@Classics. If Lennox Lewis never losted. Can he be considered top 3 ATG HW?

Not when you look at the opposition. Say Vitali didnt face an old Lennox Lewis. Hes been beating all these young guys easy. It still doesnt matter if you know how good the opposition really is. Noone is putting Vitali in the top 3. The fact that a younger Vitali's spirit was broken in 6 rounds against a prideful old lion is telling to me. Its kind of like Riddick Bowe facing Andrew Golota. Golota was undefeated bigger and better in those fights, but his will was broken by a broken down fighter who refused to give up. Those are the type of things that have to be taken into consideration before you go throwing around top 1,2 or 3. Lewis lost to Mcall and Rahman by knockout, he was outboxed by Frank Bruno, struggled with Ray Mercer and a few other marginal contenders. That in my opinion is not the makings of a all time top 3 heavyweight. All things considered even going undefeated against the opposition he faced, he should be ranked closer to 8-10 somewhere behind Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield. Just my opinion.

 

Most people don't even count those losses anyway, so wouldn't make a lick of difference:

McCall-bad stoppage, Lewis didn't have Steward than, pre-prime Lewis , won the rematch many years later

Rahman-Lewis played too much ping pong, was making a movie, wrong strategy...he won the rematch.

 

Agreed. The other two sentences are just bad excuses that people seem to excuse Lewis from.

 

I don't believe Lennox Lewis is anywhere near the top 5.
But these all-time lists are very subjective.

IF he had never lost ?
Well, that's a big IF.
It's hard to imagine. You could ask the same about George Foreman, Mike Tyson, Joe Louis, Sonny Liston .... how great would we would consider them now if they'd never lost ?
Maybe a lot greater, or maybe not. I don't know. It's hard to comprehend.

 

Yes how many people say " he avenged all his losses" when they describe Lewis' credentials? That seems to be the first sentence they write.

I dont want to get into a debate with your above post either because I disagree with most of what you wrote, so we'll just leave it at that.

 

Exactly.

I'm not saying its right or wrong either, just the way it is.

 

A win = 1
A loss = -1
An avenged loss = 0

:deal

 

A first time win is better than a 1-1 though surely.

 

But people do chalk it up as the same. They seem to say its ok to overlook the fact he was knocked out because he rematched them and won. Well he shouldnt have lost to that level of fighter in the first place. Look how the Douglas loss has degraded Tysons legacy. What if he was able to rematch Douglas and knock him out in two rounds? Instead, Douglas had his number, Tyson was overated, he got dominated, he couldnt handle boxers, he was a frontrunner had no heart etc, and so on.

A quick response is that Lewis shouldnt have been knocked out by Mcall and Rahman. He shouldnt have been outclassed technically by Bruno and even Vitali in my opinion, and that in itself doesnt put him in the class with Ali or Louis.

 

Tub of arse.