The 1990’s rocked. Consider this. The decade had Lewis, Bowe, and Holyfield in their primes. All three are hall of fame heavyweights. In addition the older Foreman, Tyson and Holmes were active, and the Klitschko's debuted in 1996. So 6 hall of fame heavyweights were active, and that number will swell to 8 a few years after the Klitschko's retire. How many other past decades can boast 8 or more active Hall of fame active heavyweights?


The depth was excellent! Mercer, Morrison, Moorer, McCall, Ruddock, Ibeabuchi, Golota, Byrd, etc... Some of the fights were excellent. And there were memorable upsets.



I would match 1991-2000 vs. any decade in the history of the division.

 

Well since that number includes fighters who were either on the comeback trail or developing prospects, then we could just as easily say that the 70's had Ali, Foreman, Frazier, Holmes, Patterson, Liston, Norton and Quarry - though I'm not sure if the last two made the Hall of fame. Still the 90's were awesome. No doubt about it.

There are some criticisms that one can make though:

1. While there were a lot of great fights, some of the better matchups were either not made in a timely fashion or never at all.

2. You had two forty plus year old comeback champs who breached the rankings and one of them even took the lineal title.

3. You had two fighters who rose from lighter weight classes to take the crown and one of them became just about the best fighter of that decade.

4. You had two of the biggest upsets in heavyweight history with Douglas beating Tyson and McCall beating Lewis.

5. You had one of the division's best participants ( Tyson ) absent for nearly half the decade.

6. You had guys like Bruce Seldon and Frans Botha winning titles.

All in all it was a good era, but not without its flaws.

 

Quarry is not in the hall of fame, and Liston had less left in the 70's in comparison to Foreman and Holmes in the 1990's.


Without doing research into every decade, I think the 90's is holds the record for 8 active hall of fame heavyweights. Every era has flaws.


Not all the top talent fought each other in the 70's. We never saw Frazier vs Norton or Lyle. We never say Foreman vs. Quarry, or Foreman vs. Holmes. ( Some say Foreman didn't want the match with Quarry ). We never saw Liston vs anyone great in the 70's.

 

Yeah as I mentioned, I wasn't certain if either Norton and Quarry had ever made the HOF, but they were still great fighters. And I admit that its kind of silly throwing Sonny Liston in as being a member of the seventies crowd. But you also went as far as to ad the Klits who's careers hadn't materialized into anything yet. Still, the nineties and the seventies were both fantastic eras. I lived through one of those eras and have done quite a bit of looking back on another..

 

There was a lot of talent in the 90s with more broad competition in general ... but the 70s still had the tougher competition and the higher ranked ATG.

The multiple belts led to this IMO so you had a lot of good fights and many challengers to getting straps.