Who's The 3rd Greatest Heavy weight?

Solid answers as always John. Thought a guy like you may have gave a mention to Sonny Liston but I can see why not.

 

With Larry David, producer.

 

Thanks DJN, it's appreciated. I'm basing this on resume only. H2H Liston would be above where i'd put him on resume only i reckon.

 

Great story and brilliantly told. Thanks SP.

 

Criteria is everything here.
eg I have Dempsey above Louis H 2H.

 

This one cannot be settled without a long debate, but I have Lennox Lewis at #3.

Foreman, Holmes, Holyfield and Klitschko can all be argued to be rated just below Ali and Louis.

 

https://www.boxingforum24.com/threads/3-atg-hw-survey.684006/

Lennox and Larry 25 votes each.
Marciano is far behind with 11 votes.

 

LOL! I didnt think of that detail!

 

I don’t think so. He retired maybe a couple years later (not sure what year this happened).

Basically, McEnroe and Borg and the older Conners were all hitting the tail end of their peaks and a new breed of player came along, the leaders of the pack at the time being Ivan Lendl, a 6-foot-2 powerhouse and 6-3 Boris Becker, who just hit the ball that much harder and eschewed the finesse game. Maybe in their primes they could have extended points and wore him out or countered them to death with a thousand cuts but these guys were just too much. Mac stayed around the longest, I think, but there was a new regime.

 

I assume this is basing it on the magazine consensus 1 and 2 which are usually Ali and Louis. I would personally have Ali and Foreman...so for me it is Foreman in at 3rd if Louis is going to be 2nd.

Foreman has one of the ATG wins over Frazier, he not only KOd a bad bad heavyweight champion he annihilated him. That was also a near prime Frazier (never the same after the first Ali fight of course). He then annihilated Norton, who would still be a top top heavyweight challenger come the late 70s. Let's not forget wins over the likes of Lyle and later in his career that famous return win for a second championship!

 

Larry Holmes. First undefeated fighter to ever win 20 consecutive championship bouts. Competed into his 50's, went out a winner and has all his marbles, attesting to his prowess in the manly art of self defense. While Tommy Loughran's jab is in a separate class, the Easton Assassin's has some case as second best jab ever.

Tyson was not the ignominious end for him that it would've been with most comeback attempts. He returned again and distinguished himself. After Tyson and Holyfield, he did sustain any conclusive defeats. Michael Spinks II and Brian Nielson are particularly discussed in this respect. At age 47 he should've been credited with Brian Nielson's first defeat, but that one was in Copenhagen. Even then, it was only via SD.

Produced two shutout wins over the Championship Distance, and a stoppage in a Championship Distance round. Stopped Evangelista, Weaver and Paul Poirier on the strength of a single punch. (Separated Poirier's rib cage with a monster right to the body which literally rippled through from left to right, as seen on the television camera and videotape.)

His jab nearly had Ocasio down for the full count, seemingly aimed for the back of Ossie's head as Liston described.

Got up from the hardest punch in boxing history to continue dominating until the stoppage. (Lennox was knocked out twice by bombs like this. I just can't rate a guy who never went the Championship Distance AND lost the title twice to a single punch.)

Crazy longevity.


Louis doesn't make my cut because of JJW I. In the extant footage, he doesn't cut off the ring but follows Jersey Joe around instead, like Liston did with Ali in Lewiston. As great a punching technician as the Bomber was, I think he loses the decision every time to Ali and Holmes.

Toledo Dempsey's the other in my "Holy Trinity." Jack literally wrote the book. He decisioned master boxer Tommy Gibbons over the Championship Distance, then repeatedly ripped 216 pound Firpo up off the deck in a display more savage and brutal than Foreman-Frazier I. (I've studied Dempsey-Firpo multiple times on movie film in super slow motion. Luis buckled him in the opening seconds and shoved him out of the ring, but his only true knockdown of the Mauler was a massive bomb which produced nothing more than a flash KD with no interruption in the action, cementing the quality of his chin.) Showed late round power by knocking out Bill Brennan in 12 by going to the body with his right. A short left hook to the body lifted 245 pound Jess Willard several inches up late in round three. As I mentioned, Firpo was 216 pounds. Luis was the same size as Foreman was in Jamaica for Frazier. Put Dempsey in their, George would've been dead. (Put Louis in there, Foreman would've still been dead. If you were a big slow guy, you didn't want to go to war with these two.)


Foreman simply didn't have the resume, stamina in his youth, or ability to defeat all styles and manner of opponents. Bob Pastor and JJW showed a decade apart that the Bomber never did figure their tactics out, and they were not top shelf like Ali and Holmes. Even though George took post FOTC and post Manila Frazier twice, Joe's a top five HW for me because I believe 1969 Frazier would've beaten more of history's other heavyweights. (While I don't have Louis in my top three, I do have him in my top five. But stylistically, JJW, Jack Johnson and Gene Tunney would be extremely difficult for him to beat since they were all movers, a style Louis reportedly tried early. We do see him move a bit with Max Baer and particularly with Jimmy Braddock, but he certainly was no Tunney or Bob Pastor.)

JJW said after Manila that Muhammad Ali could've beaten any other HW in history. I've never looked up what he had to say about Larry Holmes, but he was still only in his 60's when Larry peaked and was almost certainly an eyewitness to Holmes-Mercer.

 

Lewis or Holmes

 

Hey, you know we're here for you, and yeah, you know full well that we're your friends. We coalesce for one of our own.

 

Yeah I think Connors was still using an old school maybe wooden racket for awhile. He finally upgraded and had a bit of resurgence around 82-83. Ofcourse they say Lendl is the father of modern tennis.