Who ranks higher on the all-time great list, Pacquiao or Holyfield?

He probably believes that only 1-2% of all pro athletes are PED users, not 99,5% like its in real life.:good

Lance Armstrong is great, and yes, he used PEDs, like Contador and almost all others elite cyclists.

 

I agree. Most elite professional athletes use PEDs (or prohibited substances of some sort) at some time. It can't be any other way, they need to compete and their bodies need to handle increasingly strenous training loads to perform at the top level. Even superhuman athletes are human after all !

There are probably a few top HW boxers who don't use the heavy hormones, steroids, anabolic drugs, due to their particular size and style, but that's very few. And they probably use something on the banned list, sometime or other. It's almost impossible not to.

Besides, I'm not sure steroids were even banned officially in boxing by many commissions until very recently. Back in 1988 when Holyfield moved to heavyweight there was no testing for steroids in professional boxing because no one in boxing cared.

 

Lance Armstrong is definitely not an all-time great of his sport any more than Marion Jones or Ben Johnson are. You may say other boxers were using PEDs too but Holyfield seems to be the poster boy for it and yes I think it does call into question his achievements, just like it does for Mosley and Mayweather.

 

And Pacquiao

 

Margo was far from elite that night.

He hadn't had a meaningful victory in years.

 

Come on...don't be a mugwump!!!

 

They were both great. Think about this though...

When did Pacquiao ever fight a man who outweighed him by nearly 25% of his bodyweight? At age 46 Holyfield was outweighed by nearly 100 pounds when he fought Valuev for the WBA HW world title... Valuev won but Holyfield should have. Holyfield was outweighed by nearly 50% of his bodyweight (96 1/2 pounds to be exact) that night.

Holyfield won a medal at the 1984 Olympics as a LHW/178 pounds and weighed between 205-221 in HW world title fights. He fought guys in HW world title fights who weighed-

246, 257, 233, 235, 246, 242, and 310 3/4.

Big fan of both, I'd say they rank about the same.

 

I think Marion Jones was an all-time great. Ben Johnson was too.
As is Usain Bolt. In my opinion.
If the politics and media exposes Bolt for his PED uses, yeah, all the sheep will turn against him and deny he was ever great, but he is great regardless.

In what way was Holyfield "the poster boy" for it. Perhaps because people admire his physique ?
I mean, James Toney probably used way more anabolic PEDs than Holyfield ever did, to the point where he couldn't even pass the tests, and was caught at least twice tested positive. But he rarely gets mentioned as much as Holyfield as a "drug cheat". It seems Holyfield gets it thrown at him all the time in these threads, with Toney it's hardly an afterthought. Probably because Toney didn't look so good ... ?

Drugs are part of life. Most elite professional athletes take drugs to help them. The whole anti-doping thing is a fraud and a racket, used for political purposes and to make a profit. I don't expect the majority of people to ever come around to this reality, but us more 'hardcore' and informed fans of sports should at least be able to tell it like it is.

 

I went with Pac but this is a difficult comparison. Holyfield doesn't get enough credit for going from fighting sub-200lb men to taking on some of the best superheavies and most dangerous punchers in the history of the sport because of his losses.

Had to go with Pacquiao though because I felt that he had better wins and was fairly dominant in an unprecedented number of weight classes.

 

I think this will be the viewpoint when the dust has settled.

To put it this way: When Holy became a champ a CW, how far fetched did it seem that he'd become one of the top HWs of the 90's? And when Pac became a champ at FW, how far fetched would the idea of him running through the WW division be?

What Pac did was seen as an absolute impossibility before he actually did it. That's really what gets forgotten now. That can't be said about Holy in the same way, even though he defied the odds in a big way when beating Tyson.

 

Pacquiao in terms of sheer talent and list of accomplishments. But, Holyfield had the better wins, IMO.

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Depends whether you think greatness relies more on exceeding expectations and odds, rather than a cold ana lysis of the achievements.

 

Holyfield has better wins. Imo. And hes every bit as good as pac is in a p4p sense, beating up and knocking out huge super heavyweights as a natural Cruiser. His wins over Qawi, tyson, foreman, holmes, bowe, moorer and dokes easily can match Pac's best wins imo.

 

I'll pick Pacquiao. Holyfield never really had a reign of terror like Pacquiao did for a few years. The Cotto/Hatton/Clottey period.


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Depends how much you discount those wins according to the age/condition of his opponents. With the exception of Bowe, who beat him twice, all of those men had seen much better days and were arguably already on the downswing before losing to Holyfield. Also depends whether you factor in the dominance of those performances.

Pacquiao has wins over near-prime ATGs MAB, Morales, and Marquez, and dominant (but asterisked) wins over DLH, Cotto, and Hatton, among others.