Who was the best of the rest in the Holmes era?

Taking their respective careers as a whole, Witherspoon typically ranks the highest of the fighters you named.

 

Weaver. Knocked off Tate, Coetzee, LeDoux, Tillis and Stan Ward 2X. One of those was a Championship Distance UD, two were Championship Rounds one punch ten count knockouts, and one went on to challenge Holmes. His first loss to Dokes was exclusively due to a self admittedly skittish Joey Curtis prematurely panicked over the recent Mancini-Kim disaster, and the draw in their rematch was a flagrant Don King rig.

Everybody knows I'm partial to Championship Distance guys, and Hercules fits the bill. Would've achieved more as WBA Champion if he'd not injured himself in the gym by foolishly lifting weights. (Like Norton, Mike's made it clear his physique was a genetic gift, as Leroy Caldwell said about his own muscularity. Earnie Shavers was the best known weight lifter of the 1970's in boxing, but after retirement, the Acorn was a sharp critic of weights, stating that wood chopping was vastly superior for muscular endurance and tensile strength. Earnie also hoisted bales of hay growing up on a farm, and that entails whole body leverage rather than muscular isolation. He credited strenuous early farm labor for building up his strength and molding him into a fine all around athlete.)

Hercules is somebody I respect immensely for making the most of his ability. One of his sharp hard jabs knocked LeDoux to the deck. He won via single punches, jabbing skill, attrition and come from way behind knockouts. He also rebounded impressively from defeat and came off the deck to knock out Mercado in the following round.

Tillis was a stylist, Coetzee a boxer-puncher, Tate a huge and physically powerful and well conditioned boxer-puncher. Mercado was a huge slugger, Ward a highly skilled stylist who had decisioned Mike before Weaver avenged that with two ninth round stoppages, and LeDoux was a brawler. As far as I'm concerned he was prematurely robbed of the WBA Title considering his established comeback ability against Mercado, Coetzee and Tate, and then robbed of regaining it in the Dokes rematch. His only defeat during Larry's reign was when he challenged WBC Title pretender Pinklon Thomas in Pinklon's only successful title defense.

No alternative titlist to Holmes won more than one defense during Larry's reign except Mike, who won bouts in every way possible, off the deck, from way behind, by dominating from beginning to end, slugging and boxing stylishly, via attrition, and he converted himself from somebody with questionable stamina, conditioning and chin into a durable strong finisher with powers of recuperation. Later, he baited Carl Williams, becoming the first to stop him, lost in a single round to two guys he went the distance with in rematches, an extremely unusual reversal, pushed Ruddock to an SD in his first bout after Bonecrusher I, and at an advanced age, won fine victories over DuPlooy and Bert Cooper he had no business winning. (Weaver and DuPlooy exchanged excellent stoppage wins.

Third best is close for me, but I favor Tex Cobb here. Aside from Holmes, nobody beat him convincingly with more than a MD, SD or TD until he was coked up for Eddie Gregg. All those SDs, TDs and MDs were against future and former titlists Norton,. Dokes 2X and Buster. Beat monster punchers Shavers, Mercado and Shelburg, the latter two to get to Holmes. Randy's showings against Holmes and Dokes show the extreme gulf between Larry and Michael. Except for the Assassin, Cobb was a picnic for nobody. The TD in favor of Dokes is a DL rigged obscenity. Tex utterly dominated all three completed rounds with relentless chasing and swarming. (He rematched Dokes the way he trained to challenge Holmes. His 100 punches per round in sparring for Larry was in evidence for Dokes II.)

 

I’d say Witherspoon. Holmes got him when he was the greenest banana in the bunch, struggled (hell, arguably lost), & then never looked back. Surprise!

 

Reasonable enough choice.

Tim had beaten Ratliff and Snipes, so he wasn't absolutely inexperienced, but he was the challenger I'd have most liked Larry to have had a rematch defense against in late 1983 over the Championship Distance. Would've been better than Holmes-Frank and Holmes-Marvis. Spoon decisioned the rugged Cummings and wiped out Tillis to close out 1983. By then though, Larry had abandoned the WBC to help establish the IBF, so Tim went after the vacated 12 round limit WBC Title.

Do I have a problem with what Holmes did? The IBF continued the Championship Distance for a few more years, and the IBF remains today. More than any other fighter, Larry established the validity of a lasting sanctioning body rather than the other way around. Screw Jose Sulamian and what the WBC did to try profiteering from Mancini-Kim by lengthening the rest period between rounds from a minute to 90 seconds for trying to increase commercial revenue. Greedy *******s killed the goose which laid their golden egg. ******s! (Damned if you do, damned if you don't though. Make enough defenses, then like Ali, Holmes and Louis, you're gonna get bums and prospective bums. But who else completely owns peak Earnie Shavers TWICE, taking 20 of 21 completed rounds? Spoon? Jinx? Cooney? Only Larry and peak Ali definitely own the Acorn twice, although prime Jerry Quarry in a rematch and prime Jimmy Young in two more rematches could pull it off among Earnie's actual opponents.)

Holmes over trained himself for Witherspoon, wanting to get Tim out of there after Tex Cobb and Lucien Rodriguez easily made it to the final bell (although Larry won all 27 rounds in those two defenses), then was dehydrated with severe diathermia right before their match, it was arguably Spoon's peak performance, and with Holmes rallying after that monster ninth round right, we don't know what would've happened over the Championship Rounds. (My own suspicion is that Tim was far more hurt by that right than was widely supposed, and that's why I believe he was so timid after round nine, not because he thought he had it somehow won in a situation where he was the challenger, but because he was afraid of getting hit flush by another bomb like that.)

Now having said that Ney, I do agree a case is there for Witherspoon. Aside from Holmes, his only other defeat during Larry's reign was via 12 round MD to Pinklon. (I don't count his one round stoppage to Bonecrusher because Holmes was no longer Champion by then, and no longer an active fighter after Jinx II.)

You're already familiar with my prioritizing of the Championship Distance, and Spoon did take a 15 round MD over Tubbs after Larry stopped competing, but Tim only won the vacant WBC Title via 12 round MD over Page, then promptly lost it via that 12 round MD to Pinklon. For me, Witherspoon's best win while Holmes was Champion was Bonecrusher I, a 12 round UD win. (Very strangely after Pinklon, Tim was taken into the tenth round by the extremely weird Greg Page nemesis Mark Wills. I guess though that I'll express here my conviction that Greg had previously been owned twice by George Chaplin on bouts where the MD and SD scoring were rigged against the orthopedic technician from Baltimore. I guess to the judges, the idea of a four year degree decisioning a heavily hyped prospect like Page was sacrilegious during the early 1980's, at least in the HW division.)

 

It’s a relative matter, of course. Witherspoon doesn’t have much to compete with because Holmes’ era was sickly deficient. I do not rate Shavers, personally. At all.

 

I'd say Spoon but you make a good case for Weaver.
I've got respect for Weaver tho, as much as he got knocked back he kept on trying.

 

And whilst Witherspoon was green in regards to professional fights I would say Witherspoon never looked better or fitter as he did against Holmes.

 

There was a similar thread not too long ago.

Probably the correct answer is an unlikely one. And that is Trevor Berbick.

Berbick beat John Tate
Berbick beat an undefeated Greg Page
Berbick beat an undefeated Pinklon Thomas.
Berbick beat Muhammad Ali
Berbick also beat contender David Bey.
Berbick also beat undefeated Mitch 'Blood' Green.

And Berbick was the first guy to go 15 rounds with Larry Holmes in a title defense, putting an end to Holmes' record-tying run of eight straight defenses by knockout.

Weaver didn't go 15 with Holmes. Neither did Cooney. Neither did Bonecrusher. And Holmes was younger and better against Berbick than he was against some of those others.

 

Great Choice and explanation!

 

Are you asking resume wise or H2H Devon?

 

You may be talking about this thread that I did. I think I got all the results (with help from a couple of posters who pointed out omissions that I added upon edit).

https://www.boxingforum24.com/threads/1980s-heavyweight-champs-vs-each-other.723917/#post-22976354

It’s a results listing of 1980s heavyweights who held one title or another in that decade and how they fared head to head with the other titleholders (whenever they met, so it includes results outside the ‘80s).

After Holmes there’s no clear winner IMO, but I think based on their results against each other I’d be inclined to rank them: 1. Pinklon Thomas 2. Trevor Berbick 2. Tim Witherspoon. (Holmes at the front end of the decade and Tyson at the back end being far and above the rest.)

 

Witherspoon.

 

Kudos on Weaver, he's in the mix but Cobb, and we all love him, isn't in the conversion for top 5 and probably top 10 speaking H2H.

Norton was shot and almost got KO'd by Scott LeDoux of all people.
Dokes was bright green in their first fight and a recovering coke fiend in their second.
Shavers was a good win but he was passed his used by date.
Mercado was a big puncher and slipped into the bottom of Ring's top 10 for 5 minutes.
Shelburg got shut out by Leroy Caldwell right before Tex for heavens sake, i love Leroy but the man was 25-25-6 when he shut out Shelburg. Come on.

The fact of the matter is Tex never beat a top line Heavyweight. He didn't beat any of the best fighters from Holmes era. Page, Thomas, Witherspoon, Coetzee, Weaver, Tate, Berbick, heck, even Snipes and co.

Tex and Snipes would have been interesting, he would have had a chance in that.

 

Tucker, Witherspoon and Pinklon Thomas I generally consider gold, silver and bronze.

Cooney wasn't a champ but he fought Foreman, Norton, Jimmy Young, Lyle, Holmes and Spinks. Foreman had just turned 40 and the other older 70s fighters were in their late 30s so that means something though what is unclear. Hes got one of the shortest careers of any top HW ever so I understand thats a polarizing thing.

Probably have Buster Douglas, Smith, Tubbs and Page next in some order but the 4 above are the ones that seperate themselves the most.

Berbick I don't think can be near the top despite the Pinklon and Page wins because he didn't look great against the oldest Ali and has a few too many losses.