Record at Heavyweight:- 39 fights 26 wins 10 Losses 2 Draws 1 No contest Of his wins 11 knockouts. What are peoples thoughts on this, as if we're looking at his status are the lines being blurred between how good he was at Cruiser and bringing that into discussions about his heavyweight career?
Hi Stewart, Numbers alone don't tell the whole story, that said I value dominance highly in my ranking criteria & so have Holyfield lower than most in my HW ranking, at #15, which are based solely on fights contested at HW. Turnip is correct that most of his loses came passed prime, I have his HW record during his prime years as 18-3, with his 3 x defeats to Riddick Bowe (1-2) & Michael Moorer (1-1). His lineal HW world title record is 5-3-1, which inlcudes 2 x losses to Lewis when he 36 & 37 (though not quite as far removed from his peak as some will have you believe, imo). Aside from Bowe & Moorer, his win resume at HW is decent, 2 x past prime Tyson, Pinklon Thomas, Ray Mercer, way past prime versions of Larry Holmes & George Foreman, Hasim Rahman, James Tillis, Bert Cooper and an out of shape Buster Douglas is pretty good, but given his lack of dominance & his defeats, it's not top 10 of all time worthy, imo. I think Holyfield is often overrated at HW & underrated from a P4P perspective.
What I find interesting is how Evander's early reign was seen as being quite disappointing at the time. I think fans were missing the excitement of Tyson and felt that when Holy struggled with Cooper, a Tysonesque slugger and then went 12 with old men Foreman and Holmes he was a bit of a paper champion. I think it was only when he lost bravely to Bowe and then won the rematch to regain his title that he got some respect as a HW. Then his wins over Tyson pushed him into the realms of being a fan favorite and discussed as a legitimate great fighter. I remember after his first few defenses after beating Douglas people were looking past Holy and expected him to be knocked off by either Ruddock, Bowe or Lewis. When this happened with Bowe many fans were hailing the start of a new era,with Riddick then fighting Tyson and Lewis then Holyfield most likely retiring or becoming an opponent. When Bowe also proved a disappointment, the Lewis fight failed to materialize and then Evander beat him (plus Lewis hardly setting the world on fire with his first few championship fights) all eyes went back on Tyson to save the division. Then Evander beat Tyson, was reevaluated as a true worrier and survivor and Lennox stepped up his game to be seen as the best of that era.
Evander Holyfield defeated a DOZEN heavyweight champions: Pinklon Thomas, Michael Dokes (voted heavyweight fight ot the 80s), Buster Douglas, George Foreman, Larry Holmes, Riddick Bowe, Michael Moorer, Mike Tyson (twice), Ray Mercer (WBO), John Ruiz, Hasim Rahman and Frans Botha. Regardless of who he was at cruiserweight, if you defeat a dozen heavyweight champions and become the Heavyweight Champion multiple times yourself, you're among the best ever. Of the former cruiserweight champions who moved up, Usyk has beaten one heavyweight champion. Carlos DeLeon beat one. S.T. Gordon beat one. Juan Carlos Gomez beat one. James Toney beat two. David Haye beat two. Orlin Norris beat two. There may have been one or two others, but that's about it. Holyfield beat 12 heavyweight champions. Kind of a big deal. Between Joshua, Usyk, Fury, Wilder and Vitali ... all of them combined 'maybe' beat 12 heavyweight champions (depending on your definition). The point is, he was pretty great.
Holyfield was up against very strong competition, and should have retired much earlier. He is a four-time heavyweight world champion, and the fight with Nikolai Valuev, when he was 47 years old, was an opportunity to become a five-time world heavyweight champion. Even Nikolai Valuev retired before Evander Holyfield. Do you know any other champion, who fought with this kind of competition: - Nikolai Valuev - Sultan Ibragimov - HW James Toney - Chris Byrd - Hasim Rahman - Lennox Lewis x 2 - Michael Moorer x 2 - Mike Tyson x 2 - Riddick Bowe x 3 - Ray Mercer - Larry Holmes - George Foreman - James Douglas - Pinklon Thomas - Michael Dokes? Of course I didn't count Holyfield's entire Cruiserweight career. The story of defeated champions continues in that case. Holyfield is definitely ATG Cruiserweight and ATG Heavyweight.
Bowe beat Evander on Friday the 13th. I think there's something to that. Holyfield should have scheduled the fight on Saturday the 14th.
Some people say "I rate champions based on dominanace" But you have to take into account the level of opposition. Holyfield had the toughest road, especially at his age (came to heavyweight late) -Tyson fought almost bum-of-the-month competition. So Tyson was more dominant in his era.. but who would pick Tyson over Holyfield by now in mythical matchups? Some stubborn people.
Were talking about an era in which an ancient Foreman and Michael Moorer were lineal champions. I think the era is overrated based on being competitive at the top level but that doesn't correlate with greatness necessarily.
These are exceptional statistics, in the history of the division. However some of those numbers, were accomplished by him fighting well beyond what was in his interests. The attributes that made him great, made him unable to quit!
Bowe is really overrated and Holyfield should have definitely won that fight, it's just he forgot to take his PEDs the night before so he was fighting him on the same level. And to be fair, Evan Fields was a superb boxer so long as he didnt miss his daily dose of steroids and HGH.
