Emmanuel Steward's Top Heavyweights

Wlad has one of the longest title runs in HW history and at his peak was as dominant a fighter as any we've seen. Of course he's a top ten.

Frazier would get KOed by Lewis. He'd eat sickening punishment from the uppercuts alone.

 

Stewart also said that Tyson was a cruiserweight.

According to some of the twisted perfectionists here, such blasphemous statements should relegate you to the BBQ.

 

Wlad beat absolutely nobody and he lost to some absolutely nobodies. Joe would make Lennox fight every minute of every round, he'd run outta gas in my opinion and if you throw uppercuts you get hit with hooks, left hooks and Joe hits harder than Rahman or McCall

 

Congratulations on cramming that amount of utter gibberish into such a short post. Great work.

 

Love the tip and love Manny but he didn't know enough about Johnson, the size and caliber of fighters he defeated pre-title by his statements on Jack ..

 

At worst Johnson would be a better version of Chris Byrd today .. naturally bigger, faster, stronger and much harder hitting .. Johnson was in the stylistic class of the Whitakers, the Hopkins, the Mayweathers .. pace, timing and distance masters .. his career resume, with far and away the toughest fights and victories pre-title, speaks for itself .. he was real.

 

Byrd took a better punch, was more active and welcomed fighting tougher opponents in their prime.

The name opponents Johnson defeated before he became champion were a novice Jeannette, who often had a losing record when they meet. Jeannette, by the way, says he was under 170 pounds the match. An estimated 20-year-old Sam Langford with an estimated weight of 156 pounds, and a teen aged Sam Mcvey. Not very impressive.

However, his losses to Choysnki, Griffin, Klondike, and Hart before he won the title suggests these fighters who were not very green or small were at the time better opponents than the very green but more famous names he defeated.

Think about that for a moment...

Johnson's best wins are likely Tommy Burns ( 5'7" 168 pounds ), and maybe Denver Ed Martin. ( who was very thin and KO'd 6 times early )

His title run was very un-even with dubious results vs. O'Brien and Battling Jim Johnson, and being floored by Kethcel.

When you get Ko'd by men under light heavyweight weight, floored by another under light heavyweight, and come to different versions of who won ( a news paper draw ) with another under light heavyweight, this heavyweight champion struggled mightily with middle weights ( Super middle not around back then ) so Steward is correct, and the film doesn't do Johnson any favors either.