Chris Byrd on Lennox Lewis

Byrds promoter paid Lewis 1 Million dollars and gave him a fancy car to NOT fight Byrd and give up the IBF belt in order for him [Don King] to set up an elimination tournament where the winner [now with the IBF and WBA belts] would then fight Lews for the Undisputed title.

This was called the, Hard Road To Glory Series and Byrd, Lewis, Ruiz, Holyfield and Roy Jones were due to take part as this press conference in the video below shows them together announcing it!

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r04DEoixT0E[/ame]

 

Honestly I can see nothing but Lewis KO

 

i think lewis would have won.but im a big lewis fan so i would say that...

i would have loved to see how lewis would have dealt with a slick south paw tho..

but a well..

 

He should have taken the fight. No doubt Lewis would have been the favourite but a scalp over Byrd would have went along way. Probably could have been one of his top 5 wins if he managed it. It would have been sneaking in around at 5 but without doubt there abouts.

 

IIRC Lewis had the choice of fighting Tyson for mega $ or Byrd for far less.

He'd been chasing Tyson for years & no-one wanted to watch Byrd fight, Chris even took out a newspaper advert looking for opponents & only Jorge Luiz Gonzalez replied.

 

Lenny ducked Byrd, he ducked many fighters. Prime Tyson, Bowe, Wlad, Sanders. The biggest duck was the promised rematch!

 

Byrd isn't in lennox league, Lennox is just too big and strong. Byrd is kind of like Jimmy Young in defensive skills and Lewis is Like George Foreman.
Byrd beating Lewis is like Young beating Foreman...no wait!:huh

 

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Like anyone who actually remembers this era has said, there really was no interest in this fight. Byrd had sublime skills but he couldn't punch for ****.

Grant was an unbeaten shw coming off a come from behind stoppage of Golota. That was a good fight.

That aside all anyone cared about was him fighting Tyson. Obviously it was Rahman who got the mandatory shot and he avenged it but Tyson was hyped to the rafters and had just dominated Golota in a way that only Lewis had done. People wanted Lewis v Tyson infinitely more than Lewis v Byrd.

After that Vitali was the next mandatory and he stopped him despite slipping noticeably. He stepped down at the right time and would have lost the rematch imo.

With hindsight we can all say Byrd would have been a great victory. After all he beat tua, holy and vitali. Only wlad would beat him in the coming years. The fight just wasn't that interesting back then.

For the record i think Lewis takes a 10-2 type decision.

 

Byrd wasn't worth a bag of rabbits at HW. His wins over Vitali , Holyfield and Tua are meaningless.

Prime Tua and Holyfield would of mangled him.

Shot to absolute **** Golota beat him without throwing power shots.

 

Good post.

 

At the Klits fans in this thread

 

That's too far to the other side pal.

Byrd was a deserving top 5 hw contender.

The issue is he was no more prestigious than Tyson nor Wlad and he certainly wasn't particularly more deserving than his other mandatories in Rahman and Ruiz.

at the time there was no burning desire to see the fight but he was a worthy contender.

It shows the difference in quality between Lewis and wlad though. Byrd would struggle to break the top 5 for Lewis yet he's by a mile wlads best victory.

 

Prime Holyfield would have beaten him, but "prime" Tua...

Tua is one of the most overrated fighters of recent history.

Outside of Wlad the most deserving fighter was John Ruiz.

Going 1-1-1 with Holyfield, he beat Johnson, Rahman and Oquendo who was the flavour of the month at the time.

Having both Byrd and Ruiz on a record is a hell of a lot better than Grant and the roly poly Tuaman.

 

Who would be your 5 fighters that would be better than Byrd?