why did Larry Holmes never once try and unify?

No.... most including myself felt that Ali lost the third Norton fight. But at least he fought him three times. Holmes gets a controversial decision over Witherspoon and never touched him again, while spoon proceeds to fight a lot of the guys who Holmes was staying away from. Comparing Ali’s career to Holmes is futile

 

Yes I admit Larry should have took it in an ideal world. The situation was not ideal.

 

I think he tried unifying with Coteeze at one point didnt he?

 

Tillis was comfortably inside the top 10 and Thomas beat him in highly impressive fashion. Don't tell me Tillis wasn't considered "live". Thomas was actually a substitute for Witherspoon when he fought Tillis. The Coetzee draw was considered an excellent result as Coetzee was a top 5 heavyweight and Thomas still coming through. Thomas' standing rose and Coetzee's stocks didn't drop because Thomas was accepted as a real deal contender.

The next year Thomas beat an in shape Witherspoon in extremely impressive fashion and rolled Weaver after that. Weaver had not been beaten since the Dokes draw, a fight most thought he won. They were big wins.

Those in any way familiar with the era will know Weaver actually picked Gerry Cooney. Politics and squabbles killed that and Weaver was forced to fight Tillis.

I have no problem with Holmes fighting Cobb or Witherspoon. Cobb was a tough journeyman and Witherspoon was promising. It's after that when the shenanigans began and continued. The world title was devalued.

Well the system demanded he fight Page and he walked so i'm not convinced a unified system would have meant jack to him at that point in time.

Holmes could have simply fought Page and then Witherspoon if he won, or after one more lesser fight. It's that simple. Joe Louis or a Joe Frazier would have.

It sure got exploited.

I have no trouble with Holmes not unifying for most of his years but late in the piece he could have as he had that sort of high standing. Unfortunately it was a time when he was looking to wind down with easy beats and didn't want higher risk opponents. He said as much.

Now i don't think he was physically scared of the tougher matches, not in a million years. He did however recognise them as fights where he had a higher chance of losing and he also recognised after the Witherspoon fight that he was slipping.

If you were privy to his interviews of this exact time after saying he would fight the easier fights he also said he wasn't going to give his detractors the satisfaction of seeing him beaten. That's a crystal clear view into the Holmes psyche and, when he was taking on the guys he should have been it's one of the big reasons he was as great as he was. That enormous chip on his shoulder and him vs the world. It's what fueled him in the ring but unfortunately it was one of the reasons (his own words make this clear i think) he scaled back the last few years and took the easy route vs the legacy route.

It is what it is.

 

Well it sure did not take Tyson long to unify those titles did it?

 

You know why that is though don’t you?

The HBO series.

All down to that.

All those guys from 1985 contesting for titles Berbick, Thomas, Tubbs, Witherspoon, Spinks, Bruno, signed into a tournament. Holmes too. So The governing bodies all agreed to unifications before Tyson even challenged for a belt.

Tyson was signed into the tournament as soon as he signed to fight Berbick. Tyson was obligated to take part in the series.

Tyson gets credit for cleaning up but this was all in place before he got there.

had Berbick won against Tyson He was to meet Smith instead of Tyson. It was not down to Tyson that all this happened. This was already set in place. Contracted.

 

Nothing is ever ideal, but FOTC purse to fight Page isn't too shabby.

 

The purse for Page would have been Good profit. I am sure had the 3.1 mil offer for Marvis not been on the table at the same timeframe I guess Larry would have had to take the 2.5 for Page.

 

He had already beaten Marvis when he turned down Page. They weren't competing in any sense.

 

In Holmes's defence can be said that he was looking for a unification with Coetzee and the Page fight could get into the way for that.

That isn't that a bad reason to durn down the Page fight, even though he could have honoured the agreement he already had to face Page and then take on Coetzee. The alternative became another belt, that Holmes wanted to defend against easy touches if he didn't get Coetzee.

 

He took Marvis ahead of the Page deadline then turned Page down in persuit of a unification.
But as @Dubblechin posted on this thread, the WBC threatened to strip Larry if he fought Coetzee in a unification instead of Page.

I don’t know if Larry thought Coetzee was less risk than Page but I do know it turned out Page lost his next two fights.

 

He was stalling before Coetzee even won the belt - that was on the tail end of the prolonging it out. It wasn't gonna happen. Well not unless he got his money i guess which wasn't going to happen either.

 

If you're trying to say that the Marvis defence wasn't in any way an obstacle to facing Page, then yes. It was that he wanted Coetzee and wouldn't take the Page fight first. Or at all.

 

Yeah, Larry didn’t show much interest in Dokes, but then Dokes had an enforced rematch with Weaver over that first round controversy. The resulting draw was a good fight to watch mind.

 

Holmes was never going to be matched with Dokes due to promotional ties. Holmes would have been happy with this as would the two Kings. It was a match that was never going to be made and wouldn't have even if Holmes was somehow keen IMO.