Who Was The Greatest Heavyweight Champ, After Larry Holmes?

Lewis.

 

It can pretty much only be either Lewis or Wlad, and you can make a good argument for both. But I'd say Lewis based on names.

 

Lewis

 

Lennox Lewis, and it's not really close

 

Lennox Lewis.

 

Pretty much this.

 

As I have mentioned before my list of top 5 heavyweights remains the same, chronologically I start with Jack Johnson > Joe Louis > Cassius Clay/Ali > Larry Holmes and his successor Lennox Lewis.

There are many great heavyweights beyond Larry Holme's championship reign but Lennox Lewis was the best out of his contemporaries for the time. All of the aforementioned were incomparable but equally they were also beatable and experienced defeat. Joe Frazier is still my favourite heavyweight even though all those other boxers were objectively better than he was apart from that one occasion in 1971

I think comparing Larry Holmes to Lennox Lewis makes for some interesting opinions. Who had the better jab? the more versatile left hand and overall skill set? which guy had a better chin? who took on more credible opponents? If both of these boxers faced each other what would be the outcome?

 

Lewis hands down.

 

Holmes had the better jab.

Lewis had the better right hand.

Both men had great uppercuts.

Lewis had more punch variety he actually had a left hook unlike Holmes.

Holmes had the better chin, but Lewis's chin gets underrated for his losses to Rahman, McCall.

I think Lewis overall had the better opposition, Holmes missing out on fighting Thomas, Page, and a few others hurt his legacy a little bit IMO.

 

Winning the heavyweight championship four times (or at least a version of it) puts Evander Holyfield up there and also he did what Olexsander Uysk has now done before him so Holyfield he has been a strong consideration for my top 5 for a few years but he certainly wasn't better than Lennox Lewis.

 

By the way I know Lennox Lewis calls himself a man of the world with Jamaican parentage , British birth and Canadian citizenship which he won a gold medal in Seoul in 1988 alongside another controversial Canadian-Jamaican Ben Johnson. I have always regarded him as British with him being born in the U.K and representing the U.K as a professional but I'd be interested in if Americans see him more as a Brit or Canadian given he beat American Riddick Bowe in a controversial decision in the Olympics. I know in the U.K he was seen as a Canadian initially early in his career because we already had an active established British heavyweight at the time with Frank Bruno so it was perceived early on as Lewis stepping on Bruno's toes.

 

Holyfield was too inconsistent for me to be top 5, whilst his big win over Tyson was very impressive. In most of his biggest fights at Heavyweight he lost. He went 1-2 vs Bowe, 0-1-1 vs Lewis, 1-1 vs Moorer.