Top 35 All Time reveal - Boxing Survey Series

No you didn't. You gave more reasons to credit it.

 

Lewis admitted to having “slight trouble in one eye”, but that he’d had it since prior to winning the title. Good on him for fighting through whatever discomfort it caused him. He passed every pre-fight physical prior to Louis, though, so clearly it wasn’t as bad as romantic history makes it out to have been. And it didn’t effect his performance in the ring. People don’t seem to know that part.

Except of course for the Louis fight. People know this part. Now the story goes that it’s an injury so debilitating that he can’t last a single minute in the ring without hitting the canvas 3 times, with the insinuation being that this result was a pact between friends so Lewis could finally retire and go out with a big payday.

EXCEPT for the fact that Lewis had no plans whatsoever on retiring either before or after the fight. He wasn’t ruled medically ineligible until after, during the build up to his next title defense at Lt. Heavy, to be exact. This wasn’t something that was even on the radar beforehand except between he and his handlers, presumably. He even went overseas to try to continue his career and defend his title.

So there’s two options: A) the story that everybody knows about he and Louis is a fabrication and Lewis was simply way out of his depth in that ring, or B) Lewis conned Louis into a big money fight, took the easy way out when the bell sounded, and looked to continue his career as champion directly afterwards, anyways.

 

Billy Conn is at 11 right? I can’t tell if people are saying he’s a huge admission from the list entirely and haven’t seen him on there.

 

If people see him as more of a pound for pound kinda guy than one who doesn’t rate particularly high in one division, I guess I can stomach that. Then again the only reason would be lack of resume depth at the particular weight class, which is a question for several guys in these lists, anyway. You wanna rank him at #11 at Lt. Heavy, better make sure to rank him higher at Middle. Certainly higher than someone like Hopkins, for example.

I’m satisfied that he’s among the top 10 fighters to have ever made their living between Middle and Heavy.

 

Yeah, but then again you have Lionel Rose as your #6 all time Bantamweight I’ve heard.

 

Seems weird to make a point about not counting fights not at Light Heavyweight, then make a big point about a fight at Heavyweight.

I doubt Sugar Ray Robinson could've done half of what Walker did at Light Heavyweight and Heavyweight, but Robinson was a much better Welterweight and Middleweight.

 

I made that point because that seems to be the prevailing theme here. Otherwise I’d count Armstrong, Chavez, Pryor, Napoles, etc as Lightweights. I was protecting my own ass from the inevitable comeback of “well, technically that fight took place .75 pounds over the limit and as such doesn’t count”.

Your second point, while I understand it, does not factor into this debate.

 

He’s 11. That seems about right, give or take a few places.

I think the thing people like to weigh in his favor is him being (barely) ahead of Joe Louis but (a) that fight was at heavyweight, not light heavy; (b) he got KTFO so it’s not like you can count that as a win; and (c) he lost the rematch in ridiculously one-sided fashion so he could not replicate it.

He was a very good light heavy. To me he wasn’t an ATG based on his resume in the division.

 

It's arguable, imo, that the beat thing Conn ever did was be ahead after 12 rounds against Louis.

His LHW resume is thin, the LHW era he was in was very poor.

His MW run was arguably better than his LHW run.

That being said, I think he is an ATG and I have him number 11.

 

It wasn’t a poor era at Lt. Heavy, it was just the 30s. Everything gets overlooked from that time period for whatever reason. Mainly because the Lt. Heavy era that followed it was arguably the best ever.

An ATG Lt. Heavy or an ATG, period?

 

I get the consensus and understand it. Seems Conn should be looked at more in the mold of a natural Middleweight that did great work after moving up. I said as much in an earlier post on this page.

Now that that’s been established, where does he rate as a Middleweight?

 

Lesnevich was the epitome of a poor LHW era.

 

Outside the top 15, probably outside the top 25. He never really did anything remarkable there. He rates higher as a light heavy, but just isn’t super-elite based on his resume at 175.

 

Before we begin, are we counting fights where both guys weighed 161 or 162 or whatever, even if they were career Middleweights, as Lt. Heavyweight bouts?