top 5 Heavy/Achievement

:good

 

Foreman tore Frazier apart in a manner which wasn't too different from how Liston did it to Floyd twice.

People don't tend to hold that against Frazier.

Not to mention, you know, Floyd wasn't a terribly big HW...

 

:good

 

Frazier was knocked down 6 times in the 1st Foreman fight alone, 2 more in the 2nd, 2 by Bonavena and another one early on in his career and he had 25 less fights than Joe Louis, but we cant say Frazier had a glass Jaw and no one ever Knocked him out cold,Lewis never got up from the floor to win,Tyson never got off the floor to win, what does it all mean:smoke

 

Ali
Louis
Johnson
Holmes
Marciano

 

Larry Holmes. Most consecutive HW title fight victories by an undefeated boxer. First undefeated boxer to win 20 consecutive title fights. First HW champion to successfully defend his title in eight consecutive calendar years. (Louis was inactive for three years during WW II.)

 

Louis had harder fights in exhibitions than most of the jokes Holmes defended his title against.

 

Regardless, the law of averages dictated that Larry should have been upset at some time during his streak, yet it didn't happen for many years. The statement that he never unified the title is a meaningless red herring. Holmes put the IBF on the map. Meanwhile, as Holmes was winning all his matches, the WBA championship was a hot potato being passed from mediocre contender to mediocre contender virtually every time it was put up for grabs. Between Ali's second title reign and Tyson's reunification of the HW Championship, Larry Holmes was the only steady constant the division had. There is an old saying that, "As goes the heavyweights, so goes boxing." During the glory days of the late 1970's to mid 1980's, Holmes was the heavyweight king, and it was a great time to be a titleholder in any weight division during that period in the sport's history.

 

And how many title defenses did Thomas, Dokes, Tubbs, Coetzee and Page win? The truth is that during Larry's title run, he defeated eight other claimants to a world title (Norton, Ocasio, Weaver, Ali, Berbick, Leon Spinks, Witherspoon, Smith). David Bey secured his title shot against Larry by winning a 12 round UD over Greg Page for the USBA HW Title. Larry was the only boxer to ever post a victory over Frank (who defeated two former challengers for the HW Title, and drew with a third). In one of the worst performances of his title run, Holmes had a far easier time with Weaver than Dokes had in his rematch with Hercules, or that either Coetzee, Tate, or Williams had with Weaver. Three of the non world HW champions Holmes defended his title successfully against also received title shots against other champions (Evangelista, Shavers and Williams).

Mike Dokes managed to eke out a controversial split decision win over Tex Cobb, before Larry shut out Tex over 15 rounds (in Cobb's native Texas). Holmes not unifying the WBA Title only hurt supporters of South Africa's aparthied government of the 1980's. If the WBA had withdrawn support of SA's racist regime, Larry would have had no reservations about unifying the title. (His stated reasons for not doing so were far more honorable that Bowe's reasons for dumping a title belt in a garbage can, rather than face Lennox Lewis.) The bottom line is that nobody cared who held another version of the HW Championship as long as Larry remained undefeated. And during the same time span that Larry defended the World Heavyweight Championship successfully 20 times, Tate, Weaver, Dokes, Coetzee, Page, and Tubbs won a grand total of two WBA Title defenses between them. (Weaver KO 13 Coetzee & Weaver UD 15 Tillis.)

Larry abandoned the WBC for the IBF at just the right time, exactly when the WBC rendered their championship worthless by reducing the length of their title bouts from 15 to 12 rounds. While Larry was being man enough to join an organization which still respected the sanctity of the true 15 round championship distance (agreeing to join the IBF in part because that organization also did not recognize SA's criminal regime), Witherspoon won the diminished and vacant WBC paper title against the hapless Page, then promptly dropped it himself to Thomas at the very first opportunity to lose it. (Thomas actually made a successful defense against former and future Holmes victim Weaver, before dropping it to former Holmes 15 round shutout victim Berbick.)

Holmes was the first boxer to defeat nine of his title challengers: Ocasio, Jones, Snipes, Cooney, Witherspoon, Frank, Marvis Frazier, Bey and Williams. The facts are that Larry provided the HW division with a stablizing presence at a crucial time in boxing history, when absolutely nobody else was even remotely qualified for the task, and at his peak, no one truly belonged in the same ring with him, as he demonstrated with the shutout over Cobb.

 

Duodenum's post defending Larry Holmes is awesome, especially the part about (un)success all those contenders people say Holmes ducked.

Truth is that Holmes' title fight competition was better than that of Jack Johnson, Jack Dempsey, Gene Tunney, Joe Louis, Ezzard Charles, Rocky Marciano, Floyd Patterson, and Sonny Liston. Before Larry Holmes the only heavyweight who beat a better string of contenders was Muhammad Ali. Frazier's only really good opponent was Ali. Who after Holmes had a streak against that level of opposition? Tyson? Holyfield? Lewis? I don't think so.