Who do you rate higher Ali or Holmes?

I'm more defending Holmes's choices of opponents here and not comparing his competition to Ali who fought in the best era. Given the topic of the thread if you step in to defend Holmes on any of the points being levied its implied you think hes better than Ali. No I'm disputing individual points here I was reading and disagreed with.

I am not going to say Weaver didn't deserve a rematch based on his actual fight against Holmes.

I'm not a rankings guy. Part of why the 80s HW division isn't respected is the best avoided each other a lot and the best fighting each other is needed to make a rankings system accurate. This is also why Holmes has so many fighters "missing" from his resume its because the best weren't eliminating themselves from contention giving him the flexibility to pick whoever he wanted from the group. By the time the best of his era started to fight each other and really clear through the debris it was near the end of his reign.

1978 to 1982 was a transitional period of HW. Holmes was signifigantly younger than Alis generation but also signifigantly older than the next generation of would be great HWs. Foreman(and Jimmy Young) was the same age as Holmes but they rose through the ranks quick enough to fight Alis generation at or near their primes. If we look at the fighters we associate with being part of Holmes generation they are all nearly a decade younger than Holmes. Page, Dokes, Cooney, Tucker, Witherspoon,Pinklon Thomas, Tucker, Tubbs, Michael Spinks. All born in the late 50s. So that 78 to 82 was spent really waiting for the next generation to develop. Opposed to being a duck.

 

And why did John Tate fight Coetzee? Because Coetzee beat Leon Spinks. And since Leon Spinks had beaten Ali this gave Coetzee a claim to the belt.

 

The 80's era has obviously escaped you. The best didn't avoid each other at all excepting Holmes post Witherspoon. He avoided the lot in his later reign. The best of the rest fought each other on a regular basis which is why they racked up losses. That's what often happens when you fight the best contenders.

Page - Berbick
Page - Snipes
Page - Witherspoon
Page - Coetzee
Thomas - Weaver
Thomas - Witherspoon
Thomas - Coetzee
Thomas - Berbick
Weaver - Coetzee
Dokes - Weaver x 2
Berbick - Snipes
Witherspoon - Snipes
Dokes - Coetzee

There's 14 fights between 80-84 with high ranking contenders fighting each other, 9 were for belts. The best were most certainly fighting each other and Holmes dumped his WBC belt in order to not fight his mandatory Page in 83.

 

You stated - "The seperate WBA belts origin was Coetzee beating Leon Spinks who'd gotten lucky against the worst version of Ali."

That is blatantly incorrect.

Spinks had actually lost the return to Muhammad Ali for the WBA belt. The title was fractured prior to this fight because the WBC had taken the WBC belt off Spinks and gifted it (eventually) to Norton because Spinks fought Ali instead of Norton. The origin of the split has less than zero to do with Coetzee beating Leon Spinks. Coetzee had zero claim to the belt.

You've got it dreadfully wrong. This is all 80's heavyweights 101. One knows the era or they don't.

 

@Bokaj

Here we go again

I'm getting choklab vibes.

 

Ali is number 1 for me, Holmes number 3.

 

I think it would be virtually impossible to have Holmes outside the 10 unless you honed in on very specific aspects of his reign that normally wouldn't carry that much weight. I could put up a solid argument for anywhere between #3 and about #7 or #8. I often sneak him into #4.

 

I'm just waiting for him to join and balloon this thread to a No Chin-sized one.

To use 50 pages to claim Holmes had a reign beyond critique despite not managing to face one current nr 1 contender over seven years and only one nr 5 ranked for the last half of it.

I still wake up screaming from dreams of those discussions.

 

Yeah, the top two is an absolute lock, but after that it becomes tricky.

Holmes was undefeated during his prime, though, despite facing some of the best of that period and quite a few other contenders. That, together with his comeback run, goes a long way for me.

 

You're right. My bad.

 

Groundhog day

 

Even with all the finessing #3 is still deep in the mix.

 

And when Ali vacated the belt Coetzee was elevated to fight Tate because he'd beaten Spinks. I mean the origin of the WBA lineage not the origin of the split itself.

 

I said between 78 and 82(not 80 to 84) and most of these fights are after that and the ones that aren't are because you included Berbick,Coetzee, Weaver, Snipes none of whom I referenced when making my point because they are a bit closer in age to Holmes. And despite that not a single one of those fights is from before 1982. Just further proving my point.

Also Holmes fought Berbick and Snipes before any of these fights occurred.

 

At the end of the day one fighter beat two top ten consensus all time great heavyweights and one bubble top ten heavyweight. The other didn't. And one fighter was 10-3 against other members of the International Boxing Hall Of Fame and the other was a desultory 2-4.