Nationality is a grey area really, unless you’re dealing with someone who was born, raised and lived their life in the same country that their parents were from. My wife for example was born in South Africa, and has spent most of her life in England. Nevertheless, she considers herself Irish (and has an Irish passport), and if I even suggest a counter argument I’ll at the very least be sleeping on the sofa tonight. I think for the purpose we’re discussing (arbitrary rankings of fighters), all you can do is set criteria, go along with it, and not get too hung up about it either way. Is Bugner Hungarian? Are Hide and Alinwande Nigerian? It’s a pretty deep rabbit hole....
They didn`t embrace Lennox in England because he had a Canadian accent and didn`t the British self-mocking Britis humor that Bruno had that made Frank so charming to the English public.
And that was the reason behind the query. Is he embraced as British because he is GREAT as the determining factor? Because prior to becoming great the sense I get is that the populous didn’t accept him...rather they felt he was using it conveniently as a platform rather than a sense of national identity. So what changed? Was it his greatness or his birthplace that led to this position.
I don`t know, the public didn`t believe in Lennox when he first came along, he was treated like a Johnny come lately, fans thought Bruno did well in his two world title attempts leading up to his clash with Lennox and he had more charisma, that figt was even called the battle of Britiain and Frank took specific exception to Lennox calling himself British, the English public further sided with Bruno when Lewis called him an 'uncle Tom' in a press conferencde, I think by beating Bruno people started to belive in Lennox a little more and te British thing just died down, after he beat Holyfield he became a source of pride for Britsh people.
I think he would last a bit longer than that. Not the biggest of heavyweight but the ‘Dancing Destroyer’ did have very nimble footwork and fast hand speed, arguably amongst the fastest British hwts ever. I wouldn’t put him on the overall top 5 British heavyweights though.
Wilder proved he had a chin a number of hours ago and no way could Hide evade or take the blows Fury just did off Wilder, Hide was nowhere near Fury`s level specifically because of his reach.
Fury proved against Wilder he`s on a different level to Bruno, no way could Frank have evaded or taken the right hands that knocked Fury down yesterday, the last round was the best recovery from a KO blow since Holmes v Shavers.
Lennox was born in London like me and raised here till he was 12, he parents were Jamaican but my father is also Jamaican, does that mean I`m Jamaican?
Fitzsimmons had his last fight in Australia in1909 when he challenged Bill Lang for the National title,he hadn't previously fought there for 19 years
Lol that’s weird. I always thought that Lewis had that upper class English accent the kind that Chris Eubank is always trying to mimic. Never thought that it was a Canadian one though that would make more sense given his background.