The 80s are the most criminally underrated era in HW history

Oooh, that terrible Don King.
He'd bad, bad, bad. Him and that other guy, Putin.

 

1980's heavyweight division in sum:

1980-1986: Holmes tries to leverage the WBC title with low risk/high reward. South African promoters get involved in controlling the WBA title but John Tate foils those plans. Tate is not well connected and loses to Weaver, who is also independent of the big power players. Meanwhile, Don King builds a stable of good, pretty evenly matched guys who he tries to use to unseat Holmes. Holmes is too smart to fall for King's trap and King gets control of the WBA title when Referee Joey Curtis hands Dokes the WBA title when he jumps the gun and stops the Weaver/Dokes fight with Weaver on the ropes but blocking shots. Weaver seemingly outpoints a tired Dokes in the rematch, but Dokes gets a draw and retains the title. King briefly loses the WBA title to the South Africans when Coetzee surprisingly beats a coked up Dokes, but gets it back when Page is handed a shot at Coetzee despite two straight losses. King uses his patented technique of avoiding what is an obvious conflict of interst of often managing both fighters in title fights, through his straw man son, Carl King. Holmes gives up the WBC title, handing control to King, and jumps to the new IBF and loses to Spinks.

1986-1990: Tyson cleans up the mess. King gets total control of Tyson who falls at the beginning of the next decade.

There were a lot of talented guys who got swallowed up by King i.e. Thomas, Dokes, Tubbs, Page and Witherspoon. This makes it even harder to believe that Tyson was dumb enough to fall for the guy after seeing what happened to those other guys.

 

Be that as it may, he's been consistent with his story that he threw the fight. Is he telling the truth? who knows?

 

Yeah, Snipes was good for a couple of those years.Robbed of a decision against Tim Witherspoon.

 

I actually think that there is some revisionism going on here. At the time, Holmes & then later Tyson aside, the 80s crop was widely, almost unanimously, in fact, perceived to be a significant step down in quality from the 70s crop.

Names like Thomas, Tubbs, Page, Dokes etc seem glossy now with the benefit of hindsight, largely I suspect because we choose to view them at their potential best; truth is, in virtually every case, their best was achieved only sporadically.

 

Camille's towels were, uh, destroyed. I'll never look at Benitez the same way again.

 

I was basically going to say the same thing myself, but could never hope to put it so eloquently.

Outside of the few future HOFers, the '80s generally consisted of solid, decent, but not particularly spectacular HW fighters. They each had one or two standout qualities, but otherwise had more weaknesses than strengths. There's a reason that a nearly 40-year old Joe Bugner, who was never really among the elite of the prior era, was able to make a fairly successful comeback and beat some of the "name" HWs of the '80s.

 

There is some merit to your point

I can't imagine Holmes having as much success if he had peaked a few years earlier. Some of his toughest title fights were against '70s contenders Norton and Shavers, who were both slightly past prime when he fought them. Imagine him having to go through Prime Foreman, still dangerous Frazier, less faded Ali, prime Young, Lyle.

Now, the '80's had some solid guys like Tubbs, Page, Dokes and Thomas, all of whom Holmes never fought. And he s****ed by Witherspoon.

I think the '80's was a competitive era with the Don King guys mostly fighting one another. Holmes often bad mouthed these guys, but then seemed to avoid fighting them. That's where Ali really deserves credit. Even past his prime, he basically fought all the top 70's contenders. Holmes can't say the same about himself in the '80's.

 

I think there reached a point where Holmes got somewhat disillusioned by the business and political angles of the sport and decided to simply play the remainder of his reign as a businessman first.

To me, that shift occurs after the ****ey fight. Even Witherspoon wasn't supposed to be as tough as he ultimately wound up being.

 

That doesn't seem completely fair. Sure, Page was still a name when he lost to Bugner (shortly after losing to a 5 win, 5 loss fighter) but he wasn't a ranked heavyweight. Nor were Bey and Tillis.

 

I think that description really only holds true for a small number of them, like Weaver. Several of the others were very well-rounded fighters who suffered more from personal problems/character flaws (like drug addiction or lack of dedication) than in-ring deficiencies. Others suffered from one specific flaw (like Carl Williams and his chin).

 

Pretty good for raw talent but full of underachievers.

 

Page was basically finished by the time he lost to Tubbs.