Should Evander Holyfield Have Beaten Larry Holmes And George Foreman More Emphatically?

Holyfield started doing better after the cut from what I remember. Before that he was kinda sleep-walking into Holmes' traps, the cut woke him up and he just started using his physicality to bully the old man.

 

You remember wrong the cut definitely helped Holmes and he swept the last 3 rounds after opening up the cut.

 

Uhhh not really, in fact quite shockingly Holmes was completely unable to take advantage of the cut and looked badly gassed out in the second half. He had his best moments in the first few rounds where both fighters were fresh.

 

Not really. Holmes just had one of his career highs beating Mercer in decisive fashion (more than we can say for a couple of younger fighters later). Foreman had a ton of wins and was actually in pretty damn good shape, the best he'd be in for the return.

They are each top 5 or 6 ATGs and were still beating good competition.

 

As I said you're remembering it wrong Holyfield was clearly bothered by the cut and lost the final 3 rounds quite clearly.

The later rounds were some of Holmes's best moments of the fight when Holyfield took his foot off the gas as the cut was bothering him. Holmes was able to be more assertive and landed some eye catching right hands

The 11th round Holmes landed 28 out of 50 punches and outlanded Holyfield by 11 punches statistically it was one of his best rounds of the entire fight.

Hence Holmes finished strongly with the aid of accidental elbow in the 9th round which turned the fight around in favour of Holmes.

 

No, he didn't, he only lost round 11 decisively.

No. Holyfield didn't slow down until a good 3-4 rounds after the cut, Holmes did almost nothing in the meantime barring round 7 and tried to save his energy for later.

His best singular round was 11. Overall he was better in the first half of the fight.

If you're talking about the cut that happened in round 6. And it didn't "turn around" anything, Holmes did worse in the second half, he was horifically gassed out and literally vomitted after the match ended.

Im just saying man Holyfield is lucky Holmes wasn't a decade younger, it would end really badly for him.

 

You do should go and do scorecards at 20 paces in our scoring thread -

https://www.boxingforum24.com/threads/holyfield-holmes-scoring.671119/

 

No again Holyfield slowed down after the cut Harold Lederman scored the last 3 rounds for Holmes.

You're wrong.

 

We'll never agree on this I guess. Anyway, whatever your scoring is the fight was way closer than it should have been. Holmes was outboxing him and beating him on the inside early on, had him befuddled the whole time and Holyfield had to brute-force through him to win (though to his credit he did a good job blocking the jab).

 

I agree a prime Holmes beats Holyfield I would say an 8-4 type decision.