Which Heavyweight Champion benefited most from weak competition?

The Klitschko Brother's

 

Larry "The Mallard" Holmes.

 

Cheers, thanks alot for that explanation, I feel they should have rematched right away,I felt Norton won the fight, i dont know how controversial thinking that is tho lol

 

Definetely not Larry Holmes. He beat a lot of young undefeated fighters and also some very good fighters. His list includes Tim Witherspoon(undefeated), Ken Norton(WBC Champion), Mike Weaver(future WBA champion), Gerry Cooney(undefeated), Earnie Shavers(# 1 contender), Carl Williams(undefeated), Trevor Berbick(Future WBC champiom), Ray Mercer(undefeated future WBO champ), Bonecrusher Smith(Future WBA champ), Leroy Jones(undefeated), Renaldo Snipes(undefeated), Roy Williams(highly avoided), Michael Spinks(undefeated HOF, if you count the robbery in fight II)

This is a top resume. Sure he missed out on Page, Thomas, Coetzee, Dokes...but the ones Larry did fight, some were very talented. I would rate holmes resume over Lennox Lewis's.

 

I disagree with
- Jeffries: Sharkey, Corbett 2x, Ruhlin, Fitzsimmons - this i not weak comp. The only thing you can critizise him is not fighting Johnsnon in a small time frame.
- Dempsey: Miske, Carpentier, Gibbons, Firpo, Tunney - that´ain´t too bad. You can critizise him taking such a long layoff and not taking on Wills though.
- Louis: Farr, Schmeling, Lewis, Godoy 2x, B. Baer 2x, Nova, Conn 2x, Walcott 2x, Charles - yeah, really bad :roll:

The once with the weakest comp would be Patterson, Holmes, Tyson, Wlad.

 

Since when did Dempsey beat Tunney?

 

Is it about beat? I thought it´s about who they fought during their reigns. Losses must be taken into consideration too IMO.

 

Patterson no questions. At least "While champion."

 

Whilst im a fan of larry holmes, i respectfully disagree with his resume being better than Lewis in terms of their title defences. Put simply, we can make a case for Holmes not fighting ALL of the best guys that were around whereas this is the one thing that cant be levelled at Lewis. This isnt a slight on Holmes as i regard him as a great fighter and as brave as they come.

 

I would definitely have to say John L Sullivan.

He was so able to get away with drinking himself into comas and neglecting his training for years. Mike Tyson got his head handed to him by James Buster Douglas for a far lesser lapse.

If you thought that Sullivan fought in a strong era you would prety much have to acknowledge him as the greatest heavyweight of all time, because all his oponents either fought to survive or got destroyed quickly.

The champion when Sullivan first arived on the scene was a 37 year old Joe Goss. Goss in his prime had been a top contender but clearly a teir bellow the top fighters of the era like Jem Mace and Tom King.

 

I don't know anything about that era, and very little about Sullivan himself.. I imagine that his career must be very hard to study, given that there is no film and only scattered stories, which are not always consistent with one another..

I'm going to speculate that he was probably a very tough guy though.. He was likely more of a street fighter than anything else, and probably took on some very rough types, even if they didn't have an ounce of formal boxing training..... Given that he like both fighting and drinking ( a bad combination ), I assume he had a lot of bar brawls that were never recorded, and may have sent a lot men home with more than just a hangover..

 

Sullivan was every bit as much a profesional fighter as Corbett or Jeffries and he was a much more cerebral fighter than he is usualy given credit for. He did ocasionaly box exhibitions with people who were not profesional fighters but he usualy took it easy on them. His oponents were profesional fighters albeit a verry weak crop.

He came allong in a period when the sport was in flux. Prizefighting had been stamped out in Britain and most of the top British fighters had emigrated to America. The heavyweight scene was dominated by the leftovers from Jem Maces era and was clearly much weaker than in previous or subsequent eras. Against this background Sullivan was able to get away with lapses and training habits that a champion would not have got away with in other eras.

Despite my opinions about Sullivans competition I do think that he was a talent comparable to Jim Jeffries or Jack Johnson. He was the prototype for Jack Dempsey.

 

Well we have to credit the man for being the first of his kind, and also because he may very well have paved the way for boxing's evolution.. The life and times of John L. Sullivan must have been very hard as well as interesting..

 

Sullivan was in many ways responsible for boxing taking its current form.

When Sullivan first arived on the scene fights under Queensbury rules were not regarded as legitimate. Sullivan knocked out the reigning champion Joe Goss in a Queensbury fight but was not recognised as champion because it was not a bareknuckle bout.

Sullivan was a fighter who specialised in Queensbury bouts who beat the bareknuckle title claimants at their own game and in so doing forced people to recognise the legitimacy of Queensbury bouts.

 

And Liston.
And every champion pre Ali.
Dempsey could have had a good opposition , but he avoided many.
Still , he had a fine opposition.
Jeffries had tough battles against middleweights .
Of course he is a main candidate for that title as well.