Lennox Lewis - Biggest Shift When It Comes To Public Perception?

Not exactly, but you were close. This is Top 10 HWs of all time in 1975 by The Ring:

Joe Louis
Jack Dempsey
Jim Jeffries
Jack Johnson
Rocky Marciano
Gene Tunney
Bob Fitzsimmons
Jim Corbett
Muhammad Ali
Joe Frazier

 

Until this last generation Canadians were seen as British people. That viewpoint heavily shifted over the lifetime of Lennox Lewis.

 

It's nowhere near as simple as that, let's cut mustard, Lennox destroyed top3 rated Razor Rudduck in 2 rounds. Bowe beats Holyfield, the climax final or the 2 semi finals is about to give us a great fight and a true chmption and it doesn't Bowe dumps the belt rather than facing Lennox

Lennox then develops a resume including Rudduck, Tucker, Bruno, McCall, Akinwande, Mercer, Morrison, Mason before facing Golota who had essentially beat Bowe into retirement. Golota gets blasted out in a round. He then becomes by beating Briggs

Then we finally have Holyfield willing to unify, something Bowe wouldn't. Lennox gets robbed and then clearly outboxes Holyfield again. He then takes on the new hyped up young prospects in Tua and Grant. Avenges his loss to Rahman. And then dominates Tyson

In his finale he would beat the man who would be the next dominant champion in Vitali

Lennox has fought all comers, avenging both defeats and dominated boxing from 1992-2003. He beat every man he faced. Only Marciano and Tunney did the same and they weren't at the top for long and faced very few top contenders

 

Isn’t that usually the case? Wasn’t there a post on this forum recently showing an all-time heavyweight ranking from 1975 where Ali wasn’t even close to the top spot?

 

I'm aware of thos but I'd seen others individual oponions of Willard and Tunney being ranked in front of both too though

Liston's image certainly hadn't recovered at that stage.

 

Number 2 is a minority. Often you will hear Top 5 and almost always top 10.

 

Wlad represents a far bigger shift in my eyes.

 

I think everyone here knows I hate being controversial and I don't like to argue without a productive purpose but I guess I'll be the one to say it. I personally believe Lennox should've rated about Cleveland Williams, even at that time. There. I've said it. Bring the hate.

 

It's actually Wlad and Holmes. They weren't rated at all in their own era despite the top 5/top 10 accomplishments

 

And awful lot of people say #3 there days.

 

Yeah, but then he went on to beat Holy.

 

Nobody thinks Holyfield was the greatest. Underrated, yes. Greatest, no.

Lewis got his credit after the first Holyfield fight.

 

Yeah usually between 3rd and somewhere in the top 10.

 

Wlad is following Lewis' footsteps a bit with his ranking raising by the day, but Lewis still has 10 years on him.

 

Exactly, it's a bigger shift relative to duration because Wlad had worse optics in his own era. Unless the next era eclipses the current one Klitschko stock is only going to go up, partly because that's 90% of Fury and Ajs resume