Lennox Lewis. Does he have some holes in his legacy?

I don't think that was the perception.
I don't think that ever is. Usually people say the heavyweights suck.

Ezzard and his era suffered in comparison to the previous era, in the minds of the sportswriters of the time.
Mostly this boiled down to Ezzard following Joe Louis.
Also, the post-war era was often dogged for additional reasons, such as the loss of many recognized fighters careers, the emergence of TV, the resulting closure of fight club venues, the now-blatant monopolised corruption.
etc.

Yeah, that's an argument.
But Lewis's best wins are against an aged Holyfield.
Tua lost to Byrd.
I'm guessing a good few of the 'little guys' Charles beat would beat Tua.

etc. etc. YES.

On the other hand, I reckon 1993 Tony Tucker would lose to Orlin Norris in his own era, and probably some cruiser-size guys from Charles' era would school him.

It's all six of one and half-dozen of the other.

 

It's telling that Bowe was game to fight Holy 3 times but had no interest in fighting Lennox. Maybe Bowe was on to something as he beat Holy twice and came quite close a third time. It is what we call "telling"...

Yes, he did. And I don't rank Holy far behind Lennox. But his resume wasn't as deep and comprehensive. Still, a great heavyweight.

Holy is three years older than Lennox. It's not a huge difference. He was 35, 36 when he faced Lennox, near the end of the line but not there. Again, I rank Vander very high. I just rank Lennox higher..

I'm not throwing it away. I assumed we were all aware of it. If not, I can give you a link to a video of the fight. They called the Fight of the Century... or something like that.

Please to list me Frazier's 15 greatest title fight victories.

Unintentional humor is often the funniest.

No. Power, in a vacuum, is overrated. Effective power punching is not. People like to get into cokk measuring contests regarding guys who are claimed to have great power but have never really demonstrated it at the top level. Effective power punching, along with chin, are probably the two greatest attributes in the heavyweight division.

 

H2H Lewis beats everyone you have mentioned with the POSSIBLE exception of pre 67 Ali, and even that would be even money.

 

Either you are someone who is overly impressed by a 6' 1" 200 pound guy outboxing someone the size of Tua, and unimpressed by a 6' 5" 240+ pound guy doing the same but by a much wider margin, or you simply have an agenda against Lewis.

Perhaps you believe that if the bigger guys don't KO every opponent the win doesn't count.

 

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Interesting thing is, I don't remember Vitali being considered such a great win at the time at all.
Lewis's "legacy" was already built by then.
It's difficult to assess how good that win is, all things considered.
I'm not at all sure VK would be able to beat Walcott.

The worst version of Joe Louis would beat 1992 Razor Ruddock.

I think Charles's opposition possibly slightly better.

I disagree.
Lewis is huge but he never showed how he could cope with a small, fast, very skilled fighter.
Some of his most competitive opponents were actually the smaller/lighter ones, and he ripped through the big bad feet-stuck-to-canvas types.
Of course, he's a scary proposition for a cruiserweight, but he never actually beat anyone so slick.

Well, I'm not arguing Charles ABOVE Lewis for definite.
I'm defending "perhaps Charles", meaning they rate about level in my eyes.

 

Charles is probably underrated as a HW. Maybe I'll start a thread about this.

Anyhow, @Unforgiven, what are you saying exactly? Don't you have Lewis in your top 10? 'Cause that's a bit weird, not in the top 5 I can understand (even though he's in mine) but surely he's top 10.

 

It tells us Bowe preferred to fight Holyfield.
It has absolutely no bearing on where we should rank Holyfield against Lewis in the all-time list.

Age really has little to do with it.
Holyfield was already a well-worn fighter, several times over. Lewis was probably still at his peak.
And to Lewis's credit, he earned that longevity on his merits too.

The point is, you bring up "Lewis beat Holyfield".
And I think we have a 100% version of one fighter going against an 80% version of the other, or something like that.
It's worth mentioning.

I assume we are all aware of the fact that Frazier also beat Ellis, Quarry, Bonavena, Bugner, Mathis, Chuvalo, Machen ....
.... NOT a great list of contenders, I agree.
So what's so good about Lewis's resume ?

That's all correct. So ...
How many of Lewis's revered power-punching opponents even demonstrated it at the top level ?

Don't say Mike Weaver, I mean men who were knocking out top-level opposition leading up to fighting Lewis, not years earlier.

 

He might squeeze into top 10.
I'd say he's somewhere between 7 and 14, in that range.
I'm flexible.
There's more people here who say he's a definitely lock for top 5, and some insist top 3 or 4. Which I think is extreme ... or "weird".

 

I think you've totally taken that out of context and re-interpreted it.
I never said a thing about Lewis-Tua.

 

Extremist !

 

Just out of curiosity if it was illegal why didn't the ref say something? I would think that if you're correct, the ref had an obligation to have mentioned it. This is actually a serious question, because I though his shorts were up high too, yet the ref also saw it and never mentioned it.