This is interesting. I'd find a Fury-Holmes chess match pretty damn interesting. I think "taking apart" is a great way of describing how Larry in his prime dealt with challengers.
I must have missed something. What makes you suspect I don't like you? I think I've agreed with about 85% of your posts I recall seeing, and the only people on this forum I'd go so far to say I dislike I have on ignore. (It's only three people in two-and-a-half years, and there are maybe three or four others I might find annoying on occasion, but far from obnoxious.) In this thread I was poking fun at no-neck's attempt to reduce Holmes' career to a single win, a question which I think he's in just about the weakest possible position to (pointedly) ask no matter how you slice it. (Hint to no-neck. There's only one heavyweight in all of history who would pass that ridiculously narrow test with flying colors, such that you might say it happened once in a century.)
That does seem to be a too-narrow method of evaluation. To give the benefit of a doubt, maybe no-neck didn't mean it as myopically as it sounds.
That’s a mischaracterization of what I’ve been saying. But if you take Ruiz, Joshua, Fury, and Wilder, all four can claim to have stepped into the ring and won or not lost (in Wilder’s case) to someone better than Holmes ever defeated. The “once in a century” comment doesn’t make much sense either. Schmeling, Frazier, Douglas, Ali, Rahman, McCall, Fury, Foreman and maybe Sanders, M Spinks, Berbick, Holyfield and Lewis could claim wins close or better than Ruiz’s win over Joshua. Holmes isn’t one of them.
Your first sentence is pretty far-fetched, to my mind. Witherspoon, Weaver, Berbick, Carl Williams, Ken Norton, and even Oliver McCall and green Mercer are all distinctly better in my estimation than anyone any of those four fought. (Yes, Holmes technically lost to McCall, but it was very close and Holmes was forty-five years old carrying a spare tire.) Schmeiling beat a green Louis and was destroyed in the rematch, Douglas beat Tyson when he was starting to unravel, McCall got his puncher's chance and was destroyed in the rematch, etc... You can pick apart almost any fighter's best individual win in this way. Even Frazier, in the "once in a century" example alluded to earlier, beat a ring-rusty Ali coming off a three year exile, and Ali may very well have already been in the early stages of Parkinson's syndrome (a condition whose symptoms can progress very gradually over many years).
Including Joshua, Ruiz, Wilder, and Fury themselves? Why do you feel that guys like Berbick, McCall, or green Mercer are distinctively better than Luis Ortiz and old Wlad? Or even Joseph Parker?
Save this post we can do a thread on it in ten years. That first paragraph is as outlandish as it gets.
Insinuating that Berbick and McCall were better than a reigning Wlad Klitschko, Fury, and Wilder is well....People on the 4th enjoy their beer.
Holmes proved himself an ATG in the ring. That’s the major difference. No one, aside from a no nothing, disputes Larry’s ATG status. It’s universal. The four contenders in question are very inexperienced and have done nothing to be rated anywhere close to Holmes. ATG vs nothing’s. Only time and huge successes and exhibitions of ATG courage, will to win, durability and heart will prove otherwise. Them’s the facts.
No I wouldn't, because you wouldn't believe it anyway. You new age boxing fans seemed to think the sport started when you started to watch it. I could tell you right now I can think of off the top of my head at least 10 of Holmes opponents wouldve beaten the Hell out of the Body Builder. But you wouldn't believe it . Joshua is basically an amateur fighting for pro championships because his competition is so bad. Each fight Joshua has had have shown MAJOR holes in his game starting with endurance. The man has repeatedly had to catch his 2nd wind by the 5th rd? Really? That's World class to you. And that's only one of the Major flaws I see in his game.... But continue believing his competition and he and Wilder, Fury , and the rest are better than fighters from that era. Your welcome to your opnion.
Holmes is one of the best heavyweights ever. Amazing will to win, great recovery powers, all time Jab and excellent mover. Wilder gets clowned but is dangerous because of his right hand - if Gerald Washington could outbox him for 5 rounds and Fury could take 9 rounds off him after basically a 3 year booze fest- Holmes stops Wilder. Poor footwork and way too many openings that Wilder presents. Joshua gasses after being competitive for 5 rounds. Ruiz ends up like Mercer. Fury dances to a loss in a real stinker.
