The Most Important Heavyweight Fights of All Time

Good shout !

Sadly it will probably be many years before we get any more like the above.

 

Second Tier but still huge based on impact are:


Sullivan - Corbett

Johnson - Burns

Dempsey - Tunney 2

 

In retrospect, I simply can't put the 'Thrilla in Manilla' on any list.
Two well past prime ATG's in a rubber match.
I paid to see it closed circuit and enjoyed every minute.
Ali won and continued with lackluster performances here and there.
Had Frazier won we probably would have seen an Ali-Frazier 4??
Would that have been one of the all-time greats?
Foreman was there (who an aging Ali wasn't ever going to give a rematch to) And George would have had Joe out early in a rematch (which happened).
In my lifetime, the 71 Ali-Joe scrap was the BIG ONE!
A senior in HS, we were all pumped for this one.
With no disrespect towards Joe, Ali's camp begged him to take a few more months before engaging in the FOTC. After a hard, brutal (he had just recently returned to the ring) fight against Oscar, he stepped in against Frazier less than 90 days later! Had they waited until early Summer of 71 we would have IMO seen a different result and the subsequent HW playout would have been changed forever.
Lots to think about, my $0.02

 

I see what you did there, though it would be a bit of a low blow to not acknowledge Jem Mace who popularised gloves and ten counts in the U.S.

 

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Sullivan v Corbett. The transition into what we now know as boxing.

Johnson v Burns. First title shot and success for a man of colour.

Dempsey v Carpentier. First Million Dollar gate.

Louis v Braddock. The longest reign of a heavyweight champion begins .

Ali v Frazier1.The only time two undefeated heavyweight champs faced each other.

Subs
Patterson v Johannson 2. Floyd becomes the first man to regain the title.
Ali v Foreman .Ali duplicates the feat.
Ali v Spinks 3 Ali wins title for 3rd time.
Spinks v Holmes. Spinks becomes 1st reigning lHVY champ to win hvy crown.

 

I would personaly place more importance on someof Sullivans earlier fights, that alowed him to dictate the terms of that fight.

 

Louis-Braddock has been mentioned,

but I think it deserves a higher standing. It is the one which really ended the color line. Johnson breached the line, but it was quickly reestablished.

 

What about Charles Walcott I?

Two black fighters contesting the vacant title.

 

Some excellent mentions popping up.

 

Two that hugely impacted the sport in my time:

Mancini-Kim (I believe the OP in a later post said the thread should be about most important fights, not just heavyweight)

Holmes-Cobb

Both signalled the beginning of the end to boxing as a staple on network TV, starting the decline from boxing being a major sport (on the heels of Ali and in the Fab Four era) to becoming a niche sport.

The cable phase kind of came next, with USA's Tuesday Night Fights and ESPN's Top Rank Boxing largely beginning to rely more and more on names who were made during the network TV era (old Larry Holmes, old Hector Camacho, old George Foreman, old Robert Duran, etc.) and fewer and fewer new stars being made while the top in-their-prime talents fought on premium channels like HBO or on PPV.

Some will probably say this is more of a U.S. impact thing than a worldwide thing but the decline of bigger money in the U.S. for all but the boxers at the VERY top was a major shift in the sport's prominence ... which has led to fewer and fewer entering the talent pool over the decades since.

 

As a 61-year-old, I believe the most important heavyweight fight of my lifetime was the first bout between Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali.

The most important one in boxing history was the world heavyweight championship bout between Jim Corbett and John L. Sullivan because of it meant boxing under the Marquis of Queensberry Rules would be the main format in heavyweight championship bouts instead of the London Prize Ring Rules.

The second most important heavyweight fight which took place before World War I was between Jack Johnson and Jim Jeffries, which was the first true mega-fight in boxing history in terms of interest and newspaper coverage.

The bout between Jack Dempsey and Georges Carpentier was a tremendous gamechanger in boxing history. It had the first million-dollar gate, a massive crowd in attendance and a staggering amount of media coverage. For the most important heavyweight bouts during the next few decades, huge gates and massive crowds were fairly common.

The second bout between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling was extremely important due to its huge radio audience, the general massive interest and the staggering media coverage. However, the gate for the bout was only a little over one million dollars, far less than the then-record gate of about 2.6 million dollars set by the second world heavyweight bout between Gene Tunney and Dempsey. In fairness, the United States was still having some rough economic times when the second Louis-Schmeling bout took place during 1938, which meant that the ticket prices were generally much lower for the bout than for the second bout between Tunney and Louis.

- Chuck Johnston

 

Here I disagree.

I think that whether Sullivan of Corbett had won that fight, the result would have been the same.

Sullivan worked tirelessly to stamp out the bare-knuckle rule set, and as long as he called the shots, the fight was going to be gloved.

 

I agree that the result would have been the same even if John L. Sullivan won the bout instead of Jim Corbett. In addition, I also agree that Sullivan had a profound influence on having such a result. What I was trying to say that the bout itself set such a strong precedent that boxing under the London Prize Ring Rules essentially faded into memory and boxing under the Marquis of Queensberry Rules became the norm, especially in the most important bouts

- Chuck Johnston

 

As it followed two fights between Louis and Walcott, it doesn't seem all that much of a milestone to me.