is lennox lewis one of the greats?

Fight the power! :good

Lennox needs to get knocked down a peg or two occassionally, it shouldn't be sacrilege to call him out on his weaknesses.

 

It seems like sacrilege around here sometimes. Almost like some sort of LL cult here sometimes. :good

Strangely enough, I can see myself in 5 or 10 years time having the same conversations on here about WLAD KLITSCHKO ..... who I predict will become just as highly (over)rated as I believe Lewis is now. I'll be saying how overrated he is.
But at the moment I seem to give him as much - or more - credit than the majority !

I tend to stand around the same spot on most fighters, and the consensus swings all over the place - esp. when fighters retire.

 

Wladmir Klitschko has not been asked and answered the same questions Lennox Lewis has in a fight. For that he could never be ranked alongside him or above him, regardless of how many fights or win streaks he has. Hes simply not been tested enough to put him in the same category as Lewis.

 

Which tests did Lewis have ?

 

Please inform me which heavyweight champ fought a deeper list of punchers than Lewis?

Mason
Weaver
Ruddock
Tucker
Bruno
Morrison
McCall
Golota
Briggs
Rahman
Grant
Tua
Tyson
Vitali Klitschko

And before you start nit-picking about this fighter or that fighter being "past-it", we all know that power is usually the last thing to go... and I would really like to know the era in which 15 top hitting heavyweights were simultaneously in their prime. I smell more the classic forum's great dual standards application...

 

Lewis faced better opposition by a long shot. He showed the ability to fight in different styles. He showed the ability to fight. He showed the ability to bail himself out against competent fighters and the main thing is mental toughness. Wlad doesn't have it and that's why he has been beaten and battered by marginal fighters.

 

For a change I will agree with you on the assessment of Wlad. If he beats Haye and a few more opponents before retiring, then he has the potential to make the top15. There are few who have his jab, power and ability not to get hit. However, there are more than a few who are more durable.

 

Great heavyweight. Beat everyone in his era apart from Riddick Bowe in the pros. Think Bowe had better fundamentals but Lewis would probably have won certainly after he teamed up with Manny Steward.

 

I've already been through this "punchers" thing with ChrisP.
I don't completely buy it. And besides, just because a fighter has above-average power doesn't make him good or better than one who doesn't have it.

 

Lewis was beaten by marginal fighters too.
I don't rate Lewis's opposition as that much better than Wlad's, tbh.

It's easy to say, "Wlad can't fight", "Wlad has no mental toughness" .... seems a bit extreme to me, to say the least.

 

:good
He's only been stopped 3 times in 58 fights.
Lewis was stopped 2 times in 45 fights.

 

Losing to Purritty is dreadful. It's not extreme because wlad hasn't faced and beaten comparable opposition and he's failed miserably mentally on three occasions.

 

He was 22 years old when he lost to Purrity. He's improved a lot since then.

Count all the times Wlad hasn't "failed miserably mentally".

 

To borrow a phrase that I've seen Janitor use in the past, "power is worth a bucket of warm spit if you can't use it"

Those guys were all big punchers but most didn't have the neccessary skills and tools to utilize it against upper tier fighters.

Kind of surprised to see Tucker being thrown around as a big puncher so much in this thread too

 

I have Lewis and Foreman tied at 3/4 and Marciano/Holmes tied at 5/6.