Who did Holmes duck?

Who among the prosecution can say with conviction (and state a persuasive case) that any of the ducked parties stood more than a 40, 45% chance against Holmes when you would have liked him to indulge them with a shot?

All we keep getting is hemming and hawing about how Page's right hand was dangerous (you know, every now and then, if he felt like being dangerous that night) or how Thomas, uh, had a kinda nifty jab.

Great. Everybody had strong points. Some of them are claimed to have even had vague 'stylistic advantages' over Holmes. OK. So whom do you think would have beaten Larry Holmes, if not for his 'ducking'? Whom do you give so much as an even money chance?

 

Yeah, he was, but you can't accept that.There were worse #1's than Page, and nobody's complaining about them.

 

Dokes, and nothing much Page. I think he might have even been cautious of Page tho I cant imagine why

also, a rematch with Witherspoon as well as Pinkon Thomas, an overblown , overrated fighter

 

Nobody had a 45% chance with Holmes. Including Holmes' chalengers nobody who challenged for any title between 79-85 was that worthy of fighting for ANY version of the heavyweight title.
That's how there were so many champions. The challengers were no worse than the "champions" and nobody but Holmes was able to keep a title against the next kid.

Marvis Frazier and David Bey would have wound up champions challenging any other curent heavyweight titalist of that era.

 

John Tate was known for getting destroyed by Stevenson in the Olympics in front of a worldwide audience. His biggest win as a pro other than Coetzee was over Duane Bobick.

Here is his huge Olympic moment .. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti9iEraS0ns


As far as Weaver goes, as usual you leave out small details like Holmes KO'ed him and then had two huge super fights with Ali and then Cooney. Fighting an often defeated Weaver who he already KO'ed was really no a demand fight. IN addition, the three year window you discussed is revisionist .. IN 79 Weaver fought Tarell and LeDoux, hardly upping his marketability. Then he upset Tate, a fight largely viewed as a fluke .. he finally generated some deserved legitimacy post Coetzee but by that time the drums were beating for a Cooney megafight and a low reward moderate risk fight w Weaver never happened.

 

At least Tate made it to the Olympics, I do not have the Wells fights (where Holmes gets taken out on a stretcher)but here is Larry shot at the Olympics, Ali & Cosell commenting

By the way Weaver improved tremendously after giving Holmes hell, he was not the same 18-9 fighter and then he had almost 3 good years for Larry to rematch him and unify the titles

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyMEojHEZlc

 

Singularly and bereft of context I would take Holmes over all of them, but in aggregate and integrated into his record I wouldn't be surprised if someone pulled off a victory.

 

Exactamundo.

That's the result of tougher fights. But a point conveniently ignored. An earlier loss occurs to somebody. and it would have been to an insert name here guy. Lots of tougher matches and maybe it's not 6 months earlier. Maybe it's 3 years earlier.

Or like I said earlier, tougher matches on his way up to his first title opportunity and it's earlier than 3 years. There was like zero absorption in those fights. Personally, I cannot think of another heavyweight champ other than Vitali with less to absorb. Man, does that ever help a career for longevity.

 

Man, Larry Holmes looked SKINNY in there. He had to be under 200 pounds for that fight. Bobick actually looked pretty good -- very strong!

 

Holmes' s background before making it to title contention was no more or less impressive than a lot of men who fought for titles after 1978. They all showed talent at some point but only Holmes could consistantly beat rated fighters. All the others remained no better or worse than each other.
Nobody stood out. Not one. Then there was the fact that king wanted to promote seperate titles.

I have proven that as much as it would have been good to see Holmes fight every single guy the ones he missed were no better or worse than those he met. The best of them were no stronger than Snipes or Bey, they were the same level. A level below Holmes. Every last one of them.

 

So since you cannot back up your point on Tate's big Olympic accomplishments you actually make a statement comparing him to Holmes ? Are you saying that you think Tate was a better fighter than Holmes Bummy or just trying to not eat crow by deflecting ?

 

Number one no one was making the point on Holmes as an amateur. That's just Bummy eating crow and lacking the sack to admit he was wrong. Two this is a 180 pound Holmes .. now maybe Bummy is saying that Bobick was better than Larry too ... you never know w that guy ..

 

It definitely can happens over seven years and a half years and twenty defenses .. al lot more likely than in six fights over three years against old small guys or five fights in seven years ...

 

What do you think would have happened to Larry if he had not been KO'd by Wells and Beaten by Bobick and fought Teofilo, do you think he would have survived Teofilo?

It was you that brought up Big John's amateur loss but in fact the American team had gotten a lot of publicity leading up to the Olympics and Big John was already well known as an early pro and had TV exposure as the Best of the Americans and that was my point....He Grant you are constantly eating Crow but have no shame just hang in there with your bias.....In fact you are a CROW

 

I guess we can only guess because unfortunately we can only guess because Larry never fought the best of his ERA at there best. Sorry if the truth offends but I lived the era and Larry lived in corrupt era where he was navigated away from certain styles and was put in with mostly novice guys and never beens ....just a fact of the time of his reign and Don Kings