A legendary heavyweight champion believes he has been ‘cut out’ of the debate on the greatest of all time.
The heavyweight division is widely regarded as being the banner weight class in all of boxing, having been host to some of the biggest names in the history of the sport.
Those include the likes of Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson, George Foreman and Lennox Lewis, but now another iconic name has had his say on his own legacy.
It was October 25th 1990 when Olympic bronze medallist Evander Holyfield etched his name into the boxing history books by becoming the first fighter of all time to win the undisputed championship at both cruiserweight and heavyweight.
‘The Real Deal’ stopped countryman James ‘Buster’ Douglas in the third round of their Las Vegas showdown to achieve this feat and cement himself as one of the greatest heavyweights to have ever graced the sport.
Holyfield would go on to win the world heavyweight championship on four separate occasions during his 27-year professional career, an impressive record that remains unbroken to this very day.
Despite this, ‘The Real Deal’ revealed in an interview with SecondsOut that he believes he has been ‘cut out’ of boxing history, claiming that he deserves to be ranked as the greatest heavyweight of all time ahead of Ali.
“I’m the only four-time heavyweight champion of the world but they are still talking about Ali when I broke his record. I’ve been the only four-time heavyweight champion of the world for 24 years.
“You can’t talk about it until you break someone’s record, they don’t say nothing about me. How do you cut somebody out of history? Now I didn’t even know I was the first person to be undisputed in two weight divisions, until Usyk did it. “They keep saying Ali is the best fighter, no I am. He was three times, I’m four.”
Whilst Holyfield makes a solid argument for himself, it would be unfair to say that Ali does not belong in the conversation for being one of, if not the greatest heavyweight of all time.
Ali made his mark during arguably the greatest era of heavyweight boxing history, defeating the likes of Joe Frazier, Sonny Liston and Foreman amongst many others.
