Lennox Lewis - Whats The Lowest He Can Be Ranked?

I have Lewis 4th and Liston 5th, I don't think that's messed up, skewed and unbalanced criteria at all personally.

Lewis should be a lock top 10 at the very least, although for me anywhere outside the top 6 is dubious. He's right near the head of that next tier behind Louis and Ali.

 

You're right! Thats when it takes a clear understanding of the fighters competition, and what I feel is the biggest problem with some of the people that make ridiculous points about Lennox Lewis.
Avenging losses and beating heir apparents who either never lived up to the billing, or shouldnt have lost to in the first place, doesnt enhance your legacy when your comparing to a fighter who never lost with a comparable run.
So who did it better, more dominatly, more explosively, more consistently, and against what level of competition? Thats how you evaluate a great fighter who never beat another great fighter in their prime and how you ultimately rank him in history.
There is a very informative post on the previous page by Unforgiven to Chris Pontius discussing the Holyfield Douglas win vs the Lewis Golota win. Just about covers everything really, some of the guys should read it before they resort to personal attacks! :good

 

Well, they did well to build the fight up to any level in the wake of the Grant-Golota affair which was supposed to showcase how and why Grant was a threat to Lewis. The whole thing was almost blown away in the opening round.
Obviously, Grant's people were quick to point out "he proved a lot, he got off the deck to win - remember Cassius Clay against Henry Cooper and what Clay did to Liston in his next fight !" etc. etc.

Highlights of the fight sum up Grant and Golota :

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHb-OuNFL5c[/ame]

 

LEnnox LEwis certainly didn't think Rahman would beat Tyson, he said he only came to altitude late against Rahman because he wasnt facing Wlad or Tyson and he'd get to altitude earlier if he was facing those 2.

I wish we got Tyson-Rahman before Lennox got his revenge like Rahman wanted, Tyson could have been the only man to be champion in 3 decades, then Tyson-Lewis would have been even bigger.

 

Lennox Lewis certainly didn't think Hasim Rahman would beat Lennox Lewis either !

Really, Tyson should have been required to beat Holyfield at least to prove he was worthy of a shot at Lewis or Rahman.

Yes, Tyson's reputation and persistent box-office appeal made many people overrate him or talk him up. We all know that.

Lewis's main reason for focussing on Tyson as his main rival was two-fold 1. MASSIVE PAY DAY, and 2. The "man on the street" perception of Tyson.

And of course, Tyson always had a hell of a "puncher's chance", so even we who knew he was shot, over-hyped and undeserving were not gonna write him off completely. And that's really something to do with Lewis's proven ability to lose to huge underdogs by one-punch finishes.

 

I have him 9 on my list. I would consider him great but not on the level that many on Esb put him. The lowest I could see him is around 12. I am not entirely comfortable with putting him ahead of Fraizer or Dempsey on my list. I only did so cuz I think he would beat them in a head to head matchup.

 

1. Lewis hadn't been at altitude before and you could tell he was panting early going, however he was winning the fight handily and clowning a bit when he got caught. Freak loss even though he was unprepared

2. Tyson beating Golota/Saravese/Botha is more than Ruiz did for his WBA title shot, or Riddick Bowe for his shot at Holyfield, or Moorer for his shot at Holyfield, or any of Bowe's defenses. What did Jeffries do for his title shot? Holyfield for his second/3rd/4th/5th etc title shots? What did Louis do to get a shot at Charles? What did Holmes/Foreman do to get their title shots? Past champions historically are due title shots by default, Tyson did more than these fighters to get his shot

Stop talking out your ass Lennox and everyone perceived Tyson as a more dangerous fight than Rahman/Ruiz/Byrd from 2000-2002, and rightfully so.

 

well i am one of those persons ranking sonny at nr. 4.
but tell me why he shouldn't be that high ??
sonny was very strong, had ko power. had a terriffic jab. was a good ring general. was also good inside fighter. had good defense.
and if it was possible he probably beat MOST of the hw champs if he fought them.
if ali hadn't come around he would have dominated the 60ties

 

That was what a year and a half prior to facing Lewis? How do you maintain a top ranking by fighting once a year, and facing a guy that wasnt even in the rankings 8 months before the Lewis fight?
Riddick Bowe beat the #1 contender to earn his shot at Holyfield, how is that any comparison?
Public perception and reality is something we already covered isnt it?

 

Well for anyone that does have Liston top 5 I don't think they would believe that. What's your criteria exactly? How much do you factor H2H?

 

Tyson was not shot in 2002. But he was foregone, lazy, not motived nor training properly. I don't see how a more determined, more in shape fight with Tyson's tool set and skills at the time could make a better accounting as a HW. He won the 1st round against Lewis. Then he crumbled, but he didn't give him much of a chance before the actual fight took place. People really need to reassess what "shot" actually is. It's being way overused. Ali was shot in the 78 onwards. Shot fighters thump and have no rythm when they jump-rope. Shot fighters have generally much less punch resistance. Shot fighters are a complete shell of themselves. Tyson was very forgone, but a lot of it came down to discipline and mentality. He still got a title shot with his habits and training up to that point. Not a shot fighter.

It's the same with people who claim Frazier was shot in 75. Foregone, yes, but not shot.

 

Shot is a term thats thrown around a little loosely in the forums. When evaluating Tyson of 1988 compared to the 2002 version, its easy to put him a category of waaaay past his best. When hearing him speak and seeing him fight with the infrequency he did, its even easier to do so.
Completely shot, maybe not physically. Shot as a world class championship level fighter, I think thats a fairly easy to agree that he was.

 

Incidentally, Emanuel Steward's excuse for coming to South Africa was that "Lennox and I travel a lot internationally and are used to high altitude, we dont need to acclimatise." ........ so he was wrong. Lewis brushed it off and said he was used to altitude too. This was before the fight, and i think they stuck to that story afterwards too.
But I agree with you on the relevance of altitude, it was a factor. But not the whole story.

The point is, you're using Lennox's rating of Tyson as a far more dangerous opponent than Rahman as some sort of authority statement. When in fact it's as clear as day that Lewis GROSSLY underestimated Rahman.
"I cant believe Hasim Rahman can beat me." Lewis said in the post-fight interview.

"Freak loss" is just an excuse.
You wanna accuse people of being "biased" but you have no shame in calling an ordinary clean KO a "freak loss".
Funny, I think you also refered to Tommy Morrison's 3-knockdown drubbing by Michael Bentt as a "fluke" too !
I wonder how many of Lewis's KOs you'd describe as "fluke" or "freak" wins ?

Anyway, you're concentrating strictly on Rahman's rating before he beat Lewis.

More than Ruiz did, true. I dont recognize the Ruiz-Holyfield fights as the championship though. Lewis was the champion, and he refused to fight Ruiz. That's fair enough.
But Ruiz beat Holyfield or ran him close. Which is more than Tyson was capable of. Do you think Tyson could have gone the distance with Holyfield in 2000/'01 ?

Riddick Bowe had some decent wins going in to the Holyfield fight that certainly rank with Tyson's wins over Golota and Savarese. That's another topic entirely.

Anyway, I'm not even saying Tyson didn't deserve a shot at all. Botha got a shot, Grant got a shot, so I cant say he didn't deserve a shot at all. He didn't deserve the hype as "only serious contender". Frankly, he wasn't serious at all. And in reality he should have at least beaten Holyfield or someone as highly-rated as Holyfield to deserve a shot.

Going into the Lewis fight, Tyson's only fight in the previous 20 months was a win over Brian Nielsen, where he looked quite one-dimensional and scaled 239 pounds.

Maybe everyone you know.
A more dangerous fight - Why ? Because he had a bigger punch ? Yes, that's a fair reason, he could hit and Lewis's chin was suspect. That was it.
But I doubt Tyson could have beat any of those guys, and it's true that they were all more deserving. Rahman had beaten Lewis once. Byrd had beaten David Tua. Ruiz and Holyfield had gone 1-1-1 with no KOs.
Tyson's wins over Golota and Nielsen or Savarese (stretching back over 2 years) say almost nothing about how he stands with those, not to mention the up-and-coming Klitschkos.

Tyson may or may not have deserved to be ranked within the top 4 or 5 contenders, he might have even beaten one of them (which I doubt, judging by form) but the guys in the top 10 (above and below him) who would have beaten him probably would have beaten him badly.

The Tyson myth being rolled out one last time and hyped to galactic proportions for one last MEGA-FIGHT ( v. Lewis), living off of a repuation built a decade-and-a-half earlier, is somewhat similar to Holmes-Ali, but on a lesser scale.

****, no one really cared whether Tyson really could fight any more, he was still sell-able as the big bad menace, the other leading heavyweight of the era (people must've forgotten quite how badly Holyfield had beat him up 6 years earlier!).
And the fight was sold on myth and personality entirely, including Tyson being unhinged, his violent craziness, unpredictability and "what he might do!"

Quite a sad chapter in boxing really. All about money. Let's face it, most of us bought it, and wouldn't have missed it for the world. But it was a circus, and everyone knew it.

 

Then in his case, he chose to be shot. And you can't choose to be shot, therefore he wasn't.

 

Thats why I say the term is used loosely. To me being physically unable and not wanting to fight at all, are pretty much the same.