By James Slater: Strangely enough, back when all-time great Larry Holmes was plying his trade in the late ‘70s and early-to-mid 1980s, fans and experts were complaining how the heavyweight division was on its downside; that the great fighters had pretty much all gone. Holmes himself is still angry today over the way he failed, as he puts it “to get his just due.”
Today, however, fans would give anything to see a fighter like Holmes – and the guys he fought, such as Tim Witherspoon (a great battle), Earnie Shavers, Mike Weaver, etc – in action. In fact today, fans look back at Holmes’ era as a great era indeed. Larry himself sure does, and in a recent interview with Leighton Ginn of The Desert Sun, “The Easton Assassin” spoke of how bad the heavyweight division is today – to the extent that the man on the street no longer knows who the world heavyweight champion actually is!
“The Klitschko brothers aren’t carrying it [the sport],” Holmes said. “People are asking me every day, ‘Who’s the heavyweight champion?’ I don’t know. I feel sorry for boxing today because the heavyweight division carried boxing and the middleweights carried boxing. The only thing that’s carrying boxing now is the middleweight division, and people aren’t thinking about the other weight classes.”
Holmes went on to say how he feels boxing will “come back”, but that a “rising star is needed to take over boxing.” Larry may be guilty of over exaggerating as he claims the currently bad condition of boxing (as fans know, the Klitschko brothers are huge stars in all of Europe, where not only the heavyweight division but all of boxing currently thrives) but it’s hard to argue with him when he says that his era – and that of a few years before him, when Ali and Frazier were warring – was a very special time indeed.
Larry, like a number of U.S fans, seems despondent over the fact that America no longer plays a massive role in the heavyweight division. The “rising star” Holmes years for is surely of American origin. But will America ever climb back to dominate the sport’s most important weight class the way it did for almost a hundred years? Looking around for upcoming U.S heavyweight prospects, only Seth Mitchell looks promising.
Holmes wants the fans he meets and greets to once again know who the world heavyweight champion is. The way the Klitschkos are dominating, he may have a long wait.