Rated Higher - Foreman Or Lewis?

Of the two, I prefer Foreman in his prime. I don't see the Foreman who KO'd Frazier and Norton and lost to Ali losing to Lewis.

 

And, that is both your interpretation of what happened and what you think ANY referee should do, which is fine. But I clearly disagree with your characterization of the event, as well as your perception of its severity.

I don't think what occurred constituted a situation, in which Garcia had absolutely no option?

You have never really explained this take you have on the Lewis "PR machine". I've called you out on this idea once before. However, it seems that, rather than it being something particular to Lewis, which you can substantially evidence, it is more likely a flight of fancy you take whenever you jump on a Lewis thread - whether it serves as an undertone to your posts regarding Lewis or, as you have done here, made an outright claim of a specific, fake narrative.

It is a fairly amusing charge to make, when one considers the other characters involved, such as Don King and José Sulaimán, who are far from being saints. Or were they the victims of a Lewis propaganda conspiracy?

There's nothing there to buy into.
I see events and I interpret them.
I read the history, the backstories and gain insights.
I read posts on this forum and I either respond to them or I don't.

There is no enigma to unravel here.

No. We won't.

Garcia had only been refereeing for a few years or so and predominantly in Mexico, with a handful of bouts in East Asia. He had never refereed in the US and Lewis/McCall was his first trip to the UK or anywhere near Europe. So, it's not like he'd had an especially wide exposure.

He'd refereed about twenty or so matches, by then, amongst which were seven or eight World Title bouts - more so in the lower weight divisions.

Lewis/McCall was his first Heavyweight contest.

So, I don't think Garcia was particularly experienced and he played it safe, which was his prerogative. This doesn't mean people have to necessarily agree with the call and, when calls aren't agreed with, the referee is up for criticism.

The main point and source of this dispute is that I think there's enough doubt for it to have played a part in why people are more able to judge the McCall defeat less harshly than they might if Lewis had been counted out.

It's nothing more involved than this and it need not require a conspiracy theory to explain.

 

I think Lennox Lewis, Frank Maloney, Panos Eliades, Jose Sulaiman, Don King etc. ... all had a good working relationship. There was a lot of pantomime around it that the media ran with. There were, of course, some real disputes. But they were all shrewd operators making money together.
The WBC did actually do Lewis a lot of favour, even if sometimes sided with Don King's interests which didn't always align with Team Lewis's. Most often though their interests aligned.

Lewis, who's an intelligent man and a fine boxer but never carried much charisma, under the guidance of Maloney especially, constantly marketed himself as the avoided outsider, which fit with the "I'm the British Hope going against the Yanks" theme, which he adopted when he got a good offer to turn pro in UK in those days when Brits were desperate for heavyweight hopes. The theme was eventually adopted by some in the American media too.

Which is all good.
But it was never 100% real.

 

The fact that Lennox Lewis chief rival was scared to fight him and went to extreme lengths to avoid him both speaks to how dangerous the Big Dog was but it also hurts somewhat. We were robbed of the vision of Lewis chasing Bowe down and brutally stopping him. We didnt get that. As fans we must accept it.

 

Why do you call him the Big Dog ??

 

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Then you overate him

 

How is that?

 

That's kind of a broad generalization, is it not?

I'd say there are perhaps different measures on what makes a good "working relationship" and, as far as theatrics go, Don King is a walking pantomime. But he is every bit as serious behind the facade and a complete ******* with it.

King was one of the first to approach Hornewer about promoting Lewis, which received a flat "No."

Things didn't work out with Lewis joining Lou Duva's stable either, for some reason, although I think that might have been a series of miscommunications and misunderstandings (I can't recall).


It was the UK-based brother of Lennox, who first floated the idea of Lewis basing himself in the UK.

Timing had a lot to do with how Lewis' pro career ended up being initiated. Manny Steward took an interest, but left Lewis for days by himself in Detroit, before Lewis got hacked off and flew back to Canada. That's when Dennis (Lewis' brother) made the suggestion.

Stan Hoffman was also in the picture and the likely selection. But there were lots of other small chance meetings and conversations, which eventually set the path for his pro career being based in Britain. And, as for this being under the promotional banner of Lewis becoming the first British Heavyweight World Champion in X number of years, it was hardly surprising and only a detail, in the scheme of things.

In the end, post-Mason, a deal was struck with HBO and Main events.


The idea that Team Lewis and King (and his cohorts) all worked nicely together paints a sweet picture but is, quite frankly, completely bonkers! King didn't like the fact Lewis didn't want to sign with him - ever. He did what he could to get Lewis into his camp and made some bizarre moves in attempting to do so. He offered Maloney a $1M bribe to defect from Main Events. When that didn't work, he then sought to get Lewis to leave Maloney.

The first time I recall Lewis having to deal with King, was in the build up to the Tucker bout, a fight which King had won with an absurdly high purse bid. At the very beginning, we find King breaking WBC rules on purse splits, in order to cheat Lewis out of his fair share (probably because he knew he was about to lose a shedload on the event).

He spends most of his time trying to undermine Maloney. Dressing him down in public and even approaching Maloney's mother with an inappropriate question.

I did find the story about the 4-page booklet King wrote, entitled "The Indiscretions of Frank Maloney - Vicious, Stupid or Both???" quite funny. He pushed that under the doors of the Lewis camp and the media. The tone was full of praise for Lewis, while it utterly defamed Maloney - LOL.

Seriously. This was more than mere pantomime, on King's part. The Tucker fight cost him millions.

His attempting to bull**** the sporting public over the step aside money paid to Lewis, in order to ensure his charge Tyson didn't end up in the ring with him, was poor form, but nothing we wouldn't have expected from King.

The list goes on and on. It is a litany of bad faith actions.

You can call that a good working relationship if you like but, in reality, the only reason it might appear that way, due to both sides having shared interests, is because the WBC opponents Lewis had to face were as likely as not to be King fighters.

 

There he is. I knew you were in there somewhere.

 

Lewis.

 

Yeah, I threw that out there for you and Man_Machine, it's all good fun.

 

Sure you did

 

Sure.
There's nothing much there I'd dispute. Of course Don King was always trying to get Lewis to dump the others and sign with him.

But the elephant in the room is that Maloney and Lewis could have frozen King and the WBC out in 1992, if they'd struck up a deal with Newman and Bowe, which was possible.
Maloney admitted as much himself, but chose to string along with the WBC.

Don King was virtually finished in the heavyweight division at the time, with Tyson in jail, and a dull, washed-up Tucker as his main 'hope'. He'd lost hold on any of the titles in February 1990, and none of his fighters had challenged for the titles either.