Devils advocate, Lennox Lewis ducked chris Byrd and John Ruiz

Good points, but he'd still get criticized for failure to meet a mandatory, but I think it would most likely be reduced to a mere technicality for a desperate critic to make a case for himself.

Possibly from a marginal standpoint. Neither Ruiz nor Byrd stood out as clear #1 bests though. As I've already pointed out, Ruiz never truly took anything away from the Holyfield trilogy, and Byrd had lost very recently to Ibeabuchi and Klitschko. His win over Vitali Klitschko was not a decisive victory, and a fight that he was in fact losing, before an injury unrelated to anything that Byrd was doing to Vitali forced a resignation.

I can't attest for what people will think of this situation in a century from now. As it currently stands, we are only 5-7 years past the fact, and most seem to have forgotten most of the details already.

 

Fair enough, and I think you made your point. In a 100 years, or for that matter, even 10 years, the only thing a person will see on boxrec is that Lewis was stripped of his titles, but not the explanations behind it. I suppose one of the things that separates a true historian from an amateur is the ability to research the history in further depth, rather than taking the lazy route in an effort to win a debate on a Friday afternoon when work is slow at the office.

 

On top of that, a boxing historian in 100 years time will easily have access to these fight films.

Hell, we already have instant access to various boxing films more than 100 years old via Youtube and other Internet sources. They can easily see that Byrd and Ruiz both are awfully boring fighters.

 

Truth is, Byrd and Ruiz were mediocre fighters anyway.

I disagree with the idea that Tyson DESERVED to be ranked where he was when he challenged Lewis. Byrd should probably have been ahead of him, Ruiz and Holyfield also. But Tyson was BIG MONEY and the average man on the street perceived Tyson as still something to be reckoned with, so it made sense for Lewis to chase that fight, however distateful it seemed.

Lewis didn't have much decent opposition to go after. Were Wladimir's promoters really confident he could beat Lewis back in 2001 ? I think they wanted to get a few more wins under his belt there, and build him up a bit more. Lewis was really winding down by 2002 and most people were expecting his retirement then.

Lewis made no secret of the fact that Tyson was his main target. Grant and Tua were deserving challengers and Lewis destroyed them. There really weren't many good fighters around after he beat Holyfield.

Guys like Tyson, Rahman, and Ruiz and Byrd were crap really. But I know they have their supporters.

The heavyweight division's been **** for years now.

 

Lennox didn't duck them, he just had better fights to pursue..

Ruiz spent a long time with Maloney as his promoter years before he even became a heavyweight.. He sparred Lewis a lot and he never even scratched the surface.. Byrd wasn't technically well equipped to beat Lennox..

 

Exactly. It was the end of his career, and he didn't have anything to prove, he was just collecting retirement money. You may wonder how much $$$ and PPV a fight like Lewis-Byrd would generate... certainly nowhere close to 30 mln $ LL easily got for shot Tyson.

And the argument that Lewis ducked Byrd because Byrd was in top10 in 2001, 2002 and 2003 is simply wrong. Lewis fought only 3 opponents during this period, so following this argument it would mean he ducked at least seven other top10 fighters (or even eight, as Tyson was probably outside top 10 at this time). I agree it was lazy, but ducking is different thing.

Ruiz and (especially) Byrd had no chance against Lewis. I guess both would've turned out to be boring, one-sided contests and I really don't miss them. Well, maybe Lewis-Ruiz wouldn't be that bad as I don't mind seeing Ruiz badly beaten and possibly KO'd.

 

Just out of curiosity, what were Dempsey's reasons for not fighting Wills, or staying inactive for three years for that matter? Lewis didn't face Byrd or Ruiz on the pretense that better matches were available, and he most certainly never went longer than 12 months without a single fight. Who was around that could make a better case than Harry Wills for getting a title shot? What prevented Dempsey from not fighting anyone over a three year duration?

I understand the point of your thread and agree that its a valid one. What I don't see, is the comparison between Lewis and Dempsey in terms of reasons for not meeting mandatories and the context they are held in.

 

No they don't.

But you just said that rankings aren't important. Which one is it?



Oh, and i didn't say Dempsey ducked Godfrey. I said the fact that he didn't face Godfrey was yet another piece of evidence that pointed in the direction that he wanted no part of a good colored fighter.

The fact that he absolutely thrashed Riddick Bowe twice, who was seen as one of the if not the best heavyweight at the time.

Holyfield was declining and it's no secret that every boxer loses a lot past the age of 37.


The best case scenario is that Holyfield was just as good as against Lewis.

Okay, but Ruiz did not prove superiority over Holyfield, their series was a draw and most people thought Holyfield edged it.

Lewis, on the other hand, dominated once and the other time comfortably decisioned him.

Show me the newspaper article. Even the most biased American ******, Ron Borges, gave Holyfield a draw and that's as far as you can go. The other 6.000 articles will have Lewis winning handily.

Yep, but if a decent researcher does any work, he'll find any article which says Byrd has no power, is too small and has no chance against Lewis, on top of the fact that no-one wants to see that boring fight.

And that won't take long, considering 99,99% of the people shared that opinion.

No you don't. KO percentages, reports will all say the same thing: Grant and Tua were big threats while Byrd wasn't.

If we have 100 year old films at this point, then it is of negligble probability that in 100 years time, we won't have Lewis vs Tyson on film.

Really? How can you find an article that doesn't exist?

If you can dig up an article that say Jones would KO Lewis, go ahead.

And you can be sure that it's easier to find an article now that it's fairly recent than in 100 years time. Even if there is one such article, the chance of running into now or 100 years from now is negligible as 99% of the articles state otherwise.

 

Why?

Ruiz and Byrd weren't beating every single contender around and undefeated in doing so for 6 full years. Dito with Langford, Jeannette and Mcvey with the only exception being losses to each other.


Nice try but Dempsey and Johnson's duck jobs are the absolute worst in history and trivial matters like the opponents having boring styles or not had nothing to do with it.