Lennox Lewis vs Joe Frazier

Not sure Frazier faced anyone like Lewis, so its hard to pick a precedent for his likely peformance.

However, I think the Mercer fight tells us a bit about how Lewis would go against Frazier. Mercer walked straight towards Lewis. He was completely one dimensional, and had no head movement whatosever. Despite this he did admirably well. Even though he accepted a couple to get one in, the fight was close because Mercer's shots were eye-catching and he was the aggressor. Lewis also had periods of inactivity which evened it out.

Surely Frazier, adopting a similar style to Mercer i.e boring foreward (but with superior head movement), with a far greater work rate, better offensive arsenal, and far, far greater will-to-win, has a very reasonable chance of securing victory over Lewis.

 

Frazier was a great fighter whose specialty was absolutely destroying skilled, but smaller boxer mover types.

However, Frazier really did not impress vs much bigger fighters. He was down on point’s vs Buster Mathis until round 7, and took Joe Bugner the distance. The passive Joe Bugner stunned Frazier late. Mathis claims he hurt Frazier in the fight too. We all saw what Foreman did to Frazier.

While Frazier left hook was a real fire crack@r, it wasn't a TNT 1 shot bomb. I view it as a fast deliver hook that could be quickly re-loaded and fired multiple times throughtout the fight.

Lewis is much better than either Bugner or Mathis, and is far more skilled than Foreman. Frazier is in trouble in this match.

 

Ray Mercer had an absolute iron chin, though, which is the reason he troubled Lewis so much: Lewis was trying to go for the KO to impress for a Tyson fight. If Frazier takes the punches that Mercer did, he's not gonna last. He was hurt by far lesser punchers.

 

No arguments about Mercer's chin.

Fraziers chin seems to polarise opinion on this forum. Some think he was somewhat chinny, whereas I think he had a decent chin (not granite).

Whatever his chin rating, I think his incomparable reserves of toughness more than make up for it.

 

Agreed, but it would also be fair to say that Frazier is much better than Mercer, and Mercer did better against Lewis than Bugner and Mathis did against Joe...

 

I think his chin is pretty good. His toughness allows him to take tremendous amounts of 'normal' punishment, i.e. he had no problem with absorbing a lot of shots from Quarry, Ellis and most particularly, Ali in the first and third fight.
However, when the punches are abnormally hard (Foreman), his strategy of taking some early backfires, hard.

 

LOL. People give Lewis way too much respect around here. Frazier beat a near-prime Ali CONVINCINGLY and absolutely destroyed lesser opposition. He only lost convincingly to Foreman, who was just a horrible match up for him, not to mention being probably the hardest-hitting heavyweight in history.

Lewis beat old men and bums. And yes, they were bums. Some of them could punch well, but they weren't a 10th of the fighter Frazier was.

Why do people refuse to believe that the heavyweight division has declined sharply in the last 20 years? There's a simple and logical reason for it that I posted in the Foreman/Lewis thread.

 

He got up 6 times against Foreman when he had to know he couldn't win. The guy had so much heart. The way he fought Ali also showed he had the kind of determination that only a truly great fighter wouldn't crumble under.

 

Lewis was a good puncher but he did fail to kayo Holyfield whereas Bowe knocked Holyfield out despite the fact that Bowe is not considered to be in Lewis's league as a hitter. Just because someone was ko'd by a fighter who did not hit like Lewis does not mean Lewis will knock them out.

 

Some falacies here.

Bowe and Lewis are considered to be in the same or similar league in terms of power. Lewis just rated as a better overall fighter.

Bowe indeed knocked out Holyfield, but only after Evander returned to the ring with hepatitus A, and other health problems that he did not have later against Lewis.

Lastly, I think most people would agree that Evander was slightly more durable fighter than Joe Frazier, given that he fought numerous hard punchers and survived their power.

 

Bowe "knocking out" Holyfield was more a case of Holyfield tiring than Holyfield getting pounded. In fact, it was Bowe who was out on his feet and nearly finished in the 6th. He was pretty much saved by Holyfield's conditioning problems that night.

In the first fight Holyfield was hurt badly but it should be noted that he was a different fighter back then, 204lb, seemed more fragile (Cooper hurt him badly, old Foreman shook him), the stronger and bigger version of Holyfield took flush punches from Tyson. Additionally, Holyfield paced himself much better against Lewis and fought a safer fight whereas he was very agressive, if not careless, against Bowe.

 

I agree with the logic presented in this post, but the initial assumption does get based on a single performance, that of prime Foreman versus slightly off Frazier.

Is it fair to make these calls on Frazier when there is only one data point to support it?

Further, Foreman at that time was somewhat extraordinary, and dissimilar in style to Lewis.

The more I read the opinions on this fight, the more I wished we could have seen it for real. Frazier could have been a great foil to bring the best out of Lewis, as he would have forced sustained, exciting action?

 

Bowe is not in Lewis's league as a hitter. His kayo wins were all over guys who were not known for durability with the sole exception of Holyfield. Golota took numerous shots from Bowe but was quickly whiped out by Lewis. Bowe's power is unproven because his only impressive kayo win is over Holyfield.

 

Lennox Lewis would have big time trouble against the Joe Frazier from
1967 - 1971. He probably gets knocked out before the 8th round IMO because he wouldn't have been able to handle Frazier's pressure and body attack. The only Frazier that Lewis would beat is the 1973 -1976 version, most notably the Frazier that got blown out by Foreman. Lewis probably doesn't KO this Frazier as early as Foreman did but probably has him out around the same time he KO'd Tyson, which was round 6, correct me if I'm wrong. Manilla Frazier gives Lewis a tough fight but he probably lasts until the later rounds and Frazier knocks him out. Lennox Lewis was no Ali and Manilla was a tough fight for both him and Frazier.

 

That's one scenario the other is something along the lines of what happened when Lewis fought Tyson. I was going to say Tua, but I know Frazier would have kept coming until he either KO'd Lewis or was KO'd himself. There's a huge style advantage for Lewis, and his infighting skills particularly the uppercut, were far better than Ali's. I also think he was significantly stronger and punched harder than Ali as well. If Ali would have won by outboxing Frazier I would tend to agree with you, but Lewis is far better equiped to deal with trench warfare than Ali was.