Is Lennox Lewis the most skilled "giant" in boxing history?

I never said anything about finishing off AJ..
A targeted body attack wouldve prevented AJ from recharging.
When the stans say he never needed an inside game.. he needed it then.

 

I think its pretty clear by your definition you would have to say Quarry is more skilled because he's more well rounded could fight at all ranges etc but obviously Frazier was the better overall fighter and better at one aspect of fighting then Quarry (inside fighting) and was much better at imposing his game hence why he won.

Debatable but its a bit hard to compare fighters who are masteries of different aspects of fighting so perhaps

In an ideal world sure, but its also not very practical. I have a limited amount of time in a day why should I focus on learning every single skill and therefore dilating my mastery of all of them instead of focusing on a skillset that works for me and making sure the other skills aren't relevant. Seems like a much smarter way and more feasible way to train a fighter by optimizing their strengths rather then trying to make them well rounded and good at everything especially at heavyweight where the fighters are just not as skilled as in lower weights.

Which doesn't apply to Wilder who is only good at landing a right hand by aspect I mean an overall aspect of fighting which we seem to have agreed encompasses Long range/outboxing, mid range fighting, and close range fighting at least for the purpose of this discussion and to simply things a bit.

Ideally yes but that's almost impossible to see in a real world let alone at heavyweight. I think that's the big disagreement here you're arguing from the perspective of an ideal fighter I'm arguing from the perspective of the how HW fighters actually are in the real world and what actually works best for those fighters.

 

I would need to see some argument that all technical gaps matter. I don't think we can just assume it. Aside from everything else, different fighters have different styles. Some skills are only relevant if you fight a certain way.

But leaving that to one side, some technical gaps matter more than others. Wlad's didn't really matter against his field in the real world.

I don't think listing the number of skills someone checks off in the USA Boxing Manual tells us much about how skilled they are. A skilled fighter might only have a narrow repertoire. As long as that repertoire is reasonably well rounded in the types of challenges it can meet -- not just in how many techniques it's collected -- it's fine.

In theory, I guess if all of your opponents executed every skill perfectly, more gaps would get exploited. But nobody approaches that type of superhuman performance at the level we're talking about. With actual heavyweights, being pretty good at all of the things you need to carry out your gameplan, with enough countermeasures to stop any gaps from being a problem, is enough to qualify as being skilled. Most heavyweights don't reach that even that level, and none of them would qualify as skilled if Roberto Duran is our benchmark.

 

Lennox Lewis wasn't as good at fighting out of the peekaboo guard as Mike Tyson. This fact was utterly irrelevant to Lennox's success.

The question isn't whether Wlad could get fractionally better if he mastered whatever skill. That kind of question can be asked of any fighter.

The question is how skilled Wlad / Lennox / whoever was compared to other superheavyweights. That's what the thread is about.

Bowe could have improved in any number of ways, too, just like Wlad. But Bowe, unlike Wlad, had technical gaps -- like a bad defense -- that hurt his ability to carry out his gameplan. This is against a field with a similar level of ability to the one Wlad faced. So it doesn't make much sense to me to insist that Wlad was less skilled than a guy whose technical flaws caused him more problems than Wlad.

Neither guy approached the standard of perfectly carrying out all of the techniques in the USA Boxing manual in the ring, so checking off boxes there doesn't mean much to me either way.

 

Sure but those guys are the exception not the rule. Note also how none of them are 220+ heavyweights which I also think limits someone skills. Hence why heavier fighters tend to be less skilled on average then lighter fighters, but since we're looking at SHWs here we should compare them to each other rather then to lighter fighters.

No, we haven't entirely agreed. My point is that 'mastery' isn't just about versatility of skills, it's about the depth and effectiveness of those skills within a fighting context. A fighter who masters a few vital skills to an elite degree, making their deficiencies irrelevant, can be considered more skilled for practical purposes than someone who is 'good at everything' but not truly dominant in any specific area, especially if their versatility doesn't translate to actually winning, hence why I brought up the Quarry vs Frazier example. Sure ideally a boxers who is a master of all aspects of fighting is more skilled then a boxer who is only a master of one aspect but that's such a rare example that I don't think its a practical one especially when talking about HWs. In the end the question is this: is a boxer who is a master of one style enough to make his limitation in other aspects irrelevant more skilled then a boxer who is good in all aspects of boxing but not to the same level of mastery in any one aspect.

 

@McGrain
Bit of topic but since we're on the topic of skill and HWs. How would you rank the skill level of Usyk compared to other HWs?

 

The peekaboo style has jabs as well. This doesn't mean that every failure to use a jab is an example of ignorance of the peekaboo style. Fighters dipping off center and throwing a right hand with a high guard isn't unique to peekaboo.

If you ran Lennox through the drills D'Amato was having Tyson do, he wouldn't be as good at them, and it would matter not one whit to Lennox's career.

Are you really saying that every single technique or stylistic quirk used by an elite fighter is useful for every other fighter? Because if so, that's a huge claim, and it's not up to me to provide counterexamples. (Although I did.)

 

What's a technique to you, then? Different guys throw punches differently. There are different approaches in different gyms, different tricks. That's what I meant by stylistic quirk. And yes, it would be strange if every single one of those were valuable to every fighter.

EDIT: And no, Lennox does not need to learn peekaboo to slip a right hand.