Those big punchers also have a lot of padding on their records. If Holyfield a small man can make his way inside why cant a smaller man with superior footwork who is better offensively/defensively who punchers a harder,faster and not going on 40years old, not make his way in? Joe beat them big,tall,fast,slow. Lennox never beat anyone as fast as Billy Con as big,strong as Prime Carnera,Baer punched just as hard if not harder and he never fought a fighter as smart as Joe Louis. We saw what a moving small man in Chris Byrd did do the HW divison and he only has 10pounds on Joe Louis. Who wins the 88 skills and power Tyson or the size and power of 01 Tyson?
What? Why because he wasn't a wilder swinger? Imagine Lennox trying to hit Floyd Mayweather he'd look useless too. Mob influence or not he still had power to kill people. Of course he is not as good as Lennox,not at all, but the size argument is stupid wen Joe dispatched a much bigger and stronger man.
Imagine Lennox fighting Carnera who use to hold on to peoples arm then crack them in the face. This is also a time where if you had a bad chin you were advised not to participate/prolong your career in boxing.
The point is Lennox would not land on Mayweather. You're too focused on the size when Lennox size would not be a advantage its a disadvantage. Did Lennox ever face Byrd?? I wonder why
Oh My, what is the ESB Forum coming too ?"Louis could not defeat a single modern cruiserweight today"....? The facts are that no man who ever lived could survive a Joe Louis onslaught,once he hurt you...Not Andre the Giant, not Haystack Calhoun, and NOT Lennox Lewis, for certain.... Remember G."the bigger they are, the harder they fall"... P.S. you ever hear of Bronco Nagurski the great 1930s fullback ? You should...
i love the reference to haystack. beautiful yeah what burt said. ****ing size means something if you use it. lennox used it, wlad continues to use it. so it's an advantage for them and a tool in their toolbox. any given night they would give louis hell imo ****ing most cruiserweights? cunningham would beat louis? what about going up against a monster like tyson fury? neither of them would last any longer than louis would deem fit to let than last
I really thought I quoted your Byrd post oh well... Lewis didn't fight Byrd because he was a southpaw though. Never faced one southpaw in his pro career, nothing special though for a hw. I only know 3 hw champs who faced more than 2. Then Carnera/Valuev both faced 2. A few only faced one
My argument is that the type of shots Lewis took throughout his career were on average far heavier and more damaging than the types of shots Louis did during his. That can't be proved emphatically, but I think it's pretty darned evident all the same. Whilst both men were nominally heavyweights, Louis was never exposed to anything near the same level of danger as Lewis, so it doesn't make sense to judge their durability on an equal basis. It was actually two shots, and whilst the first one clearly caught Louis hard, it's hard to see how clearly the second one landed. It almost looked like a clothesline from the way Louis reacted. I agree though, it was a pretty heavy punch, but heavier than Rahman's detonator? Can't see that. Like I said before, you have to go back to Holmes vs Shavers to see a punch that heavy landing that flush on a dominant champion. Pardon me if that sounds like hyperbole, but that really was one hell of a right hand. No one really. But he did it to a hell of a lot of lesser name fighters for us to know that he could badly hurt almost anyone he landed on cleanly. He also (unofficially) dropped Tua. Listen, I know you want me to say that Rahman was an elite puncher, thus excusing the loss. I'm not. Rahman was extremely limited and slow, and the fact that Lewis was dropped and stopped by him is embarrassing and damaging from a career POV. But the fact that Lewis was dropped and stopped by the actual punch, given the way it landed, and the general circumstances of the fight, should really have very little bearing at all on his ability to take a shot, unless you want to argue that Lewis had one of the best jaws ever, which I don't think anyone here is doing. See above. I'm not taking anything away from the win. I'm simply saying that it has to be put into a correct perspective. That was not Lewis at his best. That's true, and I take that statement back. However, Louis was repeatedly hurt and stunned by not especially huge punchers throughout his career, and was on the verge of going down from a SMW in Conn. Yes, it came from multiple punches, but it was still a SMW, and it still came from a single shot. Knockdowns and one punch KOs are not the only way to estimate a fighter's durability. No I'm not. You've fundamentally misread my post. I'm saying that if Louis was dumb enough to let himself get hit by Rahman in the same way that Lewis was, in the same state as Lewis was at the time, then I have no doubt that he'd be dropped and counted out. I'm not saying anything at all about its likelihood of happening. They are if the fighters land the shots. Lewis was not a defensive mastermind. He got hit and hit hard on more than one occasion. But aside from his two losses he was never on the canvas and never counted out. There are far more positives here than negatives. My only argument here is that Lewis could take a better shot than Louis. Who fought however many ranked opponents and so on is a question of resume and achievement. A debate for another time.
Which specific opponents of Louis would you say were heavier handed than the likes of Tua, Morrison, Tyson and co? That's all true, but the size of the opponent has to be taken into account here. Louis fought a large number of what would be called Cruiserweights and Light Heavyweights today; even the odd Super Middleweight. He hardly ever had to fight the sorts of monsters that Lewis did, even if he did fight against a generally more varied range of styles. Yes, Lewis had his flaws; so did Louis. But the sorts of flaws that Lewis had were more of an out of the ring nature. Louis carried his flaws into the ring. I wouldn't really call Rahman or McCall "elite" punchers either, but they were both very heavy handed modern sized heavyweights, and in both cases caught Lennox flush on the jaw. That's definitely a black mark on Lennox as a fighter, or more specifically on his sometimes iffy preparation and fluctuating concentration levels, but it says very little about the quality of his chin. Why should it? Lennox more than showed his ability to take a shot from much harder punchers than both, and from more dangerous men, throughout his career for us to draw any absolute and damning conclusions from those two results. Louis may well have dropped and stopped Lewis, if he was lucky enough to get in the ring with the lazy and disinterested version. But since this is a fantasy fight it makes sense to pit both men at their absolute best. The best version of Lewis would have been an absolute nightmare for any fighter in history due to his almost unique combination of world class skills, grit, ring intelligence and monstrous physical attributes. I simply can't see even the Max Schmeling 2 version of Louis doing the job.
No my argument is Lennox is about 10 levels above any of Joe's opponents and if he hit Joe with the punches Schmelling/Walcott/Braddock hit him with then Joe would be ko'd. None of Joe's opponents where near as powerful as Lennox and none of the hitters would land with near the accuracy and speed Lennox could and would No Joe got ko'd twice by Crusers, see how we're going round in a circle here? The big punchers he faced generally barely landed, Lennox has taken more punches from big punchers without being ko'd than Joe ever managed Lennox didn't take Rahman seriously, he would take Joe seriously. Usually smaller men going up in weight can't make an impact against bigger opponents, they just don't have the weight behind their punches. This fight shows how porous Joe's defense is against quicker men. Well Holyfield landed everything he could on Lennox and couldn't budge him, Rahman and McCall could as they had. The 200lb Louis probably wouldn't affect a Lennox too much either with 1 shot Except they typically do, the bigger the punch the more concussive, whether in the 1st or last round HE was on shaky legs, if he hung on and got his legs back and took less silly chances he'd have ran away with it. FFS Lennox would walk Floyd down in seconds :roll: Perhaps because he was getting a career high payday against Mike Tyson instead