Speaking as someone who rates Lewis extremely highly, my opinion is based more on how deep his resume was than how he fared against prime ATG opposition. With the exception of Bowe, he fought pretty much everyone who was anyone in both the 1990s and early 2000s. Viewed as a whole, his career is also very aesthetically pleasing - I see him as a Diet Coke version of Ali where his career had very distinct eras of success What's more, the shadow of Lewis still looms large over today's heavyweight division: he puts Fury's top-heavy resume to shame and undermines Whyte's inability to take big fights that don't suit his every demand. Out of them all, I feel like Joshua had the best chance to become Lewis 2.0, but unfortunately he has made far too much money far too quickly, and it seems to have severely affected his conduct both inside and outside of the ring. It doesn't help that Matchroom hype every single one of Joshua's minor fights through the roof, when Lewis was allowed to fight the likes of Morrison, Mercer, Golota, Briggs, Grant, Botha, Tua etc. without ridiculous amounts of fanfare or pressure. In today's heavyweight climate -- which Matchroom have contributed to massively -- Joshua simply wouldn't be allowed to fight Wilder, Ortiz, Martin etc. after his Usyk loss by British boxing fans
His loss to rahman hurt his reputation badly but a focused lewis who doesnt take his opponent lightly can beat any heavyweight in history.
The amount of people who put him as the H2H GOAT make me say yes. He beat old men, won a fight he was losing badly with a cut, and beat 5’9 David Tua. Those are the highlights of his career. Comparing to people like Ali, Wlad, Usyk, it sounds silly to put him over them.
Not necessarily he got caught by an once in a lifetime punch that landed just as he bounced off the ropes. He wasted no time in righting that wrong by putting Rahman’s lights out the very next fight. Whereas AJ played it safe vs Ruiz..
Yes. Lennox was a great fighter, but 2 biggest names in his resume are past prime Holyfield and beyond shot version of Tyson. Lewis looked like a monster against opponents who couldn't take his power, but against those who could he wasn't very impressive:Mercer, old Tuscker and Holyfield, Mavrovic, Vitali... And that's while having enormous size advanatage against some of them (Mercer, Holyfield, Mavrovic). I rate Lennox among top 10 heavyweights of all time by resume and top 5 H2H, but he definitely wasn't the greatest (or the best) heavyweight of all time.
Top 5 heavyweight ever and arguably the top guy h2h, at least in the conversation Was certainly underrated at a time
If anything he's underrated. There's not another HW on earth outside of the greats that could go through the resume he did without dropping a fight. Yes Tyson and Holyfield were old, but so was Lewis. It's not like he was 24 fighting them. Vitali, Tyson, Tua, Holyfield, Briggs, Golota, Mercer, Morrison, Bruno, Tucker, Ruddock, etc. etc. Tyson couldn't put Ruddock away in his prime. Bowe couldn't handle Golota. Lewis dusted them both. He's a top 3 all-time great based on resume with two bad one-punch losses, both of which were avenged rather dramatically.
I certainly think top 4 or 5, though top 3 is definitely not out of the question Bowe also ducked him when he was champ and Tyson chose Holyfield over him He was 100% the best of his era and along with Holmes the greatest since Ali
Yes. He failed to stop the much smaller Zeljko Mavrovic. How many opponents did he stop who were never stopped before? Very few. His wins were mostly over faded guys like Mike Tyson, or chinny heavyweights like Golota and Grant. He received a gift decision over Ray Mercer.