The Daily Bread Mailbag returns with Stephen “Breadman” Edwards giving his thoughts on the legacies of Holmes and Holyfield, Tim Tszyu’s cut, Crawford’s next steps, and creating a perfect fighter.
Hi Breadman,
I pray God is blessing and continues to bless you and your family and the fans of your mailbag and their families.
The current new trend is to say that Larry Holmes is boxing’s most underrated fighter. I beg to differ. I must go with Evander Holyfield. Larry Holmes has too many misses for me.
He missed fights with Foreman, Frazier, Young, Lyle, Quarry, Page, Dokes, Coetzee, Tate, Pinklon Thomas, Tillis.
I’m not saying he would have lost but we will never know because the fights didn’t happen. I really would have loved to see him vs Thomas, Dokes, Page and those fights should have happened because all of them were under the Don King promotions.
Those fights could have been made unlike some of the others. Totally unimpressed with his victory over Cooney because to me Cooney was a very overhyped prospect who beat some over the hill fighters in Norton, Young and Lyle.
All were well past it when Cooney beat them. Cooney lost to Spinks and Foreman in his biggest fights and was vastly overrated in my eyes.
Holmes lost to Spinks twice although he was robbed in the second fight. He went life and death with Norton, Witherspoon and Willams. I thought he won barely vs Norton but felt he lost vs Witherspoon and Willams. Of course, he lost to Tyson but fought valiantly against Holyfield. The most impressive performance to me was his fight against Mercer. I thought Mercer was going to kill him and he beat the brakes off Mercer and his performance against McCall was impressive and a debatable win for McCall.
Holyfield is great and superior to Tyson but was overshadowed by Tyson’s persona. Holyfield is very similar to Hitman Hearns; they are great in the ring but don’t articulate well which does matter.
People love trash talkers. All you have to do to see that is look at Rolly Romero who is very limited but gets good paydays based on his talking and not his lousy performances. Holyfield fought better fighters in Lewis, Bowe, Tyson, and others and doesn’t get the respect he deserves.
What really hurt me is the way they robbed him against Nikolai Valuev. He deserved that victory but the powers that be wanted him out and always go with the younger prospect in those situations. Holyfield, like Roy Jones, is being punished for the end of his career losing fights to Donald and Byrd. He is the best cruiserweight I’ve ever seen and one of the most courageous and best fighters I’ve seen. I love the guy. A true warrior who to me is truly undervalued and could have fought and done well in any era. Holmes is a great fighter also, but I think he has been called underrated so much that he has become a bit overrated to me.
