BoxRec

Were not apart of the heavyweight boxing scene in the late 1960s and 1970s? Who would have been the heavyweight champion of the world throughout that timeframe? Or would it have been an era where there would have been multiple heavyweight champions with nobody truly standing out above the rest?

If Ali never existed, it's almost a certainty that Sonny Liston probably would have been champion going into the late 60s until finally encountering people like Jimmy Ellis, Buster Mathis and Leotis Martin.

If Frazier never existed, we most likely would have seen Bonavena and Quarry be the top line heavyweights to challenge the three heavyweights already mentioned --- with guys like Floyd Patterson, George Chuvalo and Ernie Terrell presenting some problems.

If Foreman and Norton were out of the picture then guys like Ron Lyle, Earnie Shavers and Jimmy Young would've certainly been the toughest challenges out there.

So I figure that Liston either loses the title somewhere around 1965-1966, or he retires as champion causing a heavyweight title tournament where we see Floyd Patterson become the first three-time heavyweight champion, and in turn he loses the title to Jerry Quarry somewhere between 1968-1970.

Quarry loses the title to Ron Lyle maybe around 1972-1974 who in turn loses it to Jimmy Young around 1975-1977. Young basically holds on to the title until he loses to Gerry Cooney in 1980, and he in turn would've most likely lost the title to one of the WBA alphabet title holders of the 1980s like John Tate, Mike Weaver, Gerrie Coetzee, Greg Page, Mike Dokes, or Tim Witherspoon.

I don't include Holmes only because since Ali was so instrumental to Holmes becoming a boxer that Holmes may very well have never boxed at all if Ali didn't exist.

Liston would last longer, in the late 60s and the early 70s there would be short-lived reigns of the guys like Quarry, Lyle, Ellis, Mathis, etc. Jimmy Young could become a dominant champion in the 70s, until the emerge of Larry Holmes.