Lewis as 9th best HW ever?

Probably:
McCall
Chuvalo
Cobb
Ali
Foreman
Marciano
Jeffries
Holyfield
Frazier
Mercer

 

So what? Most modern armies would beat the Romans, does that make them greater?

Newton was a terrible scientist because people now understand everything he wrote and more.

 

He has a pretty stellar resume really. He did fight quite a few past prime fighters but established himself as a top Heavy IMO.

-Douglas
-Mercer
-Holmes
-Foreman
-Tyson
-Dokes
-Stewart x2
-Cooper
-Bowe 1-2 No shame there Bowe was as talented a big guy as there has been
-Moorer 1-1


Okay, a few past their prime guys. And Douglas was a blob. But the all round skillset he displayed scores him kudos, and the fact he did fight some big, monsterous guys and gave as good as he got.

Holy wasn't exactly at his peak in the first Tyson fight either. He adapted his style to match his, ahem, bulky frame and compenstated for losing some of his mobility and speed. He toughed it out.

Stewart was a dangerous guy, and Holyfield-Cooper is a great slugfest, which Holyfield did get involved in a fair bit. Then again, Louis was dropped out of the ring by Buddy Baer and was dropped against Galento, Ali by Cooper and struggled with Jones. Pulling him up for struggling to lesser opposition, when you're comparing him to Bowe (no longevity, got battered by Golota x2, where is the rest? Ferguson, Gonzalez and Hide? Ducked Lewis) and Lewis (lost to lesser opposition twice) and the fact we saw Holyfield prosper against top notch fighters, is a bit odd IMO. They're all fairly close. Bowe is outside the top 15 IMO, some quality wins and attributes, but too erratic IMO, and faded away far too fast. For a man of his size to blatantly duck Lewis, well, I think it goes against him.

In a full body of work, even taking into account his gradual slide and losses to Ruiz/Toney/Ibragimov, he gave a fairly good account of himself against Valuev well into his forties. Evander is an old timer, ran the gauntlet, won a lot, lost some, but what a fighter.

Would his Cruiserweight wins, essentially fought at the kinda' weight we have been discussing for 'old time' HWs (well, some of 'em) count towards his HW record? I don't, personally, but it's up for debate IMO.

Holyfield is in the same bracket at Frazier and Tyson. I could see anyone one of them in the no.6 spot on any given day.

 

I would rank Lennox higher than all of these guys myself....but not for the reasons you mention :nono

 

There's no doubting that Lewis, like Tyson, is a head-2-head nightmare at HW all-time, but other factors have to be taken into account when assessing a fighter's worth in a top-10 scenario like this one.

Wouldn't argue with your placing of Lewis though. Achievement/record-wise he's hovering in around the top 5 for me as well.

 

Well I was a big believer in him/his management blatantly ducking Greb and Wills. What we have to remember is Dempsey as a marketing product was epic. Boxing really became huge because of Dempsey. No way his handlers wanted to risk the gravy train, they were in the business of making money from promotions, not necessarily sporting intrigue. Greb was too tricky/good and Wills could easily avoided using the colour line. Why bother risking millions of dollars? Why not just sell something that apears to be the real mccoy, that isn't like most businesses do, ie pretend Carpentier and Firpo were genuine world class superfights, when they weren't.

Most the public bought it, even the sports writers and boxers believed they were seeing the best of the best. They didn't see Dempsey get outboxed by Miske in 1918, they saw him destroy the past it version with Bright's Disease. They didn't see him face Greb/Wills, but saw him face Miske/Brennan, good 180lbers who were both dominated by Greb on several occasions and Greb was doing that to the pre-Bright's Disease version of Miske, the 1 who has a good case for beating a 1918 Dempsey, not the version who won 3 out of his prior 8 fights coming into the Dempsey match (granted it was good competition). Miske was 33-1 against, the bookies certainly saw this ex-Dempsey conqurour as shot to pieces.

HOWEVER Gibbons did beat Greb twice, in 1 of which he is said to have hammered him and was supposedly expecting not too much trouble in the 3rd/4th bouts and underestimated Greb (I'm quoting that from Klompton the Greb historian). Their third fight, which Greb won was fought in very heavy rain, which would be terrible conditions to fight in and probably wouldn't make it easy to judge.

Were the 3rd/4th Greb fights a sign Gibbons was past his prime? Was it because he was looking past Greb to the Dempsey fight? Was Gibbons a faded force at 32? Either way a 173lb Gibbons got bulled around the ring and despite being an aggressive puncher fought negatively on the backfoot. It could be a win on par with beating Greb, it could be more cynical match making.

The Wills avoidance was cynical, he was the number 1 challenger for the whole championship reign as far as I'm concerned. They staged a press conferance to sign the fight and then blamed the local commision for not authorising it. Did Lennox not fight Tyson when Tyson was banned from Vegas? No they found somewhere that would commision the fight, if Dempsey and his management really wanted

Wills is certainly the bigger duck, the case for Fulton being number 1 above him is very spurious, based on Fulton beating Langford who Wills had beaten numerous tiems and would go onto beat something like 17times in total. Tate did it just before Fulton too, even if Fulton was impressive.

We didn't see Dempsey against the best except for when he faced Tunney. It wasn't necessarily only his fault but to claim he was certainly past prime and it would be different in his prime, well there's no evidence for that.

I see your logic, Foreman looked awesome and some thought unbeatable against Frazier/Norton and gets an asterix next to the Ali loss -yes but it was the greatest of all time. However I like my lists to reflect exactly how good boxers were. I ask if Young can outbox Foreman, how many others can? If Lyle can nearly KO Foreman, how many others can KO him?

The Foreman that timed that big punch on Moorer also got outboxed by Morrison and Schulz. The Cooney/Qawi comeback wins didn't mean much, Cooney was a retired alcoholic and Qawi was shorter than Ricky Hatton and not a HW

I really wish a piece of HW history and Foreman faced Holmes in the 70s, maybe he could have stopped Foreman's comeback instead of Jimmy Young or maybe if Foreman didn't retire or came back during Holmes reign. If Holmes got that win he would of been seen as far greater, sad for him he didn't have a great dance partner. I think Holmes was probably better than Foreman in 94 too. So put him above Foreman in your list

 

Nice post PP. Its also worth noting that Wills has a win over Fulton during Dempseys reign.

 

well i think its wrong that you can rate dempsey for example over lennox lewis , if dempsey stands little chance against lennox h2h which i believe he doesnt , and hasnt even fought the same calibar opposition as lennox did then how do you suppose he could rank higher , just because he was a huge boxing name and loved by many he doesnt deserve to be ranked higher surely

 

I don't think many people rank Dempsey over Lewis but how they would fare H2H has nothing to do with it. Lewis just has a better record.

For arguments sake its like ranking Ali over Lewis. Lewis might have a good shout at beating Ali H2H but because of their records theres not a chance you should rank him ahead of Ali.

 

Quality post PP, on both subjects :good

Thought we'd disagreed on Greb-Dempsey, obviously I was wrong ;-) :thumbsup

With Foreman, you make some very, very valid points :good

 

No arguments with ranking Lewis over Dempsey - I do.

But I wouldn't rank someone like Vitali Klitschko over Dempsey, even though he'd probably beat Jack in a H-2-H contest.

 

Thats fair enough Bam Bam. TBH most lists I see these days by fans (rather than sports journalists) seem to have Lewis ahead but...meh!!!

The point is Dempsey-Lewis H2H shouldn't effect how you rank them in history IMHO.:good

(I don't buy your use of the Hall of Fame to indicate strong opposition though, but maybe thats for another thread!!)

 

Willard's in the HOF?

Jeez, who did he beat apart from an old JJ, and in a controversially viewed fight at that?

 

He IS famous!!