Lennox Lewis underrated or overrated?

You might as well blame Lewis for Tyson going to prison.

So lets make excuses for Tyson who avoided facing Lewis and somehow Lewis a bum? You can rationalize it anyway you want. Tyson paid Lewis to step aside. Whether it came from King or not is irrelevant.

 

The main point that you might have put in the OVERRATED column is that he got KO'd twice by little more than journeyman opponents.

I see.

Foreman's greater than Ali because be blew Smokin' Joe out in two, and Ali took 12 and 14 rounds.

I see what you mean.


And Kostya is a helluva lot greater than poor hapless Floyd, who needed 12 rounds to beat Zab, while Kostya taught the lad some new dance steps and put him away in two.

I'm startin' to see how this greatness thing works.

WTF ???

Are you serious or just drunk ?

If he'd KO'd his first 30 opponents in 10 rounds, he would have held three of the four belts and a perfect KO record. He would be viewed as great by all but complete idiots.

Not in your opinion, matybe.
But I can assure you if Tyson had gone 30-0-0 with 30 KOs against his first 30 opponents, the word great would defintely be bandied around.

If he'd pulled off the same feat against the next 20, he'd be a lock for GOAT.

 

Lennox was second only to Ali in heavyweight history

 

It seems to me that Lewis is somewhat underrated in America. More when he was fighting than now. Sorta like Larry Holmes. One thing that I rarely see mentioned about Lewis is the fact that he was the last unified heavyweight champ, that takes a bit of ability. Maybe Wlad will do it when Vitaly is gone...maybe.

 

Joe Louis was greater.

Might not have beaten Lennox, but he was certainly greater.

I have Lennox 3 or 4 alltime.

 

As a product of the PED-era, he has an unfair advantage over all prior top ATGs, save Holyfield.

Even so, Ali beats him; Tyson beats him; Holmes beats him.

Joe Louis, George Foreman, Joe Frazier, Jack Dempsey, Jack Johnson and Evander Holyfield, all may very well have bested Lennox as well.

As a champion, his inconsistency in staying champion can never rate him with the very best, such as Louis, Ali and Holmes.

He was not an exciting champion and his performance in the ring did nothing to bring boxing to the mainstream.

He was the smartest and best in a generation of steroided superheavyweight punchers.

He wants to be remembered as more than he was, but his career and reign were too contrived, cerebral and inconsistent to be thought of as anywhere near the best: a Tyson contemporary, he managed to stay enough time as an amateur to conveniently avoid coming up together with Tyson; as a champion, he got knocked out and thus was not in a position to face a younger Holyfield, and then he later got knocked out again.

The world at large never knew Lennox and never will; the boxing world will continue to overrate him as perhaps the heavyweight GOAT, or others, such as myself, perhaps will underrate him a bit by placing him just inside the top-ten all-time heavies.

All in all, he's got his due.

 

Those guys all fought in the "PED-era".

 

Over rated .

 

Under rated in his day.

Over rated now.

 

The question is by who (whom ? ) ..

A prime, focused Lewis was an extremely dangerous fighter, able to beat almost any fighter that ever lived ... in my opinion he was the best of the big men , a very intelligent fighter and a murderous puncher

 

Inaccurate, buddy.

Up to the night Tyson dismantled Berbick, PEDs in boxing were the province of "Rocky" movies. Yet, who was the next great heavy champ after Tyson's fall? Evan Fields.

Let us not murk-up this reality with references to an old, foolish Ali loading up on vitamins, or being given thyroid medication.

"The PED era" is the systematic use of modern sports science to combine drugs with weight- and strength-training to create today's surpassing performers.

In élite heavyweight boxing, this began with Fields.

 

How do you know Tyson wasn't on steroids ?
How do you know Ali wasn't on steroids ? Ali probably would have taken anything a doctor gave him, from the evidence of the thyroid case that seems to be possible.

Mike Weaver, Pinklon Thomas, Trevor Berbick, Ken Norton, Ron Lyle ..... what evidence have we got that shows they didn't use PEDs ?

Steroids have been common place since the 1960s.

 

I'm confused, was Lennox also part of the group who gang banged your girlfriend? We know the klitschkos were there but up till this point i was unaware Lennox also got involved...

Your obsession with those 3 is enough to convince me you are posting from a padded cell covered in drawings of Lewis and the klitschkos which you have fashioned from your own ****. Its literally the only possible scenario.

 

Elementary boxing history is that bulking up, muscle, weight-training were discouraged--keeping weight down, roadwork, gym work the norm--until the advent of the '90s.

Enter PEDs. Enter cruiser Evander Holyfield clobbering Douglas. Enter an unprecedented abundance of Herculean-built superheavyweight punchers of all stripes. Enter among them Lennox Lewis, a tall, lean, technical, Tyson-era amateur who, over the decade--even as he aged--became progressively bulkier, progressively stronger, progressively faster, progressively better, to eventually reign supreme by the end of said decade.

Yes, I have no proof.

But I have eyes. I have a healthy knowledge of the heavyweight division's history. And I have a conscience to understand that world-class athletes do not get better as older men than in their youthful prime by some act of magic, in an era when PED use has been pervasive, officially punished and even officially admitted-to by some competitors of the era. No. No legerdemain involved. It has been PED use.

It does no one any favors to mention Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson as possible steroid users.

Elementary study of Ali's life, 47 years removed from his prime, reveals a clean-living athlete who developed into the naturally-built phenomenon of the Cleveland Williams fight, never as much as lifting a single weight. Elementary study of Mike Tyson's origins, 25 years removed from his peak, reveal a uniquely-built 13-year-old boy who came under the guardianship of D'Amato, to become perhaps the greatest heavyweight fighter of them all, never as much as lifting a single weight.

Any '90s-and-on heavy who does not use PEDs is either:

a) stupid, simply because everyone--even at the most humble local gym anywhere in the world--is using them.

or:

b) amazingly naturally talented as an athlete, something clearly evident from the time said competitor is in his early 20s, and peaking around said heavyweight's age of 25 to 27.

Lennox is neither.