{"id":249084,"date":"2025-11-07T10:07:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-07T10:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/249084\/"},"modified":"2025-11-07T10:07:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T10:07:08","slug":"evander-holyfield-names-the-greatest-heavyweight-in-boxing-history-its-not-muhammad-ali","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/249084\/","title":{"rendered":"Evander Holyfield names the greatest heavyweight in boxing history: “It’s not Muhammad Ali”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Evander Holyfield<\/a> is more qualified than most when it comes to debating who the greatest heavyweight of all time is.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2018The Real Deal\u2019 moved up to heavyweight in the late 1980s after becoming undisputed at cruiserweight, and it didn\u2019t take him long to make an impact in the banner division.<\/p>\n

He became undisputed heavyweight champion with a victory over Buster Douglas in 1990, and further wins throughout his career against the likes of Mike Tyson, George Foreman, Larry Holmes and Riddick Bowe cemented Holyfield\u2019s place as one of the best ever.<\/p>\n

In terms of the number one heavyweight of all time, most boxing fans give that honour to Muhammad Ali<\/a>, having become a three-time world heavyweight champion with wins over fighters such as Foreman, Joe Frazier and Sonny Liston.<\/p>\n

Holyfield disagrees though, as he told Seconds Out<\/a> that he believes his own achievements outweigh anything that Ali managed to achieve.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m the only four-time heavyweight champion of the world but they are still talking about Ali when I broke his record. I\u2019ve been the only four-time heavyweight champion of the world for 24 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t talk about it until you break someone\u2019s record, they don\u2019t say nothing about me. How do you cut somebody out of history? Now I didn\u2019t even know I was the first person to be undisputed in two weight divisions, until Usyk did it. They keep saying Ali is the best fighter, no I am. He was three times, I\u2019m four.\u201d<\/p>\n

Holyfield\u2019s argument is a fair one, but the debate over the greatest heavyweight of all time will no doubt continue to rage on for years to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Evander Holyfield is more qualified than most when it comes to debating who the greatest heavyweight of all…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249085,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-249084","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249084\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}