The most underrated heavyweight champion of all time
 

1. He won an Olympic Gold Medal after boxing only 1.5 years and with only 20 amateur fights going into the Olympics. That is just unbelievable, in some ways his most notable achievement.

2. He destroyed an undefeated heavyweight champion who was considered the best heavyweight in the world at the time, crushed him in only 2 rounds and ruined his reputation to this day, Joe Frazier who was a true all time great. Smokin' Joe is an equal to Marciano, but does not get the credit he deserves because of his loss to Foreman.

3. Big George came back and won the lineal heavyweight title 20 years after losing it. That is just mind boggling. No one and I mean no one else could do that, not Jack Johnson, not Jack Dempsey, not Joe Louis, not Rocky Marciano, and not Muhammad Ali. Nobody.

Of course the talk is about George Foreman

http://coxscorner.tripod.com/Foreman2.html

I'm a huge fan of George, incredible man

I'm a huge fan of him

Yes maybe underrated is not the right word, but I think he should be always mentioned as the top of what the sport ever offered.

Anyone who saw even the 1974 fight with Ali has to admit he outboxed Ali big time.

He was a better boxer at that time, but Ali's faith won over him.

George was a fantastic fighter and makes a great Grill also...:1orglaugh

:thumbsup:thumbsup

how can you say he is underrated isn't he like 5th or 6th on the all time list

Underrated?

one of the all time greats! :thumbsup

Underrated? The guy has a huge selling grill... He's HUGE period.

The website I linked to is actually excellent, I'm reading it the whole afternoon.

Larry Holmes is the all time underated heavy weight boxing champion.

He's so underated that you made this thead and left his name out.

http://www.larryholmes.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Holmes

Yeah, I'm even reading about those really old school guys from 30's or so, those had to be incredible fighters.

The problem of Larry is that he was a part of the golden age of boxing, where the best fighters challenged other best fighters without the 4 associations bullshit.

So many incredible boxers for one title.

Joe Frazier, Sonny Liston, Ken Norton, Larry Holmes, Ali, George Foreman, Ernie Shavers those were all legends and I value them much much more than Klitschko for example, although I don't believe that these days fighters would be much worse, they definitely absolve less really tough fights though.

Does he know you are stalking him?

George certainly wasn’t underated.

It's not my words, you're all arguing with Monte Cox.

Who's much better expert than me.

The most underated White boxer ever is Jerry Quarry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Quarry

If ever you get the chance to see the Rumble in the Jungle documentary from the day you will see that he was one of the most "rated" fighters of the 20th century.

I would say Larry Holmes.

Well Monte Cox is wrong, George gets plenty of respect. The most underrated HW champ is probably Sonny Liston, who in his prime just might be the 2nd greatest HW fighter in history. His bad luck was to get shut out of the championship picture until he was past his prime, then he ran smack dab into a young Ali.

Foreman sparred with Liston when he was on the way up, and said that Sonny was the only man who ever made him turn into a boxer - trying to get away from Sonny's shots.

Hmmmmmmmmm??

But still Holmes held the title all that time with almost zero respect in the media.
I think that gives him the underated title.

No, Holmes is pretty well respected too, just not as respected as he would LIKE to be. He wants to be considered the best ever, truth is I could name half a dozen HW fighters off the top of my head that I think would smash him on his best day. He was the absolute ruler of a weak division, not his fault, but facts is facts. There were no monsters lurking for him to prove himself against when he was at his best. Larry also got taken right to the wall by some pretty marginal guys, Reynaldo Snipes comes to mind.

Reynaldo Snipes only got one lucky punch that stunned Holmes for a while so I don't
count that.

Maybe he wanted to be "the best ever" but I think it was more like he wanted to
be given his just respect for missing the Marciano record by one fight and that
fight was a farce because Holmes won it for sure. And people celebrated that
Holmes didn't break the record. Now that's lack of respect.

he was pretty bad ass..

Awesome post,

and I couldn't agree more.. he is very underrated.

You never hear about george or see him on documentaries like you do others.

Nice post :thumbsup

They didn't like Holmes, and he didn't do anything to make them like him. I will spend exactly 45 seconds thinking about this:

HEAVYWEIGHTS WHO WOULD BEAT LARRY HOLMES:

Mike Tyson
George Foreman
Sonny Liston
Muhammad Ali
Ike Ibeabuchi
Lennox Lewis
Evander Holyfield

And that's without giving it any serious thought. I would give either K brother a good chance against him, and I would make a young David Tua the favorite against him, although he's not a lock.

Larry wasn't far from his prime when he got beat by Spinks, a man MUCH smaller than him, and he DID lose that second fight no question about it. He gets credit a lot of times for having the 'best' jab, when Ali's was MUCH better. Had he been born a couple generations earlier, there would be no need to debate his greatness, because he would have had some L's hung on him right quick.

Again: You're trying to talk about fighters who don't get enough respect. Holmes, in all likelihood, gets more than he deserves. For what it's worth, I DO think he won the first Spinks fight and should have got that record, and sure as hell he would kick Marciano's ass all over the ring.

That's because he went life and death with Norton, a man 6 yrs older than him in his absolute prime. Foreman DESTROYED Norton and Foreman DESTROYED Frazier. This is why you see Foreman and Ali in documentaries and you don't see Holmes.

Holmes was a great champion, and a great HW, but far from the greatest and he gets the respect that he imho deserves. Much more than Liston, who would walk right thru him.

Actually, I take that back. I think Larry would probably beat Holyfield.

Larry Holmes is the heavyweight that doesn't get the respect he deserves.

sad, boxing is so much better than MMA, and it's practically dead in North America - heavyweight division is absolutely dead.

Not to mention we're discussing something extremely subjective.

There's a movie being made about Sonny Liston that should be released later this year, with Ving Rhames.

underrated of all time.... I think it's the guy no one saw coming and no one expected anything from them. Buster Douglas comes to mind. Too bad he didn't amount to much after his rather mindblowing title win.

But of all time? I think a guy like Jim Braddock deserves mention. Certainly no one expected the guy to beat Baer much less go 15 rounds with him.