Lennox Lewis championship run

You guys are assholes bro

Look it TF up! If you didn't know something, before saying no that isn't true. Look it up. Yes he did. He campaign for the the lesser belts to exist, he used to have his name tied to them because he thought you jamooks would like it, and when it didn't work out he walked away from the situation.

100% the brain child of Lewis and 100% came from what happened to Ruiz. And before you say no it isn't. look it the **** up jabroni. jiminy.

 

Your bias and excuse making is all over this thread guy. How do you believe you have any credibility?

Don't know TF your talking about and the concept there is no excuse good enough is so foreign to you in the context of a Lewis conversation you list his excuses at me.


One of us has become a student and it ain't me learning anything new. At what point do you admit you lacked context?

 

Yeah I think Wlad wasn't on Lennox radar then the loss to Sanders. Wlad called Lennox out a few times though in both 2001 and 2002. I don't think it was that realistic though.

 

It's a fight i think about a lot these days. Where would we rate Wlad had he fought and beaten Lewis...does that one win make a huge difference to his legacy? I think it's does...

 

If he won definitely. I think Lewis would have had him at the point but Wlad would be in with a punchers chance. Lewis would not be able to take the shots like took against Vitali against Wlad IMO.

 

Yup, I think it's a 50/50 fight but I favour Wlad, outlined why in another thread about this very fight!!

 

Of the long reigning HWs Louis, Ali and Wlads stand favorably and Holmes is a peer. Before protecting the "0" became a thing there are non champions or short time champs who've matched or surpassed Lennoxs numbers of very good wins in non title bouts. Sam Langford doesn't have many official title defenses but hes the king of HW longevity statistics by a country mile. The 1910s overall has all sorts of absurd resumes with few official title fights.

Lennox's quantity of top wins really only stands out in modern eras and its impressive because the sport is structured in such a way to make such resumes difficult. Lennox has 44 fights and 225 rounds thats not great longevity wise but today thats fine. Of course when we limit the conversation to long reigning champs theres only a few of those. Charles fought in one of the only eras where I actually believe your narrative about size(its compicated) but he probably beat more top guys than Lennox

-See Holmes different. My bigger gripe with Holmes isn't his actual reign as champion but the fact he was actually from the 70s generation and kinda came in when his generation was gone to pick up the pieces and go on a run he could have never went on if he followed the same timeline as Foreman or Bugner.

As champion Holmes's struggles was very spaced out compared to Usyks. Holmes also had a very narrow window to fight the top fighters missing on his resume(as champ anyway) as they all popped up in the last 18 months or so of his reign opposed to marinating for years. While I'm dissapointed he didn't fight Tucker, Buster, Pinklon or rematch Witherspoon looking at the timeline its not really his fault. If he gave one of them the shot instead of Spinks he could have only fought one.

-We disagree here. Wlads resumes biggest gap besides his brother is Valuev. The biggest thing holding Wlad back from being a peer of Louis, Ali as a champ and Foreman H2H is 3 early losses. H2H they are neck and neck but Wlad has the better resume as a champion if we isolate that.

-Holyfield fought everyone had mixed results and didn't get punished for losses because of his name. He was a new Walcott where he got rewarded more for winning and punished less than losing than any peer. I have Bowe,Moorer and Foreman above him because the truth is while Holyfield took advantage of his 2nd chances he should have taken a few years to get those. Everything good he did after that is tainted by the fact others who might have made more of those chances didn't get them.

Holyfield was like a video game character who saved his game before losing. Having an alphabet body take Lennoxs belt he didn't lose in the ring and give it to his last defeated opponent in his next fight is some unprecedented levels of favortism. And its why I refuse to acknowledge his WBA lineage or Byrds IBF one.

-I don't hold the Douglas loss against Tyson at all because its the only comeback of his career even within the course of a fight he lost. Douglas winning wasn't a miracle he was one of Tysons best opponents. In the mid to late 80s Tyson did get to all the elites except Witherspoon even if it was an era more defined by depth era than ATGs.

My problem with Tyson is in his 2nd career. After coming out of prison Tyson achieved very little except highlight his limitations and has been massively overrated by his pop culture status. His longevity numbers like rounds are nerfed because he was overly dependent on early stoppages. Given how short careers are nowadays I think his legacy(the actual one not the one in his fans imagination) would have been better off if he'd never went back to boxing after prison. But then again in this scenario half the boxing community would see him as the GOAT. This is why Foreman kinda died for our sins as he saved us all from that by fighting Holyfield and Moorer.

 

Yeah its a Tunney v Schmeling thing where a future great held a minor title when Tunney/Lennox was champ and they could have fought Schmeling/Wlad but there was little reason to without future knowledge. Unlike Schmeling who was stripped quickly by the IBU when he chose to go to the US, Wlad was the 2nd best HW champ for over 2 years before losing in the final months of Lennox's reign. So there was a "window". While the WBO wasn't seen as a major belt the Ring did rank Wlad number 1 at the end of 2001 and 2002. But during this window Lennox fought Tyson who everyone in 2002 would have preferred him to fight.

 

My impression of Lewis is that he fought whoever the media wanted him to fight, with half an eye on his legacy.

It is all very well to criticize his defenses against men like Grant, Tua and Tyson in hindsight, but those were the fights that the media was agitating for at the time.

 

That's nice and all but I’m not really sure what your overall point is here. You acknowledge that Lewis beat more top fighters than his peers, had one of the best reigns ever, and that only Ali and Louis clearly surpassed him. That’s pretty much my stance. If you’re just discussing heavyweight history in general, that’s fine, but if there’s an actual argument against Lewis being one of the greatest heavyweight champions, I’m not really seeing it.

 

My point has been not fighting Bowe, Moorer and Foreman is glaring but hes got everything else. Theres only a few long time HW champs and of these he is a step behind Louis, Ali and Wlad because they don't have that flaw and do have the "everything else" Lennox has. In Lennox's era this flaw doesn't matter because all his competitors have a worse version of it.

I still rank Lennox over Wlad by the slimmest of margins H2H but as a champ he got to all the top guys he could have fought except Valuev.

 

The truth is that regardless of the reasons Lewis faced the number 1 boxer in his category 10 years after starting his professional career as an Olympic champion. After 7 years of being in the top !! This is probably one of the records of someone called ATG.
The truth is also that it was 37 year old Holyfield and the fight with him sucked, sorry. It looks nice on your CV after years, when you watched it you could only yawn and yearn for Tyson and Bowe.
Before Lewis faced Holyfield he had managed to fight real wars with Quavi, Dokes, 2x Tyson, 3x Bowe, 2x Moorer, Foreman, Mercer. He beat Douglas, he beat Holmes.. Where was Lewis then? he fought legendary fights with Akinwande, Mavrovic, McCall..
They say Lewis fought everyone but he didn't fight the number 1 in his division for 10 years. He didn't fight Moorer, Holmes, Ike, Whitearspoon, Bowe, Foreman, Sanders, Wlad, Byrd, Ruiz and a few others. Do you know how many times Morrison was on the floor and Lewis didn't face him?