Why didn't Larry Holmes and Tim Witherspoon rematch?

If you had been Larry would you have re- matched him?

 

Larry is a tough mofo. I don’t think he ever would shy away from a fight.

It is true Tim gave him a tough time. But Larry was looking for a big fight without Don king. The Marvis fight was bigger money than a page fight. After this he perused a Gerry Coetzee fight. He did not need Witherspoon.

if Witherspoon was any better than Gerry Coetzee was, then Tim would have drew with Pinklon like Gerry did.

Larry was prepared to not only fight Gerry but the man who beat Page, David Bey.

So whilst the Witherspoon rematch was not exactly pursued, I don’t think it actually mattered.

 

Page had an impressive victory over the WBC number 1 contender Renaldo Snipes which made him Holmes mandatory. Holmes dumped his LONG held WBC title in order not to fight Page citing $2.5 million not being enough as the reason. Whether it comes down to not getting enough money and his hatred of Don King or not , the fact is Holmes gave up his title in order to avoid fighting Page. This is indisputable.

Your logic on Coetzee-Thomas-Spoon is horrible. Thomas was still learning when he fought Coetzee. He used the draw to his advantage and became a better fighter a year later (His own admission) and he beat Witherspoon. Speaking of Thomas, Why didn't Holmes step up to fight Thomas in a big money unification match? Instead of your choir boy, Telatubby Bey.

 

Larry Holmes 1983 "I'm ducking Greg Page because the money ain't there".

 

This was based only on sanctioning body BS.

In real terms Snipes was nowhere near the logical contender. Not with Coetzee beating Dokes.

How on earth they decided Snipes was #1 contender to their paper title?

Larry had already thrashed Snipes and stopped him in the process.

All Snipes had done since that hiding from Larry, ahead of meeting Berbick, was draw to Scott Frank and lose to Tim Witherspoon.

That’s it.

Page, himself two fights from a hard loss to Berbick, albeit who snipes got a decision over, still only beat the guy who drew with Scott Frank and he’s #1 contender???

Larry asked for an 'extension' and 'special consideration', because Murad Muhammad and Robert Andreolli offered him an 'Absurd Fight Purse' of $3,100,000 to defend his Championship against Marvis Frazier.

No.
The WBC under pressure from Don King {who had a 'Fight Contract' with Larry Holmes} pulled their sanctioning.

Don King had a $2,550,000 Contact with Larry Holmes to face Greg Page.

Larry Holmes, when told that the WBC were going to strip him,,,,,,,,,,'Laughed'.

probably because the WBC wanted Thomas to first defend his title against Weaver? Or after this Berbick?

If the WBC were stupid enough to rank Snipes so high before he lost to page and sanction a Page Witherspoon fight for a championship of the world, then there’s no telling how crazy they still were once Spoon passed their paper title to Thomas.

 

Edit

 

Holmes would have beat any of these guys. The best fight would have been a rematch with a ready to fight Weaver. Although Larry did have the flu- or something in that first fight. And Don King basically ruined the division with his shenanigan’s till he found Tyson. Thanks to King we didn’t see some good fights.

 

If Larry was the sole champion every fight is easier to make. he would have no choice but to rematch Witherspoon and fight whoever was the sole number one contender.

But those governing bodies were just giving belts to random contenders…creating extra “number one” contenders….and none of those guys didn’t even have but a win or two in them at contender level.

 

Why doesn’t anyone ask about the WBA and WBC champs ducking each other rather than unifying when Larry decided to carry the IBF belt?

They could have created a more legit ‘champ’ to force a bout with Holmes. (Of course the fact that none of them could make so much as two successful defenses when holding a belt might have had something to do with it.)

Offer me, you or anyone else $1M more to fight Marvis Frazier than Greg Page and we all choose Frazier. Don King should have matched or exceeded the Frazier purse if he wanted to make that fight.

Too bad Greg didn’t duck David Bey, then nobody could say Larry KO’d the guy who beat Page.

 

When promoters have governing bodies in their pocket they are Telling them who to rate and where in their top ten to rank them. And it is usually who the promoter (or his son) have under contract. They are not legit organisations. People need to stop regarding these bodies as legit.

Larry beat Ali and Spinks and he beat Norton when Ken was regarded as better at that time than Ali was. Young beat Foreman. Then he lost to Norton and Ocasio. Well Larry beat both of them. He also beat Shavers.

The whole time that was going on the WBA was desperately trying to recognise other people who had no connection at all to being the best heavyweights. Weaver had lost to Larry yet he was able to defeat their so called champion.

And as soon as The WBC began to stop recognising Holmes they also wound up recognising men Larry had already beat. Witherspoon and Berbick.

As IBF champion Larry still beat future WBA champs and future Tyson title challengers.

 

Your purposeful lies and sheer lack of knowledge (further lies?) when attempting to muddy the waters, mislead and deceive on this topic are downright disgraceful. You're not the only one over the years going thru all sorts of contortions to promote an agenda but no matter how many times you get corrected factually there you are at the next thread lying your little arse off and pretending like nothing ever happened.

You say all Snipes had done was draw to Frank and lose to Tim Witherspoon with regard to getting his ranking. An out and out blatant lie! Snipes was fresh off a victory over the highly ranked WBC contender Trevor Berbick which was what pitted him into a title shot eliminator with Greg Page to see who would be the mandatory challenger and number #1 contender to fight Larry Holmes. So no, Snipes drawing and losing was not "that's it" regarding what he had done. Extremely disingenuous to omit Berbick.

You've also said (twice) the WBC decided Snipes was #1 contender for "their paper title". This is either a lie or you not having a clue about what was truly going on. Snipes was never the #1 contender.

You also call the WBC title you claimed he was #1 contender for "their paper title". This was not a paper title as Holmes was the champion and had legitimised the WBC crown as the title even if he hadn't unified. So again this comment was embarrassingly incorrect.

Coetzee beating Dokes had nothing to do with contenders for Holmes WBC title because the WBC didn't rank WBA champions!! This is kindergarten level stuff. Credibility zero.

The fact of the matter is Holmes said himself he wouldn't be taking on the big names and would be looking for easier fights until retirement as he felt he deserved that and wouldn't be giving people/critics the satisfaction of seeing him get beat. He told us he would take that path and then he followed it to the letter. It's really not rocket science. This was his choice and that was what he did. He wanted low risk and around this time he also decided he'd chase Marciano's record. It's scattered throughout magazines and articles from around the time. It became a running joke in some of them. He then gave up his long held legitimised title not to fight Page. Was he scared of Page? No. What he was worried about was taking on the best guys at a time when he was fading and raising the risks of losing. I have no doubt he would have still thought he could beat the lot of them but the Witherspoon fight (remember Tim was quite lowly regarded at that time) showed father time was catching up with him and he took the safe route.

You bag Snipes for having drew with Frank but that draw and a few wins over nobodies somehow got Scott a fight for Holmes title right after the Witherspoon scare. If you held Holmes opponents post Witherspoon to the same levels you hold the guys he avoided you might get a rude shock.

Frank gets a shot off the back of a draw against a guy you are critical of. Prior to that Witherspoon got his shot via a decision over said Snipes and a controversial one at that.

Marvis Frazier has had 10 fights in his pro career and there he is lasting less than 3 minutes. It was supposed to be Page so the WBC didn't sanction the fight and Holmes gave up the title just after the fight.

After this Smith, Bey, Williams and Spinks were handpicked with 15, 14 and 16 fights apiece. I posted an article on how Williams was picked some time back. Near the very end Holmes was also pushing for a Marvis Frazier rematch at the end and even talking a Cooney fight. The networks sure said no to Frazier again.

Now Holmes couldn't be expected to take on top ranked opponent after top ranked opponent at this time but he could have at least fought one or two live guys.

It is what it is and it's all out there.

 

This is spot on i'm not gonna lie i did want to reply myself, but i've had this discussion quite alot over the past months. But you pretty much said all i wanted to say, i think it's pretty common knowledge after the Witherspoon scare, that Holmes opted for easier defences in an attempt for 50-0. I don't know how anyone can say with a straight face, that fighters like Marvis Frazier, Scott Frank, were better or more interesting fights than a Greg Page fight would of been at that time. Or fighters like Bonecrusher Smith, David Bey, Carl Williams, were more interesting than a Pinklon Thomas fight.

And just to add to Tim Witherspoon this is what an article thought of him prior to Holmes, to show how lightly regarded he was.

Witherspoon, although ranked No. 3 by the WBC, hadn't fought since his dismal 10-round decisioning of Renaldo Snipes on June 5, 1982. A jaw fracture he suffered while sparring last summer with Lightning Bob Smith had kept him out of action. During those 11½ months Holmes had stopped Gerry Cooney in 13 rounds and won decisions over Randy Cobb (15 rounds) and Lucien Rodriguez (12).

In spite of his high ranking, Witherspoon was a relative unknown who hadn't launched his pro career until he was almost 22—which is relatively late for a boxer—and after only six amateur fights, the last of which he lost. Nothing in his short career gave any indication that he would be anything more than a bit player in another exhibition of Holmes's extraordinary talents.

 

You certainly know your boxing young fella!

 

And that’s the problem isn’t it? Sanctioning bodies giving titles to contenders then not ranking the original champion!

Take away the belts, and look at the results of the heavyweights below Larry.
The better Result out there among contenders was Coetzee beating Dokes and not anything snipes did.

coetzee is the guy Larry was trying to fight. Seems to me The organisation that recognised Larry was controlled by a promoter who would not let him fight Coetzee.

SuzieQ49 said he was. I was answering him.

They we’re all paper titles.

The real champion happened to have that particular belt. Yet when page beats snipes in May they are talking about not recognising Larry anymore if he doesn’t fight page before that November? A six month ultimatum?

yet they were later happy for Thomas to sit on the title for 274 days between meeting Weaver and Berbick?

yes he shouldn’t have said that. He was signing to meet Coetzee so it was a silly thing to say.

The results were not showing Page was even that worthy or more worthy than a guy Larry signed to fight, Coetzee. But after negotiations fell through, once he had the recognition of a new governing body you can say he was restricted even further with whom Larry could actually fight. The policy of each body not ranking other challengers was giving him far less options. The Ring magazine rankings was littered with guys Larry had already beat. Witherspoon weaver Berbick and Snipes. It only really left champions he couldn’t fight and David Bey who he did fight. Still, he soon signed to meet the paper champions in the HBO tourney which as the real champion he was not strictly entitled to do.