{"id":366653,"date":"2025-12-23T12:34:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T12:34:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/366653\/"},"modified":"2025-12-23T12:34:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T12:34:12","slug":"heavyweight-ko-artist-earnie-shavers-said-muhammad-ali-was-not-the-best-he-faced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/366653\/","title":{"rendered":"Heavyweight KO artist Earnie Shavers said Muhammad Ali was not the best he faced"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hard-hitting heavyweight Earnie Shavers was unlucky with timing, competing during a period when his division was littered with talent. Although, whilst Muhammad Ali<\/a> is often credited as the standout fighter of that era, Shavers believed that another of his opponents was a better fighter.<\/p>\n

Shavers debuted in 1969 and fought professionally for over 26 years, facing a total of five heavyweight world champions during that time and becoming recognised as one of the greatest to never get his hands on the fabled crown.<\/p>\n

In 1977, he challenged Ali for the heavyweight throne at Madison Square Garden in New York, but failed to capitalise on the wounded legend early in the fight before going on to lose a unanimous decision<\/a>, in what was one of Ali\u2019s most impressive victories of the latter stages of his career.<\/p>\n

Two years later, Shavers once again came up short when bidding for the title; one of many to be halted by Larry Holmes during the remarkable reign of \u2018The Easton Assassin\u2019.<\/p>\n

In an interview with Boxing News<\/a> before his death, Shavers admitted that he recognised Holmes as the best opponent of his lengthy career.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think Larry Holmes was the best fighter I ever fought. He was better than Ali. See, they both had great jabs, but Ali\u2019s was a flicking jab; Holmes\u2019 was a puncher\u2019s jab! They were both truly great of course, but I give Larry the edge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shavers hung up the gloves with a record of 76-14-1 after 91 professional contests<\/a> and sadly passed away back in September 2022.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hard-hitting heavyweight Earnie Shavers was unlucky with timing, competing during a period when his division was littered with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":366654,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-366653","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-boxing","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}