Lennox Lewis Vs. Lionel Butler

I don't believe that Lewis necessarily made consistent progress as his career developed. Maybe two steps forward, one step back kind of progress, at best.
The distinct "two versions of Lewis" is not something I buy into.

He looked very good against Gary Mason back in 1991. But he also looked awfully raw a few fights later against Tyrell Biggs.

He looked pretty awful against Lionel Butler, IMO. But it was his first fight back from his first defeat.
The main thing I think of this fight : WHAT THE HELL WAS BUTLER DOING BLOWING HIS CAREER OPPOURTUNITY by coming to the fight untrained and about 40 pounds too heavy ?
This guy Butler blew it before the fight even started.

I think Lewis looked about his best ever just two fights later against Tommy Morrison.
Technically he was never better.

But the "bad habits" of his he never ironed out consistently. He continued to bend down to shorter opponents (Mercer, for example) and he left himself open to shots unnecessarily in several subsequent fights (Briggs. Rahman 1 obviously).

 

To me, it was a very dangerous fight with a lot of pressure on those shoulders. And Lennox handled it well and lots of guys don't and pretty much are never elite fighters any longer. Like Unforgiven said though and he's 100% right, for each technical improvement something else was neutralized or subtracted. It was never a case of positives only.

The big factors seemingly dismissed or overlooked for the bout was that Butler was on a big winning streak. And, he was a DKP fighter.

The bout was a title eliminator and you never want to be in the position of being with a rival promoter fighting the guy from DKP. As a matter of fact, most fighters will not take the risk. They just go after a different belt. Lewis was coming off a bad ko loss against a different DKP guy, so the bout was definately in shark infested waters. He did what he had to do to win & a loss in this particular fight would have put him in undercard status along with a Corrie Sanders back then. And if you went to those fights back then, Sanders was the guy pretty much on the non-televised 8 round supporter fights. A huge step back for a Lennox Lewis & I sure don't see any promoters at the time backing him for the future if he had 2 straight losses against McCall & Butler.

 

Butler was a career sparring partner and Don King fighter. Dangerous power but lazy as hell and no desire to be champion.

I dont know how you (Unforgiven), can say Lewis didnt make any consistent progress throughout his career. Theres a big difference between being inconsistent against lower top 20 opposition and being very consistent against top 5 opposition. To say otherwise is a mistake.

 

Have I stumbled into some parallel universe where you are defending Lennox Lewis :yep

Only joking..I dont agree with a lot of your lewis views but I do respect them as they are well thought out.

 

I mean he often had very good performances followed by so-so ones.
It wasn't one steady upward climb, with Manny Steward being an elevator half-way up the mountain.
He looked better against Gary Mason than he did against Tyrell Biggs and Levi Billups.
I think his fight against Tommy Morrison was as good as it gets on the Manny Steward train.

 

I always prefered the younger Lewis pre-McCall 1 personally - wide stance and all and I don't necerssarily think it was amateurish mistakes he was making - I just think that back then he had that extra dash of arrogance that youth provides - and he was MUCH MUCH quicker all round - on his feet he was like a basketballer back then and also pretty tasty handspeed for a guy that big - he was much looser and just thought he could get away with it when he was young just by virtue of thinking he was better than the other guy - he was cocky and a bit carefree back then - plus he had cooler hair hahaha I think his finest night was Ruddock and the best fight he was ever given was Bruno - he may have been coached a little more proffesionally under Manny but he had lost a little spring and started coming in much too heavy and wasn't quite the fighter he had been - I think it was he speed as a big man that set him apart as a young fighter - when he got older he just became another big heavyweight minus the speed

 

I dont think Gary Mason, Levi Billups and Tyrell Biggs were in the class of Briggs, Golota, Grant, Tua, Morrison level fighter, not thats saying much for those guys, but they were top five type guys when Lewis faced them, whereas Biggs was washed up and Mason and Billups were more in the lower half of the top 20 realistically. Maybe Mason would be, but he really didnt even have the names on his record of a Mike Grant, to be proven of a higher level.

When you compare fighters like Bruno, Ruddock and Mcall to those guys its a more realistic comparison of inconsistency vs consistency against comparably ranked opposition and I think theres a pretty hefty difference in Lewis post 96.

 

Lewis was definitely more exciting, but he would have never accomplished what he did had he continued to throw punches with reckless abandonment. He didnt have the chin for it and he was getting hurt.

 

This could be levelled at virtually any heavyweight and is a pointless unnessasary critisism. It's like you've over analyzed Lewis looking for ways to critisize Lewis and found this pathetic way. Lets use it for Lewis's peers

Holyfield didnt improve in his career because he was worse against Cooper than he was against Douglas and he was worse against Moorer 1 than against Bowe 1
Or Tyson was worse against Tucker than against Berbeck - worse against Douglas than Spinks
Or Bowe was worse against Golota than against Holyfield or worse against Hide than against Dokes.

Conveniently Holyfield has selected illness's to use as excuses for his inconsistancy and Bowe and Tyson conveniently have microscopically small primes to explain away their poor showings.

Maybe you could get some tips off lefthook for your transparant agenda against Lewis, because he actually thinks before he types...........usually

 

I don't follow.
Shannon Briggs was a bit crap really, and you know it. He barely got past an old Foreman. He was barely in the top 10, if that.
Lewis's performance against Briggs was exciting but a bit reckless too, to put it mildly.

If you're talking post-'96. Where would you rank Mavrovic ? He was a relative unkownb.
Grant, Botha, Golota were blasted out, but they were no better than Ruddock, even the best of those three was probably not even as good as Ruddock. Rahman wasn't anything special either, and managed to KO Lewis.
McCall and Akinwande didn't even want to fight.
Lewis fought a good contender in Vitali and had a nightmarre.

I'm not saying Lewis didn't improve at all. He did.
I don't see the paradigm shift you're describing though.

 

Lionel Butler! Was that the big black guy who looked like a roided freak or am I mistaken myself.

 

As I said its not saying much for the Briggs Grant level fighters, but they were still better and ranked higher than Biggs and Billups level guys and Lewis was consistently winning and for the most part fighting pretty consistently good. I think Lewis win over Briggs was better than his win over Bruno because Lewis was losing the Bruno fight and still being reckless and getting caught and Bruno and Briggs were somewhat in the same ranking class when Lewis fought them. Thats the point.

 

Yeah he was big and round not really roided. A lot of people mistake him for Garring Lane, who was one of Lewis main sparring partners.

 

If Butler did a hour of training for the Lewis fight I'd be surprised.