Why nobody talks crap about Holmes resume

People back then certainly didn't see Weaver as the Champ during his reign. He gave Larry a great fight for sure, but he did get soundly stopped. I don't remember anyone clamoring for a rematch, the end seemed pretty consummate.

 

Well, kinda-sorta, but not really. Fans and the press at the time mostly compared Holmes unfavorably to Ali and lamented that boxing was in such a sorry state. Holmes himself had a huge chip on his shoulder about it, and was antagonistic to the press. Holmes could have mitigated some of this by trying to unify the titles.

This went on until Dokes, Page and Cooney came out as challengers...Holmes manged to get one of them in the ring, and ran screaming from Page, but that is getting into the era we all agree he became a big duck. But no, I don't agree that there was some kind of universal laudation from the fans. I think that is a bit of rose-tinted glasses that started after the 90's come-back.

No offense, but that is from everything I have read and remember.

 

Let's break it down , here.

The dispute is that he became a ducker in '83.

I think we can all agree that he could not unify in '78 and '79, because those were the years that the title were fragmented.

Betwen '79 and '83, there were three champ....Tate, Weaver and Dokes.

Nothing on the table for unification matches. That is my point.

We all agree that by '83 he threw in the towel for trying to make good fights, so there is that.

 

Michael Dokes was being promoted under the Same umbrella as Holmes. Don’s son Carl King. That fight would have been very hard to make at least while Holmes was still being managed by DK productions - a relationship which wouldn’t end until 1983 when Holmes decided to go independent. John Tate lost the WBA about six months after winning it and to an opponent Holmes had beaten less than a year earlier.. three months after losing the title he lost again to Berbick ( who Holmes would beat soon after. ) then Tate fell off the face of the earth. Weaver was inactive for most of the two years inbetween 1980-1982 with only one defense and largely due to injury. That AND he was promoted by Bob Arum who wasn’t too quick to risk losing control of that fragment of the crown. In the interim while all this was going on, Larry Holmes was actively defending on average three times per year and for the most part against the better challengers around. While Tate went into a cave and Weaver was nursing injuries and Dokes being groomed for an eventual takeover ( that never happened ) Holmes beat Trevor Berbick, Leon Spinks, Renaldo Snipes Gerry Cooney and Muhammad Ali which was tragic but also final verification of lineage…. What else did you want ? Now as I’ve stated many times before, Larry went soft after the Cooney fight and took on some pretty weak challengers in place of rightful title contenders and unifications. But from 1978-1982 his reign was justifiably solid…

 

Before Holmes won the title, he was the red-headed stepchild of Don King's stable. He was regularly matched to lose against fighters who were held in higher regard by his own promoter and stiffed on pay. I remember the story where King threatened to break his legs if he didn't fight Young Sanford for 10K instead of the 90K Bob Arum offered him for the same fight.

I'm not a fan of Larry's reign and think he's overhyped, but I think his "Most money for the least threat" approach to his defenses came from these experiences and not from any fear of an opponent. Larry is a hard man and always was pretty fearless. I wish he would've unified with Weaver in a rematch (50/50 fight to me) or defended against Coetzee or Page (I think he was 90/10 against Page and would be a big favorite against Coetzee too), but the older I get, the more I think I understand his approach. He was busy enough that I can overlook hacks like Rodriquez and Frank and Zanon getting shots.

 

I would think promotional ties would make the fight easier to make. Yes, I get that all of the fights had obstacles, but that is exactly the point--Holmes would have had to have been the motivating force behind it, as other champs would go on to be.

What else do I want? Unification.

At some point in his seven years of title reighn, Homes should have thought to have insisted on fighting the other guy calling himself a champion. If you want to confine that to '83-'85, good with me. As long as we can agree on that, I am good with it. I think missing out on Dokes, Page, Coetzee (not talent wise, but because the fight was offered) and to a lesser extent, Tubbs (because he was not perceived as being as good as he was) and Thomas (because of how late in the game that was) is a much, much bigger blight on his record than Dempsey not fighting Wills or Marciano not fighting Valdez.

 

Yeah i give Holmes a hard time over ducking all the top challenges post Witherspoon (there's any amount of facts out there) but failing to unify isn't remotely in that league. Here's some extras to your already sound argument -

At the time the WBC and WBA were extremely difficult to get into bed together. The politics of the era were immense and it was hell to get a unification happening. What unifications were there from 80-83? Leonard - Hearns which was a huge money match and Leonard and perhaps Hearns as well had some freedom and flexibility in their contractual obligations. Spinks - Qawi came off but both of these guys did their jobs (in the ring) building the fight and Qawi had a huge leg up by beating the highly rated Saad who was actually being heavily maneuvered to fight Spinks at that time. Fights like Sanchez - Pedroza and Chandler - Pintor were never made.

Tate had a following and I believe if he beat Weaver and had one or two more impressive wins the fight would have sold itself. Then Weaver as you say was inactive.

Here's the biggie tho - both Holmes and Weaver were lusting after the money Cooney brought to the table. They sure weren't worried about each other While Cooney was worth what he was worth. Weaver was going to fight him but politics killed it off then King nabbed him for Holmes. Cooney was a far bigger fish than unification. Weaver then lost to the Carl King controlled Dokes and that ended it. If Weaver beat Dokes i doubt Holmes would have fought him as that would have coincided with his avoiding the best challengers from 83 onward and wouldn't have brought enough money. If Weaver beat Dokes and Holmes was offered many millions to take him on i reckon he would have. Fair chance the money wouldn't have been "enough" however.

 

The odds for Page opened at 8-5 in Holmes favor with no hindsight involved.

Holmes most certainly wasn't scared of any of them in the standard fashion, heavens no. What he was scared of was taking riskier fights against guys that had more chance to beat him because he knew he was in decline. No-one expected Witherspoon to remotely worry him and Tim had actually struggled mightily beating Snipes in a mildly controversial fight. It did result in him sitting on the title from Witherspoon forward.

 

I think John Thomas and I collaboratively highlighted why the WBA and WBC heavyweight title went without unification between 1978-1982. Even 1983 would have been hard since Dokes had it for most of that year and wouldn’t lose it until the very end of the year. A fight between Holmes and coetzee was in negotiations but it fell through on Coetzee’s end. In the end it was mostly Page, Thomas and the rematch with Witherspoon which had the combination of being most avoided and were the most makable.

 

I agree with your point about Marciano-Valdez. I disagree strongly about Dempsey. Dempsey went a full three years without a single defense. Frankly I can’t think of a finer example where a champion literally just “Sat” on the title. I mean literally until he got impressions on his ass from doing it… I certainly hope that you don’t rate Dempsey higher than Holmes based on the standards that you’ve been laying out..

 

From 1979 until Larry Holmes lost to Michel Spinks in 1985, nine different men not named Larry Holmes laid claim to being heavyweight champion of the world.

They made a grand total of four successful title defenses. It was a revolving door of guys playing hot potato with the WBA, and for a short time after Holmes gave it up, WBC titles. Of those four successful defenses, only three were wins — Dokes had a draw with Weaver.

The financial facts of unifications is that — especially at that time — there had to be a huge public demand for a unification to make it worth enough money for those organizations to be on board with it. They wanted their own champions.

Further complicating it, you had two major rival promoters in Don King and Bob Arum, and neither was keen on letting the other have control of THE heavyweight title. Better for Arum to have his own, lesser champ in the most lucrative and recognized weight class than to let King have it all — and in brief periods where King had ‘both’ champs (aka Holmes and Dokes) he would rather put on defenses of BOTH and make more money than unify them … unless it ever reached the point where there were two and only two guys who had enough recognition and clout to make the public demand for it worth the money he’d lose by not having both guys. And that never happened, because none of his ‘other’ champs could hold onto it long enough to gain name recognition and make people want to see that unification.

There’s also this: Holmes did sign to fight Coetzee (with a date and a place and a stipulated purse) … but the South African financing fell through. And then Arum tried to revive it and he couldn’t put together enough money to make it — you have to remember that fighters (and their managers) expect to get paid more for a unification than a ‘regular’ defense.

It’s a business.

Had someone grabbed the WBA title and defended it several times against top names (as Holmes had done) to plant their flag and say ‘I AM THE CHAMP’ and been able to mount a challenge that the public would want to see who was the ‘real’ champ, the money would have been there and the fight would have likely happened.

 

I don't rate Dempsey very highly and had just made a thread about it. My point is not that he gets a pass on Wills. In fact he, has even more ducks that are not discussed, like Greb and Siki. My point is really just the fixation that fans have on some historical ducks...the Wills and Valdez fights being an obsession with some, when you have a guy like Holmes that turned down a number of unifications and number 1 contenders that where put in front of him.

 

I'll let it go because again, we are not that far off, but I think John Thomas' own observations work against him. He pointed out unifications that WERE made, and that is exactly my point. The guys who got it pushed for it and threw money at it. It could be done.

It did not call through on Coetzee's end. Holmes said that he would not fight Coetzee in South Africa because it was an apartheid state, with I think is absurd...what better of protesting apartheid than beating a white champion in South Africa?

But I'll let you have the last word on in. I end where I begin. In a seven year reign he should of and could of found a chance to unify. He liked fighting "little guys for big money," and, again, in his own words, expected his promotors to find him guys that he can beat. If we are going to hold Dempsey accountable for Wills (which we should) and Marciano accountable for Valdez (which is a modern affectation devoid of any merit) then Holmes out to be held accountable for failing to unify, and failing to fight a number of the best challenges of his era.

 

They don't work against me at all. The two unifications occurred where both blokes had made multiple defenses and where both had a strong following and were considered the best in the division. There was a big public interest in these two fights. I also named two that were mouth watering matchups that didn't come close to being made. There was also half a dozen or so other divisions where unifications weren't made.

Post Tate being beaten by Weaver nobody considered Holmes to be second apart from well later on when he was declining and Thomas gained some followers. You've also totally ignored my fact that everyone was after the big dollars in Cooney.

 

First off, Larry Holmes did sign to fight Coetzee … in Las Vegas. And the money promised did not materialize. Here’s one of dozens of stories about the fight (including ones about the cancellation when the promoter did not come through with the money as contracted):

https://www.upi.com/Archives/1984/0...-Coetzee-both-know-money-talks/1947451112400/

Second, it’s easy for you to say he should have gone to a country where dark-skinned people were legally not recognized to have human rights that white people there did. Holmes had already spoken out publicly against apartheid.

Important black leaders like Arthur Ashe and Harry Belafonte pleaded with him to make sure he didn’t succumb to money to sell out to a ‘white’ state. South Africa wasn’t allowed to compete in the Olympics. There were worldwide boycotts of its products. The United Nations voted to sanction the country. Holmes was delivered a copy of a UN-kept list of performers who took the blood money (most, not all white … Frank Sinatra being a repeat offender) and didn’t want his name on such a list.

He took a stand for what was right. He also accepted a fight with Coetzee elsewhere and signed a contract. Then the money didn’t materialize and the promoter backed out. Even at that point, he tried to work with Don King (a man who had fleeced him before and with whom he had parted ways) to make the fight still happen … and King couldn’t make the finances work and it didn’t happen.

You say ‘it wasn’t on Coetzee,’ which is true — but it wasn’t on Holmes either. It was on promoters who couldn’t come up with the money to make it work.