Deeper Resume -Lennox Lewis Or Joe Louis?

yes he did but Joe Louis did the same. He beat 6 past, present or future heavyweight champion and I believe 2 light heavyweight champions. A fair number of hall of fame inductees too.

 

I think Louis’ resume was deeper but I personally like the QUALITY of Lennox’s .

 

While it's true Lewis faced some really good names, guys who were often overall complete fighters with good skills and dangerous abilities and punches, it's also true that many of them weren't at their best.

Tyson: completely washed
Holyfield: old and past his best
Morrison: not very old, but he'd been through the ringer with some brutal wars and a long career.
McCall: literally had no business being there due to mental health
Bruno: past his best
Weaver: way past it
Biggs: not only washed, he wasn't that good to begin with in the pros

On the other hand, he did manage to demolish undefeated Mavrovik, Grant, and Akinwande.

Ruddock was actually favored to win and is an undeniably good win. Briggs and Tua were great wins too, and he beat Vitali while he himself was old and that win aged well considering Vitali went on to have a pretty good career.

He never should've lost to McCall or Rahman, so I don't give him much credit in winning the rematches. You can say the same thing about Louis and Schmeling, but Louis only let that happen once and it happened to Lewis twice. Louis also had less controversial decisions/verdicts (first Walcott fight) while Lewis has the dubious affairs with Mercer, Holyfield 2, etc.

Overall, I think Lewis career is a case of quantity over quality. He has the names, but there's a hell of a lot of asterisks* for those names despite how good the opponents were on paper. Louis just straight up dominated for a long stretch of time with few controversies and his opponents were all for the most part in good condition and not past their best.

 

Lennox has a very resume of ATG he beat.
Mike was shot to oblivion, didn't give a f smoked weed in camp etc.
Evander was too old. In the second fight would have beaten him if he was younger ,with more activity,would have gotten his decision.
Vitali was a good win, I truly believe Vitali just shot his load and gassed and Lewis was opening him up before the fight was stopped.
Lewis beat some good fighters.

When people talk about Joe Louis, they don't mention much of his opponents ,because they weren't special. Still,25 defenses and historical significance is what usually puts him in the top 3

 

If not for WW2 Louis could have reached 50 titles defenses. And this was on top of the best pre title resume ever.

Lennox only fought 2 of the Bowe/Holyfield/Moorer/Foreman/Tyson group. He cleaned out most of the next 20 best guys but those are 3 stark omissions.

Louis had a getting knocked down problem that didn't matter because it didn't effect him much. Lennox actually had a flawed chin. For someone of his stature anyway.

 

I don't think he would have reached 50 tbf. And who is to say he doesn't still burn out at some point if he was to be fighting that often.

 

Whether he would or not he had the time and enough opponents. The second 25 were going to be easier then the first 25 guys too.

 

I don't see it is very likely and I don't know Joe could have got another 25 fights in myself but fair enough.

 

I have just spoken to upwards of seven of the moderators and they all say that this thread is actually not allowed. So, that's unfortunate. Because it would've been a good thread, man.

 

Joe Louis and it's not close.

 

Lewis. As much as I like Joe, he thrived in a weak HW era. His rematch wins over Walcott and Schmeling stand out as his two greatest victories. Baer, Braddock, Simon, Nova, Galento, Burman, Godoy, Paychek, Pastor, Mauriello, Farr, Carnera, Conn would not have held up against Lewis' opposition.

 

These are scandalous lies. Louis's era is possibly the era of HW even beyond the 70s.