{"id":794295,"date":"2026-07-11T22:07:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T22:07:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/794295\/"},"modified":"2026-07-11T22:07:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-11T22:07:11","slug":"larry-holmes-says-one-heavyweight-legend-would-have-been-a-nobody-in-his-era-wed-all-beat-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/794295\/","title":{"rendered":"Larry Holmes says one heavyweight legend would have been a nobody in his era: “We’d all beat him”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Larry Holmes<\/a> has named the heavyweight icon who he believes several all-time greats, including himself, Muhammad Ali<\/a>, Joe Frazier and Ken Norton, would have defeated.<\/p>\n

Holmes remained an unbeaten world champion between 1978 and 1985<\/a>, before suffering a surprising and controversial defeat to Michael Spinks.<\/p>\n

Prior to that, many suspected \u2018The Easton Assassin\u2019 to be past his prime at 35 years old, yet he was nonetheless heavily favoured to retain his IBF title against Spinks.<\/p>\n

Their immediate rematch then resulted in another contentious win for Spinks, a former light-heavyweight king, who suffered a first-round stoppage defeat to Mike Tyson<\/a> around two years later.<\/p>\n

It was just a few months earlier, though, that Holmes, having not fought since his rematch with Spinks, attempted to dethrone the ferocious wrecking machine from Brooklyn, New York.<\/p>\n

This, of course, did not go according to plan, as Tyson dished out a four-round beatdown and resumed his ruthless surge before losing to \u2018Buster\u2019 Douglas in 1990<\/a>.<\/p>\n

During a 1989 interview with Bryant Gumble<\/a>, however, Holmes insisted that Tyson would not have garnered anywhere near the same success in his heavyweight era.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone in this room [including Ali, Frazier and Norton] would\u2019ve been able to beat Mike Tyson. You would\u2019ve never heard of him [in our era].\u201d<\/p>\n

Regardless of generational debates, Holmes and Tyson are both considered among the greatest heavyweights of all time, along with Ali, Frazier and Norton.<\/p>\n

In fact, after doing this interview with Gumble, Holmes ended up making a comeback and fighting until 2002.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Larry Holmes has named the heavyweight icon who he believes several all-time greats, including himself, Muhammad Ali, Joe…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":794296,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,85],"class_list":["post-794295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boxing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794295","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=794295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/794296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=794295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=794295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=794295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}