The 90s are a true golden HW era; HW 70s are nostalgia...

Ali had his best wins and most memorable fights in the 70s.

Frazier beating Ali in 1971 gave him ATG status.

Holmes had the most memorable fight of his career in 1978 vs Norton which is also his best win of his career.

 

It's not like Bowe, Mercer, Ike and Tua have a deep resume even between them. It reads something like Holy, Ruiz, Byrd and Morrisson. Still they're are made into mythical figures when looking back at the 90's, mainly because they were big and scary looking. Well, Kabayel, Dubois, Zhang and Bakole match at least the Ruddock, Ike, Tua, Mercer contingent for wins, but are even bigger.

So if you are into the 90's because they were big and therefore scary h2h then you should be jacking off to the current crop, is what I'm saying. Thin and padded resumes was just as much a thing in the 90's.

 

Yeah, Ali-Frazier 1 and 3, Norton-Ali 2, Foreman-Lyle, Shavers-Lyle and Norton-Holmes were regular snooze fests.

 

For some time now I have been wondering how the dinosaur from the 1970s and the dinosaur from the 1970s and 1980s meant so much throughout the 1990s, despite being over 40 years old and quite overweight, and they meant little in the second half of the 1980s, which was considered weak, even though they were younger and healthier. At the same time, I wonder why there are such fighters as Seldon and Bennt among the champions. It's interesting that Frank Bruno won the title when he was clearly past prime, and he didn't do it in a weak era. at the same time, how is it that NONE of the killers of the 90s meant anything in the weak era of the Klitschkos brothers, even though they were no older than Foreman and Holmes.

 

Yes.

With Tyson, Holy, Bowe and Lewis all seeing at least parts of their prime in this decade and Vitaly and Wlad also emerging, I can see that people are excited by the talent, but by that same token the number of fights between these fighters is just too low, especially compared to when they would have been the most relevant.

And while some of these guys were keeping away from some of the others (well, Bowe and Tyson from Lewis and possibly from each other) we had some quite weak lineal champions and belt holders.

 

Foreman's long break helped his comeback and slightly more selective match picking IMO. But it's true the top heavyweights in the 90s actually couldn't keep it up into the 2000s (which many people call the decade era ever) while Holmes and Foreman did in the 1990s more.

 

Seldon was, of course, an accidental champion. a little luck, a little politics. But there remains Bruno, Bennt, Hide. McCall, who had been there for a whole decade, named 45-year-old Larry Holmes as the best fighter he had ever faced !!

In my opinion, this classification of the values of individual periods is quite naive. There are good and bad moments in boxing, there are certainly figures who set the general trend, but I don't believe that great fighters suddenly die out, then great stars are born, then magically lose their value, etc. If Tyson had knocked out Lewis in 1996 and Holyfield, as everyone expected, the 90's era would be considered weaker than the 80's even though it would actually be stronger due to Tyson's better shape. But historically, no one would consider these as great victories.
Similarly - until recently, the best HWs fed on 40-year-old Wlad Klitschko, older than Foreman and Holmes in the 1980s. But AJ and Fury didn't look dominant with him regardless of the outcome. Just watch these fights. Now, after difficult fights, both of them were defeated by another competitor, but both of them look past prime, but they were not dominated in any way. People live with emotions. The Klitschkos and Holmes lacked charisma but they were no weaker than Holyfield, Bowe or Lewis IMO. It's just the way things are

 

Bigger than the 70s guys, and subject to almost no regulations on PEDs, which were available and used to a degree they probably weren't in the 70s among elite heavyweights.

The modern guys have to evade tests that the 90s ones didn't for most of the period, so even though they're larger, they probably don't have quite the chemical labs in their bodies as, e.g., Evan Fields could get away with.

 

Yeah, wonder if the lif ever will be blown off on that. RJJ testing positive but also his opponent for several times RJJ:s amount and neither being sanctioned says a lot about that era imo. When they even were tested that is to say.

 

Sorry, my friend, but this is a very selective assessment. The amount of ATG does not necessarily indicate the greater value of a given period. what also counts are the fighters who are directly behind them, sometimes some ATGs are clearly better than others and the fights between them are important, as we know in the 1990s they had more problems
1. The best ATGs of the 1970s are simply better:
Ali, Foreman, Frazier, Norton, Holmes are better than Holyfield, Bowe, Lewis, Moorer, Tyson.
2. Foreman and Holmes in the 1990s were at most ex-ATG. For the successes and struggles they had during these years, they would not be ATG in life. Vitali and Wlad were future ATGs at best. Kliczków's greatest successes were definitely from the 00's. Tyon's greatest successes were definitely in the 1980s
3. The Bowe-Holy, Buster-Tyson, Ike-Tua, Lewis-Holy, Moorer-Holy, Tyson-Holy fights were great but were any of them better than Frazier-Ali 1 or 3? Have we had a greater fight than Norton-Holmes, a more brutal war than Foreman-Lyle? I don't think so although it's close. However, I don't think any HW from the 90s looked better than Frazier beating Ali, Ali beating Foreman, Foreman destroying Frazier and Norton.
4. Foreman and Holmes, who were champions in the 1970s, had a lot to say in the 1990s. Nobody from the 1990s had anything to say in what was considered a weak era after 2003 - the Klitschko era.