I've been entertained by the mental gymnastics required to rate Lewis inside the top 5. Your contribution has a little lacking in entertainment value, to be frank, but your welcome to your dusty old seat on the sidelines.
A top 10 is pretty darn difficult. How much weight do you place on H2H? If you're a resume guy then guys like Tunney, Marciano et al are probably in up high. If you're a H2H guy then Liston and Vitali might be in there somewhere. But I feel that if you balance H2H and resume, both Lewis and Wlad ought to be pretty darn high. My 2c.
I know I am asking a lot but you've really delved into this with heart and soul, so I'll go ahead... Have you provided us with your vaunted top ten that doesn't include Lennox? I'll heat up the popcorn.
I am just wondering who displaces Lewis. It's kind of an empty assertion to say he is outside the top 5 or top 10 when you one doesn't say who is inside these rankings.
Neither was Iran Barkley and Tommy lost to him not once but twice. An unavenged loss. How do you rate those losses?
No real problem with Lennox at 16 (though that's the absolute bottom for me personally) but why is he below Charles? What's your thinking there?
You've already more or less declared you won't possibly consider any opinion that he's outside the top 5 to be valid. I can easily name 5 I'd put above Lewis. Ali, Foreman, Holmes, Louis, Marciano. I'm not saying that's my top 5. But those 5 I'd comfortably put above Lewis.
It's not (I don't think) a legitimate list. I was just responding to JohnThomas's claim that I might have Lewis at #16. (He was in turn responding to mine that he was edging Lewis towards the #1 spot) In fact, I'd probably have Lewis a bit higher than that. I could probably argue Ezzard Charles above Lennox Lewis but that would just be an exercise. Charles is possibly underrated on heavyweight lists, I don't know. He's always been a bit overlooked. I don't think his shocking upset KO loss to Walcott was quite as bad as Lewis's against Rahman, but it's very similar and close. I think that's what made me think of him !
I know that's not addressed to me, but I think they pretty much do a lot towards excluding Hearns being regarded as an ATG in the 160 and 175 weight classes anyway.
A good place to start is his win rate against ranked contenders. It's incredible. I mean, processing it is boring. He did a lot of very good work over a very long period of time. But, like Lewis, he was a belt holder, not a champion for a spell; he was also regarded as boring and limited as a heavyweight in his own era. I have him ranked at #17 which is the absolute highest I can rank a heavy without regarding them as very very special (keeping in mind i'm pretty high on Wills). I'd argue he's the best - sorry, greatest - of the rest, behind guys like Jeffries and Langford only.
Guys who beat 10 ranked contenders in their career are rare and Charles is kicking the arse out of 20. Heavyweights.
Yeah. It's possible that i'm showing some bias via drag, because I genuinely believe he's one of the greatest fighters in history on overall body of work. Here, he is hugely underestimated. He's a lock - lock - for top 10 ATG p4p if you'll pardon the phrase. He's a monster. Note that at heavy he's approaching 20 only if you allow him to count guys he beat more than once, more than once. But see I did that thing top 50 MW - nobody in the top ten in the history of Ring had twenty contenders at the weight. None of them. And remember, this is my talking at heavyweight - at heavyweight he was victorious more times against ranked contenders than Monzon and Burley combined at middleweight. It was astonishing, really.
Yeah, that's pretty surprising. I'd probably have Schmeling ahead of him at heavyweight. I'd have probably have Patterson slightly below him. I do put some stock in "number of ranked contenders beaten", though clearly not as much as many here do. It's definitely important or meaningful but I feel a small number of wins of supreme quality (or arguably a few good wins plus the weight of one VERY GREAT win, in case of someone like Schmeling) will very often trump quantity.
