Lennox Lewis, Greatest Heavyweight of all time

Nope

 

Not the greatest, but a man for whom an argument can certainly be made for being top 5-7

 

Greatest? You can't even make that case.

Top five? The case is very strong.

Anyone putting him outside tenth is having trouble with objectivity, same as calling him GOAT.

 

I don`t consider Lewis to be the greatest heavyweight of all time but the argument can certainly be made. He was IMO the best of his time which was a very talent rich time for heavyweight amongst great fighters like Holyfield, Tyson, Bowe, Old Foreman and Moorer. I have him ranked about 5 but the case can be made for him to be considered number 1, IMO he just needed a couple more wins against great fighters in their primes to prove he was the best.

 

Of the five men you listed, only two of them met Lewis in the ring, and when both were well past prime. You also have to factor in the McCall and Rahman losses, albeit avenged. I agree that ranking him somewhere between #5-#7 is reasonable. But no argument can legitimately be made for him being anywhere near #1.

 

Lewis is one of those heavyweights who splits opinion like Dempsey.

One one hand you've got the physically imposing, well drilled 'pugilist specialist' who beat every man he ever fought.

On the other, McCall and Rahman probably mark the ugliest defeats for any heavyweight great and, while there were many top victories, there were no defining ones.

 

No one that is knocked out by Hasim Rahman (or McCall, for that matter, either one) could ever make such a claim.

He was disqualified from that discussion the instant the ref waved off the fight with McCall.

 

That's all fair enough, so long as neither of you think Wladimir Klitschko for instance has a chance to even rank evenly with Lewis (his "early career" stoppage losses being far uglier than Rahman & McCall...and with just one avenged, yet barely counting with the avenged-upon party already being legally blind in one eye...) no matter his longevity or list of achievements through present day and onward.

 

I don't think Wlad will ever rank anywhere near Lewis, but that's drawing conclusions, given that he's still active. There is a slight chance that he could reach that upper echelon, but its going to take a Bernard Hopkins type career to do it, and I doubt Wlad has another 10 years left in him.

 

I think that's kind of what I was driving at, even with an implausible B-Hop like renaissance, there is nothing he could do on the positive side to balance the scales with the extreme negative of having prime or near-prime stoppage losses far more embarrassing than Lewis' - and three of them at that, not two - and for all intents & purposes never avenged them as Lewis did (that is, legitimately, when doing so could've meant something). He could take on his brother and knock him out, and have a handful of really good young up-and-comers emerge from the woodwork in the next several years - each better than anyone yet fought in his reign - and mounting all their heads as trophies on his wall still would leave him short of standing in peerage with Lewis. If we are putting a ceiling over Lewis' head because of his stoppage losses, then a much lower ceiling needs to be put over Wlad's applying no more forgiving a standard.

 

Agreed. Though however unlikely, should Wlad manage to reign for another 10 years and defend at a frequency of two times per year, that would amount to an additional 20 title defenses, blowing him well past Joe Louis's record. In such an instance, one would have no choice but to put him in their top 3-5, but again, that's not likely ever to happen.

 

Rating fighters will always be subjective. It's not like asking whether a fight occurred on such-and-such a date, or whether Ali-Liston I was fixed. It depends on your judgments about who beats who, about the strength of the era relative to the others, about how well a fighter could apply certain skills, etc.

That's even truer when you're talking "greatness" instead of head to head. "Greatness" is a human invention. Its criteria change with time, and vary by country. It's not like distance or volume that you can measure objectively.

When you look at the heavyweight championship, you're looking at a very select group of men -- fighters who were the absolute best in the world during eras that (largely) did not overlap.

So yes, you could rank Lewis #1.

 

The highest a case can be made is #3. He is still underrated. He fought in a ridiculous era of power punching giants which counts for something in my book. Put him in with the title competition from Johnson, Dempsey, Louis or Marciano and he goes undefeated.

 

He's definitely a contender for top 5. He beat anyone who was anyone in his time - The fact that he did n't meet Riddick Bowe was hardly his own fault. As we all know,Bowe's camp avoided Lennox like the plague.