Lewis' chin is one of the best ever in the HWs

A+ fighter for sure.

 

I disagree ... he had a solid chin but he did get flattened twice with single shots ... maybe when focused a b plus chin ..

 

That line is an absolute gem!

Where art thou, CT?

Me thinketh you should maketh a comebacketh. We are missing your inputeth very mucheth.

Please excuse my lispeth which somehow runeth downeth from my moutheth to my finger tipeths. Theriously annoying.

 

Good chin. Only down twice, and only legitimately sparked by Rahman.

 

Hi buddy.
I am in agreement about his chin being good, plus there is a lot of post saying he was " knocked out " my definition of that phrase would be a prone fighter ( Ketchell like as an example ) Lewis was not , he was rescued by the ref on both occasions , in the Mcall fight after the ref had got to 9, in the Racham fight a lot sooner, so in reality he never heard the word 10 , just for clarity I am not saying he was in a fit state to continue ( especially in the Rachman fight ) but wouldn't say he was sparked in the true sense of the word.
stay safe matey, chat soon.

 

Lewis's chin was only average but an excellent fighter so it doesn't matter really

 

Haha! Or should that be tha tha. Or hahaeth!
Whatever it is, welcome back pal.

 

Lewis’ chin was decent…I put it in the B list. There’s no getting away from the fact that he was one punch KO’d. That excludes him from the A list imo.

However it just goes to show how fine the margins are when we as fans of the sport make these kind of judgements. Ali is put in the A class by most of us when it comes to Chin, yet he was almost sparked out by Henry Cooper and no matter how you look at it, surely an A grade chin wouldn’t have been dropped so badly that he…allegedly… needed smelling salts to bring him back to earth! Whether that’s true or not…and I expect wise ol Richard to educate me on this subject…he was hurt badly by one punch.

Whatever the shenanigans surrounding that knockdown though, the fact is Ali did recover and went on to win convincingly in the end, so many people look at that result as a testament to Ali’s famed chin strength. Me? I see it as Ali’s great powers of recovery ( smelling salts or not).
Chin strength and powers of recovery are not necessarily the same thing.

 

Thanks Vic!

Hahaeth sounds very good. Lol.

I agree with your views on Lewis' chin. The two KO losses lend to underrating of Lennox' chin. The biggest criticism was that he allowed himself to be caught so clean but that doesn't come into measuring the sheer attributes of his whiskers during the instances in question.

And @Mike Cannon made great points in properly detailing that Lennox wasn't actually counted out or fully unconscious - despite being in no condition to viably continue. Though I should note that the Rahman loss was recorded as a KO at least on Boxrec - although it did appear that the ref stopped counting at 8/9 and stopped the fight - but then it also appeared that Lennox only arose upon or a bit after being on the deck for 10 seconds but as far as I could tell, Lewis still wasn't technically counted out and many ref counts actually figure to be a bit longer than a strict 10 seconds. In fact, when a 10 count is tolled exactly in alignment with real seconds, it's easy to mistake as a "quick" count - since we're probably more used to ref's tolling 10 counts over a real duration of 11/12 seconds.

Aside from age onset deteriorations and accumulated wear/tear, we often take a fighter's chin as a perfectly static and reliable quality/quantity from one fight to the next. Still, I would imagine a fighter would be self-aware of some variances in his/her resilience on different occasions.

Certainly, poor conditioning and lack of focus could potentially take from the general resilience upheld by a fighter otherwise. Ultimately, ATG chins will take it all even if/when their normal resilience is impaired - managing to prevail even on their "off" nights.

We can only imagine/guess how other fighters would've fared if hit with those exact same punches that stopped Lewis - and they were big shots from big men, no question. I would say that the likes of Ali, Holmes, Foreman etc. ultimately survive those same shots but that's select company and no slight on Lewis. Aside from those KO losses, it seemed that we did seem some variance in the resilience of Lewis' chin in some fights - [possibly more-so than the average fighter, but it still wasn't ultimately fatal nor did it lead to Lennox losing by decision.

I'll give Lennox a B-or should I say a B-eth? F***ed if I knoweth! Lol-eth!

 

Wow, could Tua's defense be any worse? It was like every single punch Lennox threw went directly into Tua's unguarded face. Plod, plod, plod, get hit in face. Plod, plod, plod, get hit in face... Occasionally throw a left hook, get hit in face.... Rinse and repeat all fight.

 

I see three chin categories.

1. One punch resistance.
2. Accumulated damage resistance.
3. Ability to recover from being hurt.

Lewis rated high at #2 and decent at #3. Anything that didn't flatten him, he'd soak up without it hampering his ability to keep fighting, and he'd recover from being hurt quickly if not flattened.

Tyson Fury is high at both #2 and #3. That's why he can repeatedly get up from being KD'd by Wilder, recover, and win the fight. Larry Holmes is about the same here. Got knocked down some, but other than Tyson, got up and won.

Mike Tyson was high at #1 and #2. He didn't recover that well though. Once ground down, he was done.

Guys like McCall, Cobb, Mercer, Holyfield, and old Foreman were high at all three.

 

Interesting. Where would you put Ali? Definitely 2 and 3 I’d say. What about his one punch resistance?

 

Fairly high. If Tier 1 is the group I listed, he's at the top of Tier 2. He got better as he got older. He ranks above Fury and Holmes here.

 

Is Fury's chin really that notable? Just asking.

 

This thing about Tua having some terrifying power, yeah sure a 226 pound Tua like the one that fought Ike Ibeabuchi. A 245 pound version of that fellow like the one that fought Lewis was far from being anything special.

This stuff about a chin. I don't really buy into it so much, Lewis won his fights cause he was defensively good enough to not get hit flush alot and offensively good enough to give better than he got and to strike back after he had been struck. Thinking that Lewis won those fights because he was sooo good at taking a punch... Im not convinced.