The top 5 British heavyweights of all time

best for me: Lennox Lewis

 

Doubt he would feature in many top 5 just outside in top 10.

We don't have an abundance of hw world champions especially undisputed ones.

Of course he was a very good boxer he held a world title at hw? The pinnacle of boxing

 

UK Top 5 Heavyweights EVER SO FAR. the likes of Joshua/ Fury are not included as we do not know how far they would go and they are boxing in probably the worst era of world heavyweight boxing .
1. Lennox Lewis
Without doubt one of the top 10 if not even top 5 heavies of all time. so obvious choice of the UK's number one

2 Tommy Farr
Went the full 15 rounds with a top 5 ATG in Joe Louis giving him a hard fight in the process.

3 Frank Bruno
Frank was a tough man in general he was also brave and looked fantastic, lacked speed but tried and was a lot better than he got credit for he would have given any heavyweight a good fight in any era. I would pick him to beat Joshua.

4 Henry Cooper
Smart boxer and known for fighting hard for all his fights and never giving in. boxing in a time where it was known to be a tough time and beat some good world class fighters.

5 Joe Bugner
Could have been much more that he was, he never became his full potential for whatever reason, but he was a big powerful guy, I heard he never really tried against Ali and was glad of a good pay day.

I could replace number 5 with either Gary Mason, Brian London, Bruce Woodcock, Bob Fitzsimmons, John L Gardner , Billy Wells, and Probably a few more, should write top 100 UK heavyweights

Also I know people will say Bob Fitzsimmons was 3 weight champ and probably should be number 2.but difficult for me personally to rank

 

Joe Bugner, Henry Cooper nor Tommy Farr won a world title (to my knowledge anyway). I can use google but once you start going pre-war I don't have a clue. Anthony Joshua, Tyson Fury & David Haye have all won won titles and so it would make sense that they would be amongst the top 5. A fella called Bob Fitzsimmons has a decent record and was a world title winner but I've never heard of him.

 

Exactly that is why I am not going too far back apart from Tommy Farr where I have read about giving Joe Louis a hard time, and also an old guy many years ago talked about how good he was. If he went the distance with Louis he must have been special

Yes Joshua Fury and Haye have won titles but I was talking different era's where titles were not given out and there was really only 1 champ, people like Cooper who I think would have beaten Haye, Haye for me was always an entertainer and never really into it as why I said Bellew would beat him.

A true life and death struggle with Cooper or Mason or Bugner ...Haye would have quit well before the 10th

And a fight with big Lennox........ AJ , Fury or Haye,, would have not got passed the 5th

 

The list of wins by British heavyweights over world class opposition is very thin on the ground, once you take Lewis out of the equation. Most of the famous British heavies are remembered and in many ways defined more by their losses than their wins.

I haven't included Fitz, partly because his claim to Britishness appears to have been made by others, and partly because throwing a guy who would barely be a super middle these days into a debate alongside modern day heavies raises too many questions in itself.

Going by record against world class opposition, and not H2H:

1. Lennox Lewis
2. Tyson Fury
3. Anthony Joshua
4. Frank Bruno
5. Joe Bugner
6. Tommy Farr
7. Henry Cooper
8. David Haye
9. Henry Akinwande
10. Bruce Woodcock

Lewis doesn't require any explanation. None of the fighters below Fury and Joshua have a win that comes close to beating Klitschko, and Fury has a slight edge by ending Wlad's reign and slightly better competition outside of that.

Bugner and Bruno are tough to split and could go either way. Bugner probably has more depth in his wins, and the overall quality is similar, but Bruno doesn't have any eyesore losses like Bugner. Farr has a win over a lineal heavyweight champ (Baer), which neither Bugner nor Bruno can claim. However, against world class opposition he more often than not came up on the losing side, including the rematch with Baer.

Ranking gets very difficult outside the top 6, as you're looking at a limited number of world class wins. It's difficult to compare Haye's brief heavyweight career with flashes of brilliance, against Cooper's exemplary run against British/European opposition but patchy record at world level. It gets highly subjective at that point and a lot depends on which criteria you consider most important.

 

It's hard with older pre-war fighters and even harder with Heavyweights given that they've just increased with size. Lewis would be my top pick, probably Cooper second or so. After that it's quite tough to rank. Maybe not in the top 5 but I think Bruno can be in the conversation at some point. He was decent and it's forgotten that he had Tyson hurt at one point, maybe a slightly better fighter would have capitalised better. He had his limitations for sure, but he was certainly decent.

 

World titles were a bit harder to come by in the days of Farr, Cooper and Bugner though.
There was one world champion in those days. Farr had JOE LOUIS. Cooper and Bugner had MUHAMMAD ALI.
That's a harder task that picking up a trinket with a close win over an freak like Valuev or a KO of a mediocrity like Charles Martin !

I have to give Tyson Fury his due though, he dethroned a good champion for the legit HW crown.

 

That's a very good point mate, I didn't consider that.

 

1) Lewis
2) Joshua
3) Bruno
4) Cooper
5) Haye

 

No Fury? pure madness beat a younger version of Wlad and hed been more active than before AJ fight.
Having Haye at 5 is comedy tbh

 

Thread title should be; top 5 British HW's after Lennox Lewis.

 

Given we invented the sport we should have more champions from the old times but the only real boxer who has proven himself on world level and properly respected is Lennox Lewis and we share him with canada

 

Bruno cooper or haye never beat a dominant champ