Make an argument for Lewis to be rated #1

What is the point of this thread?

 

I don’t think Lewis should be #1, but the argument would be, he beat every man he fought, avenged all losses via KO wins, and cleaned out a very good era of heavyweights. Lewis is a top 6 guy in my book. Yes he was starched twice. Most heavyweights get knocked out.

 

He has beaten every man he fought, no one ever had his number stylistically like Ali vs Norton, Holmes not solving his problems with Witherspoon/Norton/Williams in a rematch, Foreman never solving a slickster like Ali/Young, Frazier never solving a huge puncher in Foreman, Dempsey with Tunney, Louis with movers.

He was only down twice in his career, which is quite unique considering he's faced more punchers than Ali (down 3 times) and Louis (down 7+ times). The only guys who knocked him down were big 220+lb punchers, contrary to a small guy like Cooper or Braddock. While he was knocked out twice, it should be noted that the first stoppage was a premature one, considering most heavyweight fights around the same period were allowed to go on much longer. One only has to watch how Golota was allowed to continue after staggering around the ring much worse, against Lewis, or how Holyfield got a full 15 seconds to recover against Bowe III.

His other KO defeat came at the age of 35 when Dempsey, Marciano, Foreman, Bowe, Charles, Frazier, Louis and Jeffries were already retired; Ali was struggling with anyone with a pulse around that age, Holmes lost to Spinks whom he probably wouldn't have lost to in his prime, Johnson was fading but fighting easy opponents and Tyson was aging pretty bad as well. At any rate, he has better longetivity than nearly all heavyweight champions in history.

During his career he's shown to be able to do anything; box skillfully off the backfoot for a full 12 rounds (Tua lopsided UD), slug agressively (Golota TKO1, Ruddock TKO2, Grant KO2), fight smart behind a jab, 1-2 mixed with uppercuts on the inside (Holyfield, McCall II, Morrison), getting back in the ring with the guys who knocked him out (McCall II, Rahman II), going to war in the trenches and come out victorious (Mercer, Klitschko, Briggs) and defeating iron chinned akward fighters (Mavrovic, Mason, Klitschko, Akinwande), scoring one-punch KO's against big guys (Weaver, Rahman II, Tyson, Grant), coming back from being behind to win (Briggs, Bruno, Klitschko); he's done it all.

He is amongst the biggest of all linear heavyweight champions with a huge armlength, dito power, and unlike former big guys like Willard and Carnera, he had a ton of athletic talent, footwork, handspeed and ring smarts to go with it.

Bowe and Tyson ducked him and this takes away some of his legacy, although it does go to show you something about how confident they were about facing him. He stopped Bowe in 2 rounds in the amatures and stopped Tyson in 8 rounds when Tyson was past his best, but so was Lewis at age 36.

He also has the unique feature of defeating the future heavyweight champion in Vitali Klitschko. Only Joe Louis (beating Walcott) and Dempsey (beating Sharkey) did that too.



There you go.

Well, you can't really make a case for him being #1, Ali and Louis' resumes are just too good. But i think he's done enough for a spot right behind them.

 

He faced the best and beat the best and retired technically undefeated. That is the general argument. That for me could get him as high as number 3, maybe even 2 but never 1.

 

Compelling post.

 

Nothing has been able to dissuade me from the perception that Lennox Lewis had a soft core, avoided Mike Tyson, picked his spots very well and was the best of a mediocre era.

Since he was a teen, he knew he and Mike were to have a showdown at the pros. Coming off a trip to the Olympics in 1984, and though older than Tyson, in 1985, when Mike turned pro and began his charge to the title, Lewis decided to remain an amateur. Lewis was beating up on teens as a 23-year-old "amateur" when Tyson was destroying Larry Holmes and Michael Spinks.

With Tyson out of the picture, Lewis suddenly appears and does what he does. When Larry Holmes and George Foreman can come back and embarrass young lions of the 90's era, I see compelling evidence to believe Holmes' assertion that these guys were stronger than in prior eras, but simply couldn't fight. Lewis beat everyone he faced, but he never dominated, because he was decisively destroyed twice.

In his two fights against an old Holyfield, he won but looked vulnerable whenever Holy attacked him. His heart has never persuaded me and, when he said after one of his losses that to him losing was the same as winning, that to me sums up his safety-first, chess-style, tentative mentality: winning is all right, if it comes; but no do-or-die, a la greater warriors like, say, Joe Frazier and James Jeffries.

I'm still struggling to put him in my top ten.

 

As if everyone always sticks to the thread topic.

I'm just elaborating on why, in my personal opinion, Lewis can't be considered No. 1.

 

You consider lennox lewis's era as mediocre,lmfao. Please name a strong era besides the ali era. Was it rocky beating up on old guys and light heavyweights? Do you consider joe louis's bum of the month tour as the strong era, or better yet, jack dempsey's era.

 

My view of this is as follows. Some people get out of high school and go straight to work, others go on to post secondary education and focus on building a stronger foundation for the long run. This would be my analogy between Tyson and Lewis.

 

If lennox Lewis had beaten a few guys like Lucien Rodriguez, Alfredo Evangelista, Lorenzo Zanon, Scott Ledoux, Tex Cobb and Daivid Bey, then I might consider giving him a #1 spot. Seeing as though he didn't, then I can't even have him in my top 10.

 

I'd like to add these:


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He was starched once. The first defeat was by stoppage. He was wobbly, but they should have let it go on. In fact, it was a terrible stoppage. His second loss was devastating. That was a starching. As for the quesition, I can't make an argument for Lewis. These sorts of exercises are silly, in my opinion. We should make arguments for why we rank him where we do, not for how we rank him otherwise.