That's about the best comment I've seen so far. Foreman was 'brain-dead' against Lyle but..Lyle was never going to win. I thought Ron was dead at the end! Give me some Lyle signature wins (Shavers maybe, in his home town and was out with that left hook at the end of the 2nd) Ron? A tough fighter in any era but falls FAR short of any discussion of GREAT IMO. PvP vs. Joe? Frazier would have put him into a pile early especially if Ron came to slug it out. Is every shout out for Lyle predicated on the Foreman fight??? All the 'big boys' he fought had his number. Young 2x, Ali, Quarry, etc... I think he beat Bugner in Denver via UD, is that correct? Whoa! There's a 'victory' worthy of greatness against 'listless' Joe. My $0.02
Lyle had a few issues .. like Jess Willard he started real late .. Lyle also came back to have a career after being stabbed so badly in prison he was declared legally dead but somehow came back to have a serious professional career .. no matter what you think that took something out of him before he even started. He was a big, strong, very hard punching guy but there seems to be a strain of poster on this forum that thinks any man with a punch beats China Chinned Joe Frazier and they are delirious .. Frazier was a warrior who fought as a swarmer while near blind in one eye almost his whole career often giving up serious size .. to rip his chin is simply revisionism. He was an animal with a terrific chin and was as hard to hit as any heavyweight swarmer I've ever seen.
Frazier is a level up on Lyle and would prevail by stoppage sometime after the mid rounds for me. He would crowd Lyle and bury his head on Lyle's chest quite often while wearing him down.
Ron Lyle's signature wins were Jimmy Ellis, Oscar Bonavena, Earnie Shavers, Joe Bugner and Buster Mathis. Those aren't bad. Excluding Shavers, they're practically all of Frazier's signature wins, too. Frazier did better against Ali and Quarry than Lyle did. Lyle did better against Foreman than Frazier did either time. I picked Frazier to stop Lyle late. But Lyle was no pushover in his day.
He had one hell of a mule kick for a punch (just not always particularly accurate and often thrown quasi-amateurishly...it's a wonder a lot of his haymakers landed at all imo). And he had heart, just not the world's greatest chin. The fact that Ali turned things around so fast on him is testament to that last. Off the floor from Foreman or not, Lyle got cockeyed from heavy or unexpected shots (the latter one of Ali's trademarks). Had he not had that disability he might have beaten Foreman.
While I agree that Frazier is more accomplished and better overall, Lyle matched up well with Fraizer, and IMO would have beaten him in the mid 1970's had they met.
FOTC Joe is the baddest heavyweight who ever lived imo. I watched that fight again and was once again a little freeked out by all the (cringe-worthy) punishment Joe took in that fight. I should also mention, though Ali is second only to Larry as my favorite fighter, he made himself look real bad not keeping his right hand up. Toward the end of the fight I actually was angry at Ali and yelling "Jeezus, HOLD YOUR RIGHT HAND UP, ALI"!
