Jack Johnsons resume, why I consider him a top 5 all time heavyweight

Because Tyson was unbeaten for 6 years and was THE big name left. Public demand was for this fight, no one cared about Byrd who was already dominated by Wladimir Klitschko who is as close to Lewis as it gets, stylistically and in any other way.

Yes, but this is not really fair. If you would've let Holmes and Lewis fight a middleweight and light heavyweight every other month they would've had a very 'deep' resume as well.

 

How is Tyson #6?

 

Who were they?

Like i said, there's very little in my opinion between #5 and #10 on that list.
The others were Holmes, Frazier, Foreman, Johnson and Holyfield.
Holmes avoided a lot of challengers and rematches, Frazier had a short peak and was blown out in 2, Foreman also had a very short peak and was unproven vs good boxers, Johnson i have gone over before and Holyfield was somewhat inconsistent.
Tyson lost to a semi-journeyman in Douglas but had a magnificent run when he cleaned out the division in a way that none of the above could (excepting Frazier) or did. It's all very close.

 

Hart wanted no part of Johnson after the fight. He refused to fight him, even though Johnson immediately wanted to fight him again and promised not to clown and dilly-dally and to knock him out the second time. :good

 

You said he beat more name fighters over 200lbs than Lewis did.

Sorry but i'd take Klitschko, Tua, Bruno, Holyfield, Tyson, Ruddock, Grant, Golota, Akinwande, McCall, Rahman, Tucker, Morrison and Briggs every day of the week over the fighters you listed.

McVey was as green as grass. He had 8 or 10 fights with no amature experience yet Johnson only knocked him out once in 60 rounds. When Mcvey matured as fighter, Johnson wanted no part of him.

Fergusson was losing to tons of fighters, journeymen included. Johnson beat him 3 out of 5, the others were ND's.
I will give you Martin but no one without pink glasses takes these over the men Lewis defeated.

 

some say that after Johnson beat McVey the third time, McVay wanted no part of him

 

Chris and I agree.

 

It would be a solid accomplishment for Holmes to beat down LeDoux, Bey, Zanon, etc. in close succession and beat them each multiple times, but it wouldn't cause me to declare that he had an incredibly deep resume which ranked alongside Ali's and Louis' as the greatest in the history of the heavyweight division.

I don't really give Holmes credit for being dominant against an utterly shot Ali, and I don't consider Fitzsimmons to be anywhere near Ali in the heavyweight pantheon.

Except that Page, Thomas and Dokes were not regarded by any significant number of fans to be great or near-great fighters and were not anywhere near the level of legitimate challenger to the throne that Langford, McVey and Jeanette were. You're very well-versed in all of this; you know that Langford, McVey and Jeanette were the elite contenders for the championship in that time period and Langford was widely recognized as being a full cut above the rest, possibly even as good as Johnson at his peak. This is more like Patterson with Liston(for a while, before he broke free of D'Amato and made the fight) than Holmes with Thomas or Page.

Shavers had early-round blow-out wins over Young, Ellis and Norton, a good win-loss record with a monstrous knockout average, had nearly beaten Ali in their title match, and was widely regarded as the hardest hitter alive. Cooney was, perhaps, something of a hype job, but he was still a big, legitimately hard-hitting, young, undefeated contender in his prime.
And Norton is the most impressive- Norton had a win over Ali, had beaten several other name fighters, had an impressive record, impressive appearance, impressive skillset, and although he was 35, he had just bombed out Bobick in 58 seconds and beaten Young, so it's extremely difficult to argue he was "a shell" going into the Holmes fight.

 

Holmes could rank above Johnson but the Ali fight does not help his legacy much if at all.