Lennox lewis 90-98

The bowe v lewis debate is moot because bowe ducked him anyways.

The bruno fight is a terrific example of lewis's mental fortitude and aside from tyson, noone was ever ahead on cards against frank; his losses were all come from behind knockouts.

 

I think over the 90's as a whole lewis was the best h2h fighter but holy was the most accomplished with lewis a close second.

Even if lewis gets the nod from trash can till fan man, holy still spent about 6 years at the top of the division.

 

Been watching a few of the fights from this era again today.

Riddick giving his belt up rather than face a man who'd clowned him in the olympics is totally unforgiveable and not becoming of a champion. had lewis refused to rematch vitali he too would have been demoted as chamipon, the same way, i'm sure, if Johnson would have beaten hart and jeffries ha drefused to face him etc.

So Bowe cannot be classed as the best heavyweight when he's openly refused to meet the consensus number 1.

That being said, Lewis's victory over tucker was top class but not as good as holyfield's over Bowe, so Holyfield takes back his crown desrvedly so.

Lewis's best year in retrospect was 97 (mccall, akinwande, golota) but it just was not as good as Holy's (tyson, moorer). noone really had a good 98 so holy keeps it by defauly up until 99 when Lewis twice dominates him.

1990-1992: holyfield
1992: bowe
1992-1993: lewis
1993-1994: holyfield
1994-1995: foreman
1995-1996: bowe
1996: tyson
1996-1999: holyfield
1999 onwards: lewis.

I'm fairly happy with this because Lewis kind of defaults his way to being the best in 92 when bowe ducks him, but parity is restored when holyfield outboxes big daddy to usurp any claim lewis had of being the best. holy deserved a 1 point decision (or draw if you scored it 10-9) so retains his status until he retires leaving moorer as the next best heavyweight but he's promptly flattened by big george. Foreman refused to fight anyone of note whilst in the meantime bowe was knocking out hide, gonzalez and holyfield. next year sees golota batter bowe before fouling out leaving a void which is brutally filled by mike tyson. 97 is arguably the best year with both lewis and holyfield notching up great victories over their contemporaries leaving to a huge buildup and eventual showdown in 1999 which results in every claim being unified together for the sake of clarity.

 

I don't think it's that significant a gap to be honest. By this point they were promoting the two as the HW kings on an inevitable collision course.

to be honest, both had quite a shitty year: briggs coming off a gift decision against a 900 year old dinosaur. mavrovic and bean were both never have beens. they're slightly ahead but not enough to out do vander's great work the year before.

as I said neither did anything great that year so the status quo just resumed, atleast in my eyes.