Larry Holmes on Sky Sports

Did anybody see this? I thought he was very good. Lots of amusing stories and anecdotes about the likes of Ali, Foreman and Don King.

Some of the things he said:

He considers himself the greatest ever heavyweight
The heavyweights of today are useless
Mike Tyson would not have beaten himself, Frazier, Foreman, Ali or Norton if he was around earlier
He predicted Tyson would end up dead or in jail a year before Tysons incarceration
He predicts Mayweather will go broke
He thinks Joshua is talented and would like to teach him
Lennox Lewis was only a 4/10 fighter
He was scared of Shavers
Don King tricked him into signing for the Tyson fight by telling him he would have 9 months to train. Once Holmes had signed the fight was rescheduled giving him only a couple of months to get into shape.
Talked about how to use the jab properly, heavyweights today cant jab and move.
Foreman turned down 10million to fight him.
Foreman was too slow and telegraphed his punches
He didnt like Norton
Boxing is in desperate need of a real heavyweight champion
Joe Louis was the best heavyweight in history aside from himself

boxing has a real heavyweight champion just nobody likes him in the U.S or UK. I thought it was an interesting watch

Really good watch and was quite funny at times!

catchweight wrote:
He predicts Mayweather will go broke

I'm not one to usually laugh at the misfortune of others, but I would love this to happen  

wheelchair1991 wrote:boxing has a real heavyweight champion just nobody likes him in the U.S or UK.  I thought it was an interesting watch

....there are a lot of parallels between Klitschko and Holmes.

I don't recall Holmes criticising any of todays HW's, and I believe he gave Lewis' jab a 4/10 not Lewis himself.

Would love to have Larry around operating now, but he's definitely not the greatest ever....

Still, some interesting points though. Can't see Floyd going broke though, his lifestyle is ridiculous but he can make $10m like it's nothing and he seems to have a smart enough head on his shoulders to not do an Evander.

I agree boxing needs a real heavyweight champion. Klitschko's the champion but my God does he suck.

Larry gives good copy. His acceptance speech at canastota is worth checking out on you tube.

Nice to see Holmes tipping the hat to Louis.

Mayweather will just have SOOOOOO much money he might not go completely broke.

Mayweather never heard the phrase "Be nice to people on the way up as you'll be meeting them again on the way back down."

What's this, people seemingly implying that Mayweather isn't much of an intellectual and not a fountain of philosophy? Controversial!

Anyway, Larry always gives good value whenever he's on camera, whatever capacity it's in. As jimdig has already said, his Hall of Fame induction speech is top class.

On top of that, this little gem which I couldn't find for years; the now infamous post-fight press conference for the first Spinks fight (yep, the one with THAT line about Rocky). Although he does it with a little more humour and class, Holmes' arrogance could give Naz a run for his money here, particularly when he starts airing his differences with Rocky's brother Peter Marciano, who is in the crowd!



Also, for anyone else who is a fan of Holmes' smack talking abilities, check out the Rocky Pepeli fight if you haven't seen it.....Well, not the actual fight itself, but the pre-fight interviews and, even better, the immediate post-fight ones!

Holmes throwing a kick off the top of a car is hard to top.

Larry Holmes should never have tried to match Marciano's record, he didn't need it. For me, 48-0 with 21 title defenses is easily better than 49-0 with 6 defenses.

I always liked Holmes when he was fighting and I thought he won both of the fights with Mike Spinks.

How can someone who's defining fight was against Cooney and lost twice against a light heavy weight call himself the best heavy weight ever?

Good question, rapidringsroad. Larry is the all-time Heavyweight champion of trash talk, but even he hasn't been able to convince anyone that he's the division's gold medal winner just yet.

I'd say his defining fight was against Norton not Cooney combined with Shavers and Witherspoon he's got four wins to compare to any heavyweight outside of Ali. Losing to Spinks isn't something you expect of a great heavyweight and whilst I think he deserved the nod in the rematch he legitimately lost the first fight.

Depends how you look at it, I guess. Cooney was certainly the biggest and most anticipated fight of his championship career, at least.

He fought and beat better fighters than Gerry, for sure, but in some of those fights the wins don't appear as impressive as they should because he either a) was made to struggle or sometimes win contentiously when he was expected to dominate (Witherspoon, Weaver etc) or b) beat an opponent who was a little past their best (Norton, Shavers etc).

Could argue that, all things considered, Cooney was Holmes' overall best performance as champion as it showed a little bit of everything of what made him such a brilliant fighter, and also because he was in there with an unbeaten, young and legitimately dangerous challenger who performed very, very well himself.

Although my personal favourite for Holmes is his win over Mercer. Often shoved aside for some of the aforementioned fights because it happened years after Holmes' championship peak, but I always have a little smile on my face watching old man Lar rope-a-dope the unbeaten (and pretty useful on his day, too) Mercer, even doing a little showboating for the cameras as he does!

Great, great entertainment from Holmes in that one, and his punch accuracy off the ropes was superb. A badly overweight Mercer, down on his luck and certainly not taking the sport as seriously as he should have been by then, was able to give a pretty much peak Lewis kittens four years later, which puts some extra perspective on Holmes' win there.

rapidringsroad wrote:   How can someone who's defining fight was against Cooney and lost twice against a light heavy weight call himself the best heavy weight ever?

I wouldn't call Holmes the greatest heavyweight champ either. But if you're going to hold losing to a light heavyweight against him then you should also hold Ali losing to Leon Spinks against Ali. Leon may never have been a light heavyweight, but he was 6-0-1 when he went in with Ali. He had no business getting a title shot and Ali had no business losing to him. At least Michael Spinks was a world champ and entered the ring against Holmes 26-0. Infact, when he challenged Holmes, Michael had had more title fights than Leon had had fights when he challenged Ali.

Ali has the excuse of not having had a good performance in years and being utterly shot to pieces by then. Like, more shot than bonnie and clyde, plus he got pretty decisive revenge.

Very much enjoyed the interview.

Strongback wrote:Mayweather never heard the phrase "Be nice to people on the way up as you'll be meeting them again on the way back down."

To be fair he does give a lot to charity

Diamond in the rough wrote:

Strongback wrote:Mayweather never heard the phrase "Be nice to people on the way up as you'll be meeting them again on the way back down."

To be fair he does give a lot to charity

Charities won't do him a favour when he's down on his luck with his cash running out.

I may be controversial when I say celeb charity work is often about the stars own ego especially when they shout about it from the rooftops.

John Bloody Wayne wrote:Ali has the excuse of not having had a good performance in years and being utterly shot to pieces by then. Like, more shot than bonnie and clyde, plus he got pretty decisive revenge.

Can't have been that shot, he won the rematch.

Ali was shot, not as shot as he became but he was finished by the Spinks fight, that he was able to win the rematch says more about Neon Leons lack of ability.

Or more about what neon Leon had been up to in the interim.

Not sure I'd agree re how larry's best wins stack up. Shavers was a dangerous banger but past his prime if he ever had one. Norton, is the best win on paper, but it was wafer thin. Terrible Tim was a very capable fighter but a novice  (Though the holmes fight was probably his peak) and gave him all the trouble he could handle. And cooney was a great white hope. On the plus side, he came through those fights (though truss would take issue re witherspoon) and found a way to win, in adversity.

Its the problem with Holmes. He was a great fighter, but his record does have a touch of the calzaghe's about it.

milkyboy wrote:Its the problem with Holmes. He was a great fighter, but his record does have a touch of the calzaghe's about it.

Wow. Big Pants' record being compared to Calzaghe's. Ouch.

I can see what where you're coming from though, milky, in the sense that both men kept winning title fights for an eternity, but generally against a string of sometimes pretty damn good (but not great) fighters, occasionally run of the mill fighters and then, every now and then, pretty poor fighters (in world title terms, anyway).

I think what probably keeps Larry a few levels higher than Joe, for me at least, is that he was in general taking care of the best challengers available to him and doing just about all that was possible for him to do. Although he didn't unify any titles, he garnered Ring Magazine title recognition the moment Weaver stunned Tate in that fifteenth round (on the back of him having already beaten Weaver, of course) and by and large fought the best names available. Fair enough, Holmes maybe earned that official number one status by default in a way, but in retrospect I think there was enough to applaud in his performances and opposition to install him as the top man in his weight class from 1980 onwards.

On the other hand, Calzaghe took an age to make that step up from titlist to divisional kingpin, and all the while there were a shed load of tough but also attractive fights in the division above him (peak versions of Jones, Michalczewski, Tarver, Glen Johnson etc) which offered a big improvement on the Pudwills, Salems and Veits of this world. But for reasons best known to himself, Calzaghe never seemed all that keen to be in on this at the time.

I can understand and appreciate anyone's misgivings when it comes to Holmes' record (particularly in light of how excited Larry himself gets whenever he recounts it!) but in general I think there's enough there to bolster the idea that he was something very, very special, particularly when compared to other Heavyweights (not the deepest division historically as we know). With Calzaghe, I'm not sure that's the case.

To be honest Milky outside of the four fighters I mentioned the rest of his defences remind me a lot of Wlad, some pretty damn awful opponents. Smith and Weaver get elevated because they took part in pass the parcel with the WBA and WBC belts but if we're honest neither were ever that good. There are though very few heavyweights with wins of any interest, Dempsey, Marciano and Louis have none but are all shoe ins for the top ten, it's an odd division. Foreman runs over Frazier and Norton but would find himself below men who have no wins that could come even close to comparing to those two.

It's been such a poor division we find some very good but not great fighters considered to be great heavyweights, Ali is the only one I would consider to be special and have greatness comparable to anyone.

I thought the calzaghe line might grab someone's attention!

When i said 'touch of calzaghe's' that's what i meant, long unbeaten run, not a great deal of quality on it.

Though it might not have come across in that post   i do rate larry. He was just guardian of a poor and fragmented division in the post ali pre tyson period. Not his fault.

Can't need too harsh on Mayweather - he's hosting Clinics all across South Africa free of charge this week, so he can't be all bad?

kingraf wrote:Can't need too harsh on Mayweather - he's hosting Clinics all across South Africa free of charge this week, so he can't be all bad?

Two words.............Tax Break.

Better to do something than nothing regardless of the reasons behind, those with money are in a no win situation.

I lways think Larry suffers following on from the era before and being so close to ali and in his camp for so long didn't help him when trying to escape his shadow.
He took on the best available at the time when he was champion that's all anyone can ask really.

He also said Mayweather was the only star of boxing today........

I guess the OP forgot to put that one in for some reason.........

Holmes doesn't suffer wheelchair quite the opposite.......

He's in most peoples top 6...........He squeaked past a hammered by Foreman NORTON.......Decked off an old Ali beaten Shavers............Got a gift against a 12 fight novice in Witherspoon..........and ducked Greg Page and Pinklon Thomas amongst others.........But it's okay when he does it........Lost to a blown up 175 pounder.......

Also must be said we only had two titles back then and HOLMES did more than anybody else to legitimise the IBF and start Boxing's decline.....

Ali the best by a country mile...........Holmes though is in my top 6 after Foreman.......

Brought that up the other day, Truss. I must be the only person on here who can't understand why people shout 'robbery' when it comes to Witherspoon-Holmes. One of the cards (118-111) was a disgrace, but honestly I feel that a draw was the very, very kindest I could be to Tim.

Well we can all have an opinion and it's fairplay..

Not that it means anything because I as I scored both Mosley's fights for Oscar BUT Consensus is with me on the Witherspoon-Holmes fight..

But like I said not that it means anything..

Holmes won and that's all that matters........

larry holmes was great he did beat the ali great victory