Beat the **** out of a prime Holyfield for one. Prime Bowe was ****ing awesome. He had all the skills.
It's relevant here. Lewis won his Olympic Gold off a guy who would go on to be a near invincible and feared champion and it's the one guy he never fought professionally. The Russian guy you mentioned who beat Lewis up in the amateurs never turned pro, never accomplished anything professionally, never became a champion. He was a footnote. Yeah, but that's all he beat. He never fought Lewis, he never fought Tyson, he came back in 2004 after Lewis was gone and he never fought either Klitschkos. He talks tough about Lewis but he was emasculated twice by a guy Lewis took out in a round and he waited until Lewis was gone to come back instead of utilising the many opportunities given to him to settle that question. His win against Holyfield was historic but other than that he doesn't really deserve to be considered GOAT
Evander was 36/37 years old going in to those fights and went 2-4-1 in his next seven fights after Lennox. He was as close chronologically to losing to John Ruiz as he was to beating Tyson if we use the Lewis fights as the reference point. He beat Tyson in 97, lost to Lennox in 99, and lost to Ruiz in 2001. Are the people saying he was old and past it wrong?
Depends if these are the same people saying they underestimated him against Tyson. There's not much difference between the Holyfield who beat Tyson and the one who lost to Lewis. Don't get me wrong, he should have retired after Lewis. But it was a tough victory for Lewis, Holyfield clearly had something left. He wasn't completely past it
Let's see, he beat everyone that he faced, he is arguably top 3 atg behind Ali and Joe Louis. Not to mention he can mythologically match up with every heavyweight in history.
This doesn't actually detract from his standing. Unless you were looking from pound-for-pound considerations. His size was one of his attributes. He was the most dominant HW fighter of a ten year stretch, 1993 -2003.
I've always thought people who find him "the definitive #3 HW ever" were smoking something. But I have come around to much of what I wasn't focusing on or being consistent with. He's top notch. You can make arguments for him being that high and then again you can make arguments for others that surpass him. It is what it is. But if you don't rank Lennox in your top 10 ever, you probably are a little wack or your list has 8 of the top 10 pre-1965.
If boxing is about hitting and not being hit, Vitali wasn’t doing a great job of that. The fight was stopped fairly and that’s hardly Lewis’s fault.
