What boxers did Larry Holmes consciously and deliberately avoid, if any?

His feelings on King were a lot more complicated than that.

 

I responded to you because you came up with the exact quote in context while another poster tried to take this post and make it seem like Holmes was saying this specifically about Pinklon Thomas. Which he wasn’t.

He was saying ‘I’m done with boxing unless someone wants to pay me a lot of money to fight again, and I’m only interested in doing that if it’s the kind of opponent I want to fight.’

If he does that and retires, is retirement ducking? If so I guess every fighter is ducking by not continuing to fight until their dying day, lol. He said ‘hey if you want to pay me a lot of money to fight Spinks, I’ll take it.’ And he was true to his word — he did.

 

Here is the problem.

He didn't really avoid anybody.

He was just looking for the easy path.

If Gerry Cooney had been a head to head monster, he would still have fought him.

The problem is, that he was not looking to meet the most deserving challengers either.

Some of the contemporary criticism was justified!

 

The thread title asks for specific fighters Larry Holmes “consciously and deliberately avoided.”

That’s far different from, ‘did he fight every good fighter of his era?’

The only thing he consciously and deliberately avoided IMO was getting entangled with Don King on more than a per-fight basis after he got out of his contract with King.

That meant not fighting some fights that could have been made because Don had tied up much of the division. But those guys mostly kept losing to each other so I don’t think it’s of much consequence.

If one guy had managed to win the WBA title (which for a period of time was controlled by Arum) and hold onto it long enough by making even 3-4 defenses to make himself a marketable commodity — John Tate if he had beaten Weaver and maybe just one more defense even was in position — I think Larry would have happily taken the big payday to take him on … or rematches Weaver if he hadn’t lost it … or fought Coetzee if the financing would have come through (he signed to do so) … etc.

 

I'm not sure how you live with this kind of logic when I'm obviously talking about rematching Witherspoon once it was known that Witherspoon was actually good, unlike in the first fight. Larry didn't do any rematches except when he lost the title. Pattern behavior. Fighting Cooney in no way provided an excuse for Holmes not fighting Thomas over a roughly three year period when he fought several no hopers. Thomas beat Tillis in 82 and drew with Coetzee in 83; he had arrived.

I'll just copy and paste this from a thread I did:
1. Men who Holmes did not fight:
Dokes was Ring annual number 4, 3, and 1 for 80--82.
Coetzee was 8 in 78, 3, in 79, 5 in 80 and 81, 1 in 83, and 5/6 in 84/86.
Tate was second only to Holmes in 79
84 and 85 belonged to Pink, number 1 in each year.
Page was 2 in 83 and 84, and 5 in 85

 

I've been saying for a while now that Sullivan needs to retire. That said, the fact that all of the top heavyweights STILL refuse to fight him is a testament to how dangerous he must have been in his prime.

 

Witherspoon couldn’t have gotten a title shot without being ‘good.’ He had to do something to get to that level, but you seem to think beating him didn’t count.

He did not duck a guy he fought. The two are mutually exclusive.

All of those guys at various times had short periods where they were viable contenders but the inconsistencies among them isn’t Holmes’ fault. As I pointed out, Page lost to Witherspoon and Bey and Larry fought both and you seem to think he’s ducking Page when in fact he beat men who beat them.

Give me an example that fits the title of this thread: “consciously and deliberately avoided,” as in made a concerted effort not to fight a specific guy.

All you do is list a bunch of fighters who were good — as were the fighters Larry beat. If he fought every guy on your list and didn’t fight the ones he did fight, you’d have a list of David Bey and Bonecrusher (KO’d Witherspoon in one, btw) and Cooney and Shavers and Weaver and Williams, etc.

He was an active champion who took on worthy contenders. You seem to want him to have found a way to squeeze 30 defenses into a time frame where he fought regularly, didn’t take massive periods of time off (the longest being when he was set to fight Coetzee and then the fight fell through) and managed only 20.

 

He shouldn't have added the IBF to the growing list of belts.

This fact is only tangentially related to the thread topic, but it is true. There. My gripe is registered for posterity.

 

It’s a no-win situation.

Someone was going to claim the IBF title.

And we’d be hearing about how Larry didn’t fight him.

 

Maybe I think Larry consciously and deliberately avoided these men while mostly keeping quiet about it (although he did run his mouth about it at times) while you seem to think video tape of Larry ripping up a contract is required to suggest that.

Have you noticed how Larry signed on to fight basically every white guy from his era ($)? It shocks me that he didn't fight Bugner.

 

Maybe you believe for every drop of rain that falls, a flower grows. Well why don't you tell us what you think instead of leaving it as a maybe?

What does skin color have to do with it? He fought men of various ethnicities. You criticize him for not fighting Coetzee and then make this whatever-the-point-is statement?

I neglected to address your ‘pattern behavior.’

Guess you’ve never heard of Earnie Shavers? Considered the most dangerous heavyweight on the planet, Larry stepped up to fight him in Shavers’ first outing since roughing up Muhammad Ali in a fight about which you can find many people on this very forum make a case was the fight that caused the long-term damage to Ali. And Larry boxed his ears off.

No need to ever fight that monster puncher again. But yet Holmes did so, and after Earnie dang near decapitated Ken Norton in one round.

So much for 'pattern behavior.'

Basically your view seems to be that Larry should have fought your list of guys and not fought the guys he did ... and then you'd have a different list and say Holmes should have given Shavers a rematch and fought Weaver and Witherspoon and Bonecrusher and Leon Spinks. Hell, you'd probably be screaming that he ducked old Ali.

SMFH.

 

Um, Larry was forced to fight Shavers in an eliminator. He swept him, so it’s not all that admirable that he’d be willing to fight him after winning the title. And Shavers had inferior boxing skill to the guys I mentioned.

I’ll give Larry a neutral for Coetzee because he apparently signed on once, it fell through, and then he didn’t reschedule.

Larry did make sure to fight Caucasian Cooney rather than other top opponents who would’ve offered lower purses. He also fought Cobb, Frank, and LeDoux while not fighting those guys I previously mentioned. Race definitely had something to do with this. To deny it would be racist. (These guys all looked white. I do not know what ethnicities their grandparents were.)

Funnily enough, Bugner appears to have narrowly missed a shot at Holmes because he lost to Marvis Frazier, so Larry fought the guy who had the famous last name instead. It was a win-win for Holmes when those two collided.

Edit: Forgot Lucien Rodriguez

 

To say their skin color had anything to do with them getting title shots is what’s racist. Damn.

You really DKSAB do you?

You think a guy wins the title and then he sits back and says who he’s going to fight and the promoter doesn’t have anything to do with that?

A promoter makes an offer. The fighter accepts it or he doesn’t.

To not fight Cooney would be absolute stupidity.

First off, Cooney was ranked No. 1. So he would have been stripped of his titles (and your ilk would be screaming DUCK DUCK DUCK) if he didn’t. And he also made $10M for that fight.

In your world, title shots, apparently, are some kind of welfare or charity plays. A champion should be handing them out like food stamps to needy contenders, lol.

The only guy he did this for was LeDoux, who had a wife dying of cancer who needed an operation Scott couldn’t afford … and you criticize him for adding years to her life. Damn.

It’s a business. Marvin had a name so Larry fought him because that name meant NBC would pay more money for the fight and more people would come to see it. Same reason Mike Tyson fought him.

He gave title opportunities to poor contenders like Renaldo Snipes and Mike Weaver and Leroy Jones and Bonecrusher Smith and Tim Witherspoon and David Bey, but they don’t fit your narrative.

I don’t know what your real beef is with Larry but you’re really revealing yourself and some kind of sick agenda.

 

You make an interesting point, but let me offer an alternative:

If Larry hadn't claimed the IBF, it's possible that we wouldn't be hearing that Larry failed to fight the guy. Why? Because without Larry's imprimatur, who cares about the IBF? Everybody ignored the WBO until champions started legitimizing it. I don't know that there was anybody else in the heavyweight division at the time who could have conferred legitimacy on the IBF like Larry did.

(I mean, sure, us Classic boxing nerds in 2022 would still be criticizing Larry in hindsight for ducking whoever held the IBF. But if Larry never legitimized the IBF, we might be criticizing him for failing to fight a worthy opponent -- not for ducking someone who happened to have a trinket with the letters "IBF" on it.)

 

Whereas that was an excellent one which should end the thread right there, this one I am thinking of was defiantly after the Williams fight.