Highest Ranked Fighter, Lennox Beats From 1970 - 80?

Even without PEDs Lewis was a bigger man than the 70s boxers. And it isn't as if steroids were unknown then. They were being used in the Olympics since the 60s. There is some evidence that Norton was a steroid user.

 

Without steroids, Lennox isn't that much bigger anymore. He's an inch shorter than Terrell, although I guess he might have ended up heavier even if he'd never touched a weight. Hard to tell something like that, tho.

Boxing was very conservative back then, to the point where they were still dehydrating Big George. I asked a while ago about evidence for Norton being on steroids, but the the only evidence presented was that Norton was very muscular.

Even if Norton was juicing, though, it doesn't follow that a hypothetical 70s Lennox would, since other 70s fighters -- including Ali, who was more than willing to stick other potions into his body -- don't appear to have done so.

 

To me he beats all for sure but Ali and Holmes and those could go either way ... Lewis was 6' 5" w a 84" reach .. up through Bruno he weighed at 230 or under .. he basically had about 2" in height over Ali and Holmes , maybe 1.5" over Foreman and three inches or so in reach .. later into his thirties he was about twelve to fourteen pounds heavier .. I think Ali and Holmes had the speed, jabs, movement, chins and conditioning to beat him similar to how Usyk beat Joshua but make no mistake, Lewis was a very tough match for anyone at his best .. love Frazier but he was too small .. I feel Lewis would tee off on Foreman like he did to guys like Grant , Golota and others .. the best combo of the two George Foreman's could have beaten Lewis in a completion of how Bruno gave him trouble but George never went that far in career one ..

 

Can you show me contemporary evidence for that?

Lennox even without the steroids is easily as big as Foreman (IMO bigger). With PEDs and modern training he went in the high 240s.
Being 220 is no big deal for him. Certainly bigger and stronger than "prime" Ali.

Norton's son was certainly a user, and Norton was into athletics and bodybuilding. He wasn't a career boxer like Ali or Holmes. American football players and track-field guys were all using testesterone and other anabolic steroids.

Lewis was a Canadian football player. Assuming he grew up in the US he would almost certainly end up playing football.

Testing was non-existent. For all you know Ali (1960 Rome gold medallist) was also a PED user.

 

Lewis would have been a perennial top five or top three for the decade. He wouldn't have been an underdog in many if any fights.

Also I trust that everytime all of you are reading the name "Lennox" in this thread you are doing it with the Brian Kenny over exaggeration LEN-OX.

 

He could potentially have beaten Ali, Foreman and Frazier. At least one of them would be his best win.

 

Lennox could have beaten all of the 70s heavies at least once but to see him go 3-0 in a trilogy, I think he'd struggle to maintain 100% against all the big names - Ali, Foreman, Frazier, Norton and Holmes. I'd also be nervous about him against Lyle and Shavers who both had the kind of overhand right he could be susceptible to. Maybe Mac Foster lands a bomb.

Other than that, I think he navigates the 70s with some success and could have held the title periodically as long as he could bounce back from any defeats which he showed himself more than capable of doing. He'd be right up there.

In answer to the question, potentially all of them. The highest ranked contender he doesn't lose at all against...? Quarry, Chuvalo, Bonavena, Young, Bugner. Take your pick.

 

All bar Ali and George.

 

I think the answer is pretty simple. Depending on when he fought them he would beat everyone. I don't think there is much argument that he could beat the less than ATG fighters. Before you yell at me, yes he could possibly lose to a couple of them if his whiskers were tested. As far as the best go. He could certainly beat Ali, Frazier and Foreman in 1979 and Homes in 1975.

If the thread question was who could he beat if they were in their primes the answer is the same for the less than ATG's. He could beat or lose to Foreman and Holmes. He would have had a lot of trouble holding off FOTC Frazier and probably would have lost. That being said, Frazier would have struggled with prime Lewis on most other nights. He would not have beaten Ali.

 

What do you mean by "contemporary"? I ask because George Foreman said it was happening, and he was a contemporary of his own fights.

Norton's son takes us into the late 80s in football, which is a different kettle of fish than boxing in the 60s-70s.

Ali didn't even weight train. (Again, unless we assume he was also sneaking in reps when nobody was looking.) He didn't have the physique Norton did, which is the usual reason people start to suspect Norton. This is the same era where trainers still thought you'd get slow if you built big, icky muscles. We know the guy injected other stuff into himself. It would be odd if he was taking steroids and we had no indication of it.

Look, I actually sympathize with the desire to figure out who was on PEDs in the 70s. I've raised the issue myself a couple times.

Norton is a lot more suspicious than Ali, but I don't think that the following:

* Played in other sports where some people used steroids

* Looked abnormally muscular

* His kid used steroids many years later

...is enough to be confident about it. If I had to bet, I'd say he was on them, but I wouldn't bet much. The "for all I know" standard isn't really enough for me to accept that something happened. For all I know, Willie Pep won a round without throwing a punch, even though nobody has ever produced evidence it happened.

That said, good point about Lennox's potential exposure if he'd been raised in the 70s.

 

Post it here then.

American athletes in the 70s were using PEDs. Norton certainly had knowledge of bodybuilding.

I assume all fighters were on PEDs unless proven otherwise. You don't go through the Olympics without knowing aboout them.

As for weight training, taking testesterone without a dedicated weight training regime is defintely viable if not ideal. Anabolic steroids (like test) improve speed and other traits, not just strength.

I think it should be obvious that Lewis would be the biggest contender in the 70s. IMO he would beat everybody unless he does some dumb stuff like Rahman 1. He has all the positive traits of Foreman (bar chin) with much better boxing skill.

Lewis would rule the roost.

 

Ali, Frazier and Foreman

 

He confirmed it to Lewis Erenberg via email for Erenberg's book "The Rumble in the Jungle," published by University of Chicago Press in 2021. I think it's also in one of his autobiographies.

Steroids were isolated at least by 1937. Do you assume Joe Louis, Ezzard Charles, and Rocky Marciano were on steroids?

One of the reasons I bring up weight training is that it helps fighters just like steroids do. Yet weight training wasn't commonly used until the 80s. And dehydration, despite being stupid, was an accepted training method in boxing for almost 200 years. The lesson being, just because something works doesn't mean that boxers will use it. Boxing is a chronically conservative sport. You will still, in 2022, find people in boxing who think weight training is bad. So how strong is your evidence that steroids were widespread in elite professional boxing, specifically, by the 1960s and 70s? Is it just their presence in the Olympics? (Plus the one journeyman guy who died from early steroids.)

If Lennox gets steroids and weight training in the 70s -- which, per your rule, you presume Lennox used -- then it's obvious he'd be bigger than most of his competitors in the 1970s.

If Lennox doesn't get steroids and weight training, then it's no longer "obvious" he'd be bigger than everybody else. Again, assuming you're correct to simply attribute steroid use to Lennox, you've never seen Lennox performing without PEDs. You don't know how much of his power, weight, stamina, and speed was owed to PEDs.

 

I cannot see Lewis beating Ali (except the very end with the Spinks fights etc) George Foreman, Larry Holmes, possibly Ron Lyle and I wouldn count Shavers out against him either. Joe Frazier I think is a toss up.