Starting To Think Lennox Lewis Is The Most Complete and Best Heavyweight H2H

It's tough to tell because Lewis has such great fluidity. Bowe doesn't string combos as smooth. I also think Lewis has great snap that comes from some sort of explosion. It's hair splitting I guess, but I think Rez puts Liston in the top 5 and I don't see how you can say Lewis was slower than him. Just seems like a weird reason for someone not being ranked in the top 5.

 

Come on... Louis was downed near more than handful of times and against second-raters. Do you really think Galento and Braddock would've dropped Lewis? Rahman had pretty good power, and the shot he hit Lewis with was a shot with more power than any shot I've ever seen Louis take except for the right hand Marciano knocked Louis out with. It was the perfect punch... Lewis was probably able to go against McCall but the ref stopped it. Bigger doesn't equate better, but generally Lewis was taking shots from bigger guys and generally more powerful punchers.

You can laugh all you want. I mean, I would never figure Conn to have Lewis railing around the ring regardless of how poor Rahman and McCall are as fighters.

As a thought, maybe Louis had the superior recuperative powers but their chins were more or less the same. Possible?

 

Not seeing it Rez. Liston is one of the more ploddy-slow fighters I've ever seen regarding HW champions, especially for his size. He had good head-movement, and maybe his upper-body matched or was superior to Lewis. But his mobility wasn't better in my view and his handspeed was definitely slower. We'll just have to disagree on this one. I think Foreman was much more mobile and had much better "bounce" to his step which made him such a destructive HW. He had the mobility to corner you and then pound away at you. Liston was fairly good in the center of the ring.

 

I suspect Lewis fighting a LHW in the 1990's would've been perceived as ridiculous. Had Roy Jones Jr ever taken that fight I'd imagine he would've been totally dominated by Lewis jab. It's not that bigger is neccessarily better, it's just that Lewis is a superheavyweight that controls range. And Conn was a special fighter, with little analogous examples of in the 1990's.

Never said Louis had a glass chin, neither did I with Lewis. You question Lewis chin because he got sparked by C/B level fighters. It was unlucky, it happens. The shot Rahman hit Louis with packed a lot of power. It was just the perfect shot. Being decked is a measure of either balance or chin. Louis didn't slip every-time he got dropped (He was floored like 8 times in his career I believe) but he took some big shots from Baer, Galento, Schemling, Marciano, etc. I don't think it makes Lewis any worse that he tended to not get hit with these punches. He took some big punches in his career, and it is a shame that he happened to get knocked out by 1 punch twice. McCall never knocked Lewis out cold per se though. If Rahman landed the same shot on Louis I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't make the count.

You know, it really gets irritating any time you go outside conventional thinking and get silly knee-jerk reactions. A case of too much group-think can be stiffing to intellectual creativity and honesty.

 

I just don't think it's as simple as you make it. Fighter A got knocked out in his career more than Fighter B therefore has a better/worse chin. It's not like we can put them in a line and have them take punches to really test this out. Louis was downed much more, and Lewis was KOed twice. Once in extremely legitimate fashion in South Africa and the other was a fair stoppage but let's not make it like Lewis was dead. Suppose the ref didn't stop the McCall fight and Lewis "survived" how much better or worse would his chin be in comparison. The Rahman incident would seem even more like a fluke circumstance and the evidence for a case on behalf of Louis would be even less. I'm just saying I think their chins are comparable and I don't see the evidence is overwhelming either way. Dempsey was KOed by Flynn early in his career but I think his chin is superior to Louis. Is that wrong? I have to take the an overall assessment of the punchers a fighter takes and how they react. We can't put too much stock in just one shot. Either way, if Lewis chin is worse than he must be much better at controlling range or has better defense because Louis was downed much more in his career.

Take this idea for example. Ali was downed more and on the canvas for more time than Marciano but faced bigger punchers and was tested by bigger punchers more often by taking bigger punches. Louis took punches from big punchers, but Lewis took punchers by bigger punchers probably more often and was downed less. What makes this confusing is that Lewis took punchers a little less often in general than Louis did. It can be hard to compare. I never outright said Lewis had a better chin but their chins are comparable to me.

If Jones Jr beat Lewis he would be a top 10 lock. Man that would have been ridiculous.