{"id":381119,"date":"2026-01-01T08:25:17","date_gmt":"2026-01-01T08:25:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/381119\/"},"modified":"2026-01-01T08:25:17","modified_gmt":"2026-01-01T08:25:17","slug":"heavyweight-great-says-muhammad-ali-was-his-idol-but-considers-himself-the-best-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/381119\/","title":{"rendered":"Heavyweight great says Muhammad Ali was his idol but considers himself ‘the best ever’"},"content":{"rendered":"

To become a world champion requires a fighter to believe he or she is the greatest. No man embodied this better than Muhammad Ali<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Part of Ali\u2019s persona was to label himself the very best, but what he achieved led others to do the same. Inside the ropes, he was the first ever three-time heavyweight champion, beating the likes of Sonny Liston, George Foreman and Joe Frazier along the way.<\/a> Outside of the the ring, his cultural impact is immeasurable.<\/p>\n

Though he is number one in the eyes of many, others can\u2019t see past the achievements of Joe Louis, or the more modern-day boxing of Lennox Lewis. A man who is usually regarded in the top ten heavyweights ever, but rarely number one, is Larry Holmes.<\/a><\/p>\n

Speaking to Sky Sports<\/a>, \u2018The Easton Assassin\u2019 explained why he should take the top spot.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t really get the recognition that I would normally get like a Mike Tyson. I had (nearly) 20 title defences. Mike Tyson had three or four and then lost.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was champ for seven-and-a-half years. They don\u2019t want to recognize me. [Muhammad] Ali don\u2019t have the fights that I had defending the title. He didn\u2019t hold his title for seven and a half years. Only one guy had that title for longer than seven and a half years [and that] was Joe Louis. And the only person that had a record like mine was Rocky Marciano, nobody else.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy does Muhammad Ali got to be the greatest? He could say he\u2019s the greatest, you could say he\u2019s the greatest but I know different. I\u2019m the greatest!\u201d<\/p>\n

On paper, Holmes could point to his victory over Ali in 1980 as his case in point, though a closer look would show that Ali should have been far from a ring that night. Holmes later said that he was asking the referee to stop the action but was forced to continue fighting, beating the legend to a late stoppage \u2014 the only of Ali\u2019s campaign.<\/p>\n

Where he can\u2019t be denied is his comparison to Marciano, as he was just one fight away from equalling that latter\u2019s famous 49-0 record before losing on points to Michael Spinks in \u201985. He failed to avenge the defeat in a rematch six months later, and retired for two years before returning to lose to Mike Tyson inside four rounds. Holmes fought on until 2002 before retiring.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To become a world champion requires a fighter to believe he or she is the greatest. No man…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":381120,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-381119","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/381120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}