Lennox Lewis, Greatest Heavyweight of all time

Even with that logic, I think it would be very, very difficult. I can't see any reasonable argument for him rating higher than Joe Louis or Muhammad Ali, with two losses to McCall and Rahman, along with his most notable wins coming against diminished versions of Tyson and Holyfield ( though probably not his best wins. ) There were also a few people that he never met in the ring during the course of his reign, ie. Byrd, Ruiz, Wlad, Moorer, Bowe, old Foreman, though I don't dock him too badly for not doing so given that some of those fights never materializing weren't his fault.

 

OK, to play a little DA, who were Louis' defining wins? An over the hill, undersized heavy in Schmeling? Or an over the hill Braddock or Sharkey? And then.... a bunch of guys we know because they fought Joe Louis?

 

Burt Sugar didn't have him top ten.

 

He beat six men who were either past, present or current lineal champions. He reigned for 11.5 years and through 26 world title fights. He suffered a bad loss to Schmeling early, but avenged it and that was against a former world champion, when Louis had only been pro for less than two years. Jersey Joe Walcott was a future Hall of famer in his prime. I see the argument that you're making and the logic behind it, but I doubt there are many who would rate Lewis higher than Louis.

 

I wouldn't. But blaming Lewis for some of his pelts being a bit past it (which in the case of Holyfield is only arguable) is a bit silly when commending Louis for Schmeling, Sharkey, Baer, Braddock... And let's not even mention Marciano. By the same token, Lewis should get a lot of credit for beating a future champ in Vitali when Lewis himself was past it.

 

I agree and you make some good points.

 

Burt was a bit overly attached to some pioneers and icons of yesteryear (with yesteryear broadly interpreted as both during and before his own time) and loyal to a fault to most of them, unwilling to make levelheaded choices about sacrificing their rankings to make room for those more deserving of the spots...bizarrely with the exception of Holyfield, ahead of whom there are truthfully several more deserving contemporaries. (Lewis and even Holmes ranking behind Holyfield, somewhere from eleventh to infinity...who knows what shadows lurked in that stylishly outfitted head? :conf)

Johnson and Tunney in his top five says it all, really. Absolute madness, rooted in nothing but nostalgia.

 

Well if you're deconstructing everything on that existential a level, "could" we subjectively call IBC & IBO heavyweight champion Brian Nielsen the #1? :yep

 

Can we call a guy #1 who sits on the title for 3 years while avoiding both his #1 and #2 contenders?

 

I've always liked Bert Sugar's character and felt that he added personality to boxing. But I agree that his ratings and opinions of certain fighters are terribly biased. Seems like an echo of Nat Fleischer in there somewhere.

 

I could see about a dozen different ways that someone would rate Lewis higher than Louis or Ali.

Maybe they weight "head to head" very heavily when assessing greatness, and believe (like Seamus does) that Lewis would go undefeated against Louis's opposition. Maybe they believe that the 90's were an unparalleled pool of talent, and that Ali's victims weren't as good in comparison. Maybe they're like the old-timers and have all sorts of weird definitions of "greatness" that differ from today's. Or they're revisionists who believe Ali lost all three fights against Norton, plus the one against Young, and count one or more of the Liston fights as fixes. (And by the same token, they might rate Schmeling pretty low and point to the way he demolished Louis). Some people don't give people an extra halo for having briefly held the heavyweight championship at one time -- they're just another #1 contender who got lucky. Or perhaps they share George Foreman's favoritism for punchers, and rate Ali low like Foreman did.

Ask any two boxing historians from the same era to show you their heavyweight list, and the criteria change a lot. Professional boxers' lists vary enormously, and they know a lot about boxing. Once you start looking into the past...well, we've all seen the crazy lists from the 1940s or 1970s. Nat Fleischer is the tip of the iceberg. It's not primarily because of ignorance; it's because the criteria are very different.

One of the many, many differences between people's "greatness" criteria.

And a revealing one. Whether somebody gives a fighter credit for a "good faith try" to meet top opposition will greatly alter their opinions of Lewis, Dempsey, and several others.

Now remember that there are LOTS of such tiny-but-important value judgments. Most have changed over the years. A lot are inconsistently applied, too -- witness how every heavyweight from Ali's era supposedly "could have been champ" in another time period

 

According to CT the field is wide open.

Esch was technically heavyweight champ (IBA super heavyweight champ, anyway) - so he's in the conversation, with all HW champs being a selective group among whose number you can pull virtually anyone to present a plea for GOAT-hood.

 

No, and I'm glad you recognise that distinction; too many fans are guilty of huddling Wladimir up with Lewis. It doesn't wash.

Aside from all the negatives there are to list with Wladimir, the fact he allowed his brother to get Corrie Sanders out of the picture was terrible. No amount of defending can erase that.

 

That is indeed true and I agree that criteria varies widely. For me, I don't use proposed head to head outcomes to rate fighters because its speculative and even in eras where fighters actually did beat men head to head, they still didn't produce a higher rating, ie. Bowe taking two out of three against Evander, or Barkley beating Hearns twice. For me its mostly about legacy and what a man actually did accomplish in his era. Joe Louis reigning longer than any champion and having the most title defenses at heavyweight is a very strong criteria. Weather or not he beat all available worthy opponents is subject to opinion, as there were many who felt that Lem Franklin, Elmer ray and a few others were pushed aside.

 

What criteria are you using?

You're going further down the existential road than I am here. At a certain point, your criteria for "greatness" would have to diverge so far from what every era and country considers "boxing" to rate Brian Nielsen #1 that you wouldn't recognize it as the same sport.

To put it another way -- A person from your hypothetical Brian Nielsen worshiping culture would have a VERY different understanding of what counts as "good boxing" than we do. Or Fleischer did.

Talking to such a person about boxing would be like a modern racquetball fan arguing with an Aztec priest about their racquetball-esque game that involved human sacrifice.

I could imagine somebody considering Jack Sharkey or Floyd Patterson the GOAT, and still having a conception of "boxing" that is similar to ours. Or at least mutually comprehensible. The criteria would still be recognizable as "boxing", even though we might find their rating silly.

To be intellectually consistent and rate Brian Nielsen as #1, by contrast, you'd have to have to have a pretty unusual definition of "boxing".