Always wanted to like Lewis, & you have to admire his skills, but watching him jab jab jab through so many rounds, barely even throwing the right, didn’t make for an exciting style. Great record though & he did beat Shannon Briggs convincingly - Lets go Champ!
I've always been a fan of Lewis, but it's problematic for me that a 40 something Holmes was able to do better against common opponents like Mercer and McCall.
With the lack of testing across the world in that era, we'll probably never know who was doping, and for how long. If it all did come out of the wash, my guess is that a lot of sacred cows would be skewered, and that UK fighters wouldn't be immune from that. We know that Jones was popped in his fight against Richard Hall, for which his explanation was very dubious, and it was never properly pursued by the relevant authorities. We can also summise that it was unlikely to be the first or last time that he took performance enhancing drugs. Anything beyond that is getting increasingly speculative. We don't know what he was taking, when he started, what response he had to it, when he stopped, and indeed what the vast majority of his competition were doing at the same time. Whitewashing Jones obviously isn't the right thing to do, as he failed a drugs test, and it was brushed under the carpet rather than him being exonerated. Positive tests tend to be the tip of the iceberg, so it is unlikely that a failed test is the one and only time they took PEDs. However, I don't agree either with putting a doping asterisk against his entire career without any reasonable grounds to support that.
Oh dear oh dear oh dear. Hatton had a good first round and lost everything afterwards. Oscar and Castillo beat him in close fights. Come on lad, give your head a wobble.
I get you, for his time Joe Louis was a boxing phenomenon and for sure one of the most skilled HW's ever. The skill gap between him and his opponents was huge - but, if he fought in Lennox's era that skill gap would have been significantly smaller. Perhaps Lennox isn't the most skilled HW ever, but he's up there for sure, especially when Steward came along. There is no denying he was incredibly skilled - and also consider his power, height, reach, and ability to fight tall... Yup - IMO, nobody beats a prime Lennox Lewis H2H.
