Towards the final years of his illustrious boxing career, Floyd Mayweather Jr came up with the moniker ‘TBE’, The Best Ever. Mayweather did retire with a perfect 50-0 record and won belts in five different weight classes. He held the WBC, WBA Super, WBO and IBF titles and Ring Magazine lineal championships as well.
Fans of Mayweather have declared him the undisputed champion after holding belts in multiple divisions, but one boxing legend and hall of fame former World champion strongly disagrees.
In his recent interview with Yahoo Sport’s Kevin Iole, Evander Holyfield spoke on the matter and gave an interesting opinion about Floyd’s reign as champion.
“My whole thing [is this], he is a great fighter. But to actually say that [he’s beaten everyone], you’ve got to be the undisputed. You need to get all the belts at one time and let everybody know that I beat everybody who had a belt and I am undisputed.
“You can’t just say ‘I got this WBC belt, I got this WBC belt and I got this WBC belt,’ and all of them are WBCs and you don’t got the rest of the belts to say you are undisputed,” said Holyfield in the interview.
Winning a belt is not enough for Holyfield, he insists that Mayweather should have fought other great champions more often.
“The whole big thing is, its not just this one belt – its all of these other belts. I wanted to be undisputed, where you can say that I am the undisputed champion of the world. Ever since [Muhammad] Ali left, there wasn’t an undisputed champion until [Mike] Tyson was the first one to be made undisputed, then Buster Douglas, then me, then Riddick Bowe and then Lennox Lewis. Lennox was the last one [at heavyweight]. That was five guys who took the time and said ‘I don’t just want to be one of the champions – I want to be undisputed where everyone knows at that time that I was the very best,” added Holyfield.
‘Real Deal’ then made the claim that Mayweather was never an undisputed champion.
“That’s the only thing that Floyd is missing, because he was never the undisputed world champion in any weight division.”
The heavyweight great also talked about the potential upcoming megafight between WBC titleholder Deontay Wilder and Anthony Joshua.
“The thing is both fighters have the things that they do really well. Deontay may be the lesser experienced fighter that been the champion so long. But, what he has, he has confidence. Here’s a guy that does that the things he does really well, he’s got fast hands and he’s got that one-two I think at any given time if a person doesn’t watch out he’ll hit you with that one-two,” explained Holyfield.
The American ultimately gave Joshua the higher praise and said that he is ‘a more complete fighter.’
“The fact of the matter is Anthony Joshua is that fighter with pedigree that he’s been in the game. He became the very best amateur fighter. He won the gold medal and all this so he brings a lot to the table. But I do believe that any given time he [Wilder] can knock anybody out. He throws the quick right and he’s not afraid to throw it. I like his confidence. I actually feel if you get the proper people you can add more to him.
“I think when he fights Anthony Joshua, after the fourth or the fifth round it changes. You know, youth is your strength. I think Anthony Joshua is just a more complete fighter. He’s been tested. He has been down and he has gotten up,” concluded Holyfield.
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