if lewis had?

The Rahman loss is interesting in that it affects him negatively for losing...but in winning the rematch the way he did, also affected him positively. It proved the strength of his mentality, gave him the chance to give one of his best-ever performances and get possibly the best-looking knockout of his career.
I do wonder about that, about how it all worked out in the long run.

 

Does Monzon's 3 losses affect his 160lb standing, despite having avenged all 3 losses? Of course not.

Fair enough they were much earlier in his career and weren't KO losses, but the fighters he lost to weren't of the level of McCall or Rahman. I think it's impressive that he was able to deal with them both so well shortly after (Rahman straight after and McCall 2 years after).

The HW division is probably the hardest to go undefeated in because you can come up against a guy technically inferior but if he carries power and catches you with just 1 big shot in the whole 12 rounds then it could be lights out.

 

Hoyfield is as tough as they come, his career achievments are amazing, and one of kind. As a under sized Heavyweight in the era of giants, he was a 4 time champ, never ducked anyone in his era, and always showed heart.

As far as Holyfield not being remembered as much as Lewis, Hoyfield is currently ranked 2nd in PPV sales, just under Oscar, and just above Tyson who just passed after his fight with Iggy last year. In terms of popularity and being a household name, Lewis got nothing on Holyfield, and while he was a great champ during his time, he will always be remembered for picking off Holyfield and Tyson when they were well past there primes, and his controversial last fight, which was a win over Vitali, that was never rematched because of Lewis himself turning it down.

 

If he still has the draw with Holyfield that would make him 43-0-1 sense he ko'd both McCall and in rematches lets say he has 34 ko's give Lewis the win over Holyfield and h is 44-0 with 34 ko's.
Lewis would be in most of our top 5 lists. Cutting his career off 5 wins from tying Marciano's 49-0 mark and 6 from beating it would hurt his standing as much mabey more than anything else.

 

a lot of people would have yeah

 

no disrespect to bruno but there is an ocean of difference between their repective achievements in the ring.
so for you to rate him just above bruno is an insult:thumbsup

 

Why do people act like if he got past McCall, that he wouldn't have made the same mistakes and someone else would've taken advantage?

Lewis LEARNED from his mistakes and improved on them.

 

Only one man above him
THE GREATEST!! Muhammad Ali !!!!!!!!

 

His size is irrelevant.

One division. all guys are equal.

4 times champ means he lost the title 4 times too.

I would dispute the "never ducked anyone" thing a little bit as well.

He never openly ducked anyone, but I don't think fighting the Grandads like Holmes and Foreman were great defences.

There's also a very long list of regular, contender type fighters he didn't face. Noticeably, all big punchers.

Why did he fight those guys post prime?

Because they didn't want to face Lewis until they quite clearly had to.

Tysons camp only picked Holy for their fights because they thought Holy was done. And Holy wouldn't have had the chance to fight him if they hadn't believed that.

The fact Tyson at that point in his career was more hype than substance is really the key point here.

Neither of those guys would have beaten Lewis at that point in time anyway, that's quite clear.

Holy's fans rave over his wins over Tyson as though it's some clear, prime v prime matchup, but quickly say Holy was too old for it to really count against Lewis - even laughably suggesting the fact he got a bogus draw means he would have won years earlier....

Tyson post prison was not all that great. Was he better against Lewis than he was against Holy? Probably, but how can you tell?

He fought **** before the Holy fight, my Mum would have KO'd Bruno that night - and **** after.

I don't really rank the Lewis v Tyson fight anywhere in importance. Who cares? Both men were old at the time. Lewis is actually older than Tyson. Even at the time, Tyson mentioned something about "two middle aged men fighting".

 

if lewis retired undefeated he'd be considered very near the top, but ali would probably be rated higher because of his opposition. anyway, as others have said if it wasn't mccall and rahman it would've been somebody else

 

As another poster stated, you can't pretend an event never happened (McCall) because things may not have unfolded as they did. Nonetheless Lewis legacy would have been higher than it is. Lewis's chin is nowhere near as bad as people make it out to be. He fought numerous punchers and was only knocked down twice. The McCall stoppage was too fast, if every heavyweight fight was stopped that quickly, Holmes would have lost to Shavers .

 

If Lewis hadn't lost to McCall, he would have lost not much further down the track.

He didn't lose because of a shaky chin, but poor technique.

Eventually somebody would have caught him. There's no doubt he was a far far superior fighter under Steward.