Is Mike Tyson greater than Lennox Lewis on the all time greatest heavyweight ranking?

Blocking Tyson from fighting Mercer probably did have something to do with what you suggest but, then again, Lewis/Tyson was a massive payday all-round and mitigating the potential upshot of Tyson's antics, at that stage, seems to have been a sensible enough idea. Even if Tyson had gotten past Mercer without a scratch, the Lewis/Tyson bout had been penned in for April 6th, 2002. Tyson/Mercer on the 19th of January would not have left a lot of time for promotion.

Another aspect of the action sought to have Tyson's status as the WBC's Mandatory Challenger revoked. This was the clincher, in my opinion. Tyson wanted that fight. He wanted the big payday.

It was a justifiable business move, on the part of Lewis, and I'm not sure the petition to the court for an injunction actually went ahead, in the end. Tyson called off the Mercer bout a couple of days after the threat of action.

 

Not much separating them really. They probably beat a similar number of contenders and often in dominating fashion. There are probably two things that separate them and both are in Lewis's favor: He has the best win between them and he was never dominated by anyone.

Tyson's loss to Lewis and later losses don't mean all that much since he was way past it by then, but he was in his prime or reasonably close to it when he lost in one-sided fashion to Douglas and Holy. While you might claim that Mike was unlucky not to get a second try at Douglas, that can't be said about Holy. Evander looked more dominant in the rematch if anything. Lewis was never in with someone that looked plain better over two fights, Tyson was.

 

I heard it all now.......the Danish Pastry Chef is now a great Hall of Fame fighter..............then Butterbean must be a ATG too,

BTW, after Rahman , while looking like total crap until he landed his one shot on glass, became champ and King got him on board by simply walking into his hotel room with a mil in cash in a suitcase out maneuvering other promoters with the oldest street trick in the world naturally he wanted to line up Rahman vs Tyson which Rahman enthusiastically supported .................Big Lemmie wanted nothing to do with that and of course went to his prefered method to handle fights , go to court to get the win.............Lennox Lewis not only picked up belts out of the trash, no, he was also the Number 1 Litigator when it came to relinquish a belt, sue for a belt or step aside money in the 90's and early 2000's.....when the shoe was on the other foot and he could not sue himself out of the VK rematch, while still actively S U E I N G Tyson to get him in the Ring again for a absolute point less re match, he retired.

However, IMO , he should have re matched VK and put paperskin Vitlay out of his misery, which he would have done to that stiff arm puncher, so we would not have to listen to VK's endless "won" the event TKO6 blabber while getting his face shredded like pulled BBQ.