Devils advocate, Lennox Lewis ducked chris Byrd and John Ruiz

Yeah and together they had a lot of losses, embarrassing and one-sided ones, unlike Wills.

Who cares what they had together, anyway? If you're playing it that way then we could invoke Langford and Wills together.

No, that honor goes to either Riddick Bowe or Floyd Patterson.


And i'm sure there are other fighters in history that didn't get their shot. I wasn't talking about heavyweight only, i was talking about any weight division.

Ruiz and Byrd never once even reached the #1 contender spot! They were ranked in the top10 for quite a few years as well as the opponents that Lewis did fight, most of which were more rightfully ranked and higher/longer.

END OF!

 

But to summarize, janitor, address the following points:



-Ruiz went even with an older Holyfield than the one Lewis decisively beat. Although any news paper report will have the first draw going to Lewis, if we keep that as a draw for the moment, then Lewis still did better against Holyfield than Ruiz.

-Rahman, Tua, Klitschko and Grant were all at the same level of a Ruiz and ranked accordingly.

-Tyson was consistently higher than Byrd. Byrd never knocked out a ranked contender and considering a similar fighter in Wladimir Klitschko lopsidedly decisioned Byrd, a Byrd win is highly unlikely.


All of this is clear even if we somehow didn't have their fights on film and no newspaper accounts.

 

Lewis chose not to fight Byrd and frankly it is not a fight i would have wished to see .

Pop in Byrd vs Wlad 1 and 2 to see how a Lewis fight would have went.

Byrds best bet is that Lewis is content to get a points vicroty which means that Byrd only gets a 12 round beating as opposed to a 4 round brutal stoppage which would happen if Lewis wanted to make this an early night.

Lewis ''ducked" Ruiz to fight the heir apparent in Grant. At that point in time Ruiz was known as nothing more then Tua's 19 second *****.

 

Most historians don't do this, I think the only one on this site that does is Mendoza.

Unless there is newspaper evidence (i.e., a reporter suggesting Lewis should fight Byrd or Ruiz, or a report suggesting Lewis is taking the easy route) then you can't really consider it likely, can you?

 

Lewis KO1 Jack Johnson.

 

I don't think Lewis ducked Ruiz and Byrd, but if we are to suppose that this was the case, then let me put it this way: very good for Ruiz and Byrd...

 

I think there is a stronger argument that Lewis ducked Wlad Klitschko while Wlad was #1 contender during 1999-2001 than there is that he ducked Byrd or Ruiz.

 

lewis would have handled both. Ruiz may have been able to hug his way to wide decision loss but lewis would have stopped byrd who stands in front of his opponent too much.