Sugar says Lewis is alltime great yet only top 12

No, I disagree. It's not nebulous at all to say that a guy, even if he may not be as good as a certain set of opposition, would still pose a threat to that group. Any man with Lewis' combination of size, boxing skill and punching power poses a threat to absolutely any opponent.
For example, Earnie Shavers obviously posed a serious threat to Holmes, but Shavers was a far lower-level fighter. Shavers was capable of beating or coming close to beating men like Ali, Holmes and Norton who would be seen as levels ahead of him in ability. However, he was also far more vulnerable than those men to defeat by lesser opposition. You would never have seen a prime Jimmy Ellis, Jimmy Young, Ken Norton, Muhammad Ali or Larry Holmes being beaten down by Bob Stallings like Shavers was. Hence, even though he was a live underdog or even, in some cases, a favorite against them in the ring, he was clearly inferior to them overall. Seeing my line of thought?

 

Lewis's losses to McCall and Rahman are irrelovant. He was much better than a lot of all time greats. Period. Let's close this thread off now.

 

I think Lewis was better than those two, but I can't say those losses are irrelevent.

 

Do you think we should count Ali's losses to Trevor Berbick and Holmes the same way we do Archie Moore's losses to Marciano and Patterson? If you do, I don't know what to say to you. Ali was clearly an utterly shot fighter at the time of the aforementioned losses, while Moore was still well within his heyday. If a 49-year-old Moore beat the living bejesus out of a 49-year-old Ali (which you know he would), would it be fair to rate Moore a superior heavyweight to Ali? Of course not. A 1-1 "same age" comparison is not fair at all.
If you've followed my posting career here with regularity, you know that I do give fighters credit for longevity. This criterion is one of the main reasons, for example, that I rank Ali and Louis ahead of Marciano, that I have Foreman much higher than most people do, that I consider Moore one of the top 10 all-time pound-for-pound, etc. I also take credit away from guys like Tyson who had very brief runs of success and then dropped out of the picture. Moore was able to maintain elite-level performance far longer and to an age at which most fighters have absolutely gone down the drain. Great longevity near the top of the division is an enormous credit to a fighter, and a lack of it is a minus. But absolutely, if you are still in your prime as a fighter, as demonstrated by prior and subsequent performances, then you should be judged by the fights which happen during that prime period.

What you're doing here is rewriting history to your liking. All the extant evidence indicates Dempsey was willing to give Wills a title shot and that the fight did not come off due to circumstance. It's still a minus for Dempsey's legacy, because he failed to establish total dominance over his era (although this same criticism can be applied somewhat to Lewis as well- see below), but this certainly strongly softens the blow.

Yes, not of note, but it obviously destroys your "Dempsey was terrified of all black guys" theory.

Guys like Weinert, Renault, Risko and Gibbons were respected contenders who were in the top 10 RING ratings around the time Tunney fought them. I think they were better than some of the guys, like Mike "the Bounty" Hunter and Orlin Norris, who beat McCall. Tunney was completely spotless at heavyweight with a respectable resume going into his shot at Dempsey's crown. He was a longtime great fighter and future Hall-of-Famer.

No, the only list I've seen of Lewis' "contender" opponents that had 20 included those guys.

I'll take your word for it on McNeely. Regardless, Patterson title opponents Moore, Jackson, Harris and Johansson were all legitimate contenders.

Patterson was the youngest heavyweight champ of all time, first man ever to regain the heavyweight title, and had arguably beaten every man he ever faced going into the Liston match (most observers thought he beat Maxim). He was a great champion in his prime, and Liston utterly annihilated him both times.

How is it relevant how good Ali was considered going into the fight? What's relevant is how good he actually was. It's near-impossible to significantly downgrade someone for a loss to Ali. Granted, though it is near-impossible, Liston still did it by losing in the admittedly disgraceful fashion he did. But it nonetheless remains a loss to Muhammad Ali.

Again, I've always given fighters credit for longevity, as most people who've debated with me could probably tell you.


It's obviously subjective to a certain degree, but i'd take them over most of the other guys' opposition.

Here, I'll stop the sort of beating-around-the-bush that's going on here. For bona fide contenders, not one-hit wonders or gatekeepers, Lewis beat:
Ruddock
Tucker
Bruno
Morrison
Mercer
McCall
Akinwande *(a touch debatable)
Golota
Briggs
Holyfield
Grant
Tua
Rahman
Tyson *(being quite generous including him at that stage of his career)
Vitali

That totals to 15.

Eh- I try to be careful about using strong terminology like that when talking about world-elite fighters. Have to admit Norton's chin was substandard for an elite fighter. It doesn't change the fact that he was an elite, championship-caliber opponent, though.

You have something of a point here. However, this is a touch on the hair-splitting end of things. The fact remains that Lewis never gave anyone a rematch, even when they gave him a serious test, unless he didn't win the first fight. I thought he beat Mercer anyway, mind you, and the other serious struggles he did still definitively win, so this isn't an enormous strike against him, but it's comparable (though perhaps to a somewhat lesser degree) to the criticism which can be leveled against Holmes.

 

Yes, but aside from Witherspoon (I admit Holmes should've rematched him), Holmes' non-rematches are equally understandable. Norton dropped completely out of the picture after the Holmes fight, being blasted by Shavers and drawing with LeDoux within the next year and disappearing from the big scene. And Williams, which was a match past Holmes' prime, was the last match before the Spinks losses, which obviously precluded him from giving Williams any more shots.

No, actually, I think Lewis not fighting Klitschko, who was an overwhelming #1 for an extended period in his reign, and not fighting Byrd, also a #1 for an extended period in his reign, is overall at least as bad as Holmes not fighting a few fairly middle-of-the-line contenders like Thomas and Page.

If you took any two guys' fights against a given opponent in the same time period and then matched those two fighters against each other, it would absolutely be more likely than not that the guy who did better against the common opponent would win. The existence of counterexamples does not disprove a general tendency. And the more common opponents you get, the stronger the correlation.
I am not saying what your little strawman above makes out- NOWHERE did I say, "Therefore a 90s Holmes would beat Lewis." I said it was an "interesting point of reference." Whenever you're judging two guys against each other, common opponents should absolutely be one of the first things you look to. They don't prove one guy's better or would beat the other guy, just like win-loss records, resumes, etc. don't prove one guy is better or would beat the other guy, but they are absolutely useful indicators. If common opponents "didn't mean anything," there would be no way to form rankings in boxing. The fact that Holmes, well into his 40s, was able to do significantly better than a prime Lewis against not one, but two major common opponents is legitimate evidence that he was likely a better fighter in his prime. It's not proof, but it is certainly a point in his favor.

 

The first fight with Munroe was an exhibition, but there is evidence beyond Munroe's bragging that Jeffries was knocked down. Gilbert Odd, in his biography of Fitzsimmons, describes Jeffries going down from a hard rap on the jaw. Jeffries claimed he slipped, but his word is as self-interested as Munroe's. Without film, there is no way to say.

The Butte paper(s) apparently pumped Munroe as the winner and as scoring a knockdown which is what led to the title defense.

 

You say you rate longetivity highly but this part of your rankings don't really reflect that. Tyson had 6 good years. Lewis had double that. Lewis has better wins. Both had lost to lesser fighters. Yet Tyson is still above Lewis in your rankings. Where did the longetivity argument go?

As i've argued before, there had been other fights between colored and white fighters around that time, where even the black fighter was given the verdict. When Dempsey ran out of the ring with Jeannette, he was booed and gave "boxing a black eye". Sorry but this coupled with the fact that Wills was promised a shot if he got by Fulton and never getting one when he did pretty much convinced me that they held him on a leash. And why shouldn't they? Wills could do nothing about it and Dempsey could make money knocking out Carpentiers. But it's still a BIG black mark on Dempsey's legacy as a fighter.

Well he never fought one after that so i don't really see why it destroys that theory. Just see how he ran from Wills if you want to keep believing that he wasn't afraid of black skileld fighters. Hell, he even admitted himself that he wanted no part of an ancient Langford and Jeannette ! It's time to open your eyes and see that every clue points to Dempsey wanting no part of skilled black fighters. I don't care whether it was his management or not that decided this, in the end it counts against him.

Yes, but his hall of fame status was because 90% of his work was at lightheavyweight, not at heavyweight. The points that i made still stand.

Moore was not a title defense but agreed on the others.

He was a champion, not a great champion. Not many people rank him higher than #15. Which, by the way, pretty much goes to show how undeserveringly low #13 is for Lewis if you think an undersized 180lbs heavy with no chin, not half the wins and more than double the losses is only 2 spots lower.atsch

I'm not degrading Liston for losing to Ali. I'm degrading him for the absolute disgraceful and pathetic way he gave up. That is not a champion's way.

Yeah, then why is Tyson higher than Lewis despite Lewis having better wins, equally embarrassing losses and much more longetivity?

Ring ranked contenders:

01.Mason
02.Ruddock
03.Tucker
04.Bruno
05.McCall (loss)
06.Morrison
07.Mercer
08.McCall
09.Akinwande
10.Golota
11.Briggs
12.Holyfield
13.Holyfield
14.Grant
15.Tua
16.Rahman (loss)
17.Rahman
18.Tyson
19.Klitschko
20.Butler (was #10 ring ranked)

18-2 with all defeats avenged.


And no, it's NOT generous to "give" Tyson the ranking. Sorry but it's time you let go of your emotion of what Tyson had once been and see him objectively as a fighter, who hadn't lost in 5 years, had knocked out all of his opponents since, one punch KO over Botha, destroyed Golota in a way that only Lewis did as well as a bunch of second-raters. Tyson was a legit contender. You're really showing bias in questioning him. Tyson was in the ring top3 for more than two years for crying out loud! How the hell is it generous to give him a shot!?

Of course, when a guy like Cleveland Williams is ranked based on knocking out Texas bums, sorry, Texas mediocrities, you have no trouble with him being ranked.

No, it's not. It's really not. I don't understand how you can submit that the comparison is not really fair but still say it applies to Lewis! I mean come on man. Holmes missed out on 4 contenders and avoided 3 rematches as a champion! Again, i'm not saying he should've done all 7 of those, but Lewis did nowhere near that and frankly, claming that Lewis and Holmes are close in receiving this kind of criticism is no more than showing bias. Again.

Norton dropped out of the picture AFTER Holmes refused a rematch. Who is doing historic revisionism now? You think Holmes declined a rematch and said to Norton" "Because you're about to get knocked out when you fight Shavers after i avoid you"?

Dito with Williams, Holmes just went on with his business facing other opponents just like he did with Witherspoon.
It's like this:
Fighter has a close fight with the champ Holmes.
Holmes does not give a rematch
If the fighter loses his next fights, Holmes fans sigh from relieve and say "There, see, he didn't deserve it".
If the fighter wins his fights like Witherspoon, there is nothing more to say.

Can't you see that Norton and Williams' cases are identical to Witherspoons? They were never gonna get rematches even if they kept winning like Witherspoon did.

Now again, i will add that i don't really hold Williams against Holmes as he was old, but what bothers me is this pattern of disrespect and lack of willingness to give rematches during his entire career.

 

I agree that he should've fought W. Klitschko. You have a point there.

However, there is something that you should not overlook here.

Lewis avoided W. Klitschko to make a legacy sealing fight with Mike Tyson.
Mike Tyson had been ranked in the ring top3 for three years and definitely deserved a title shot, although Wladimir was more deserving.
But in the end, the Lewis vs Tyson fight was the biggest heavyweight fight of the last ten years, and Tyson deserved a shot.

What did Holmes do?
He avoided Page to fight..... a 10 fight Marvis Frazier??? Come on MF, i know you're better than this. Lewis made the biggest fight possible and to seal his legacy, Holmes avoided the top contender to fight a mediocre, unexperienced fighter. This is not even comparable!

Because of this, Byrd was out of a title shot too, unfortunately, but as i said there's a reason for this (Tyson). No one gave Byrd a shot against Lewis because a similar fighter (Klitschko) didn't drop a single round against him and Byrd always makes for a boring fight; Lewis already had a reputation of being boring.

Holmes didn't fight Thomas, Page, Coetzee and Dokes when they were highly ranked, and instead fought undeserving fighters. Ort from ring magazine was payed off so one of Holmes' horrible opponents could be ranked.

 

I can't agree with that, I think that's a bit unfair.

Akinwande was 32-0-1 (with the draw being hugely debatable), with two inches of height and reach on Lewis, and usually clocking in around the mid-230s. He'd never been stopped, never even been down.

He had been the WBO Champion (with 2 defences) before dropping it in favour of fighting Lewis for the WBC, making him the #1 mandatory challenger to Lewis. These days, it would've been a WBC & WBO unification bout.

Akinwande might not have been the top guy in 1997 or anything, but viewing him as anything less than a credible contender seems very odd to me. He didn't have Lewis's credentials but then, hey, hardly anyone did in '97.

 

This is getting rather convoluted... Let me show how I would compare these guys' legacies:
I generally assess fighters on a combination of their legacies (consistent performance level while in their primes, longevity, quality/quantity of title reign, quality/quantity of winning resume, outstanding/unique accomplishments, etc.) and my perception of their head-to-head ability in their primes. Quality and quantity are of similar value, but if it comes down to it, I go with quality.
For example, Holmes had a very long title reign with a great quantity of defenses; but as you are so enthusiastically pointing out, he failed to face some of the best challengers available, failed to give rematches in situations that strongly merited them, and made many "throw-away" defenses against weak opposition. On the other hand, Marciano had a relatively short stint as champion, but in that time, he comprehensively cleared out the cream of the crop in his division (five defenses against #1 contenders, 1 against a #2 contender, beat five of six fighters to be ranked in the top 2 during his reign), gave rematches in all appropriate situations, and won every time in clear, uncontroversial fashion. Hence, although it was much shorter, I feel Marciano had a superior reign.
It is true that Lewis had far superior longevity, with a greater quantity of noteworthy wins accumulated over the years than Tyson. However, what Tyson did in his admittedly brief prime run was something special- in '86-89 Tyson beat everyone and cleaned out the division without a single controversial fight. Absolutely cleaning out the cream of the crop at any given moment in history without any losses or controversies is a very noteworthy accomplishment and worth as much as an extended time period of more moderate dominance, I would say. While Lewis was steadier over the long haul, he never had the intense quality Tyson did- he had a couple very ugly losses amidst his biggest wins, he had a close decision or so, and he overlooked some of the very best contenders available in his reign. He never flawlessly cut down the entire crop; he just consistently registered as the best in the division. In addition, I do believe that, had both men met at their peaks, Tyson would more likely than not have come out on top. Thus, I have Tyson one place ahead of Lewis. This is very close, and I don't see it as being unreasonable to rank Lewis higher. I just tend not to.

This report of Dempsey "giving boxing a black eye"- do you have this from multiple sources, or one writer's perspective? Because the general consensus- not one article, but the general consensus- of what I've read regarding that time period does not support the idea you're forwarding here that Dempsey not fighting a black man was seen as shameful. In fact, I have read accounts in which it was seen as shameful for a white man to even spar with a black man.
Second, this seems to be a little bit of a double standard on your part; below, you seem to think it's somewhat of an excuse/softening of the blow to Lewis' legacy that he failed to face outstanding #1 contender Wladimir Klitsckho for financial/risk-reward reasons, but here, where you're positing a similar financial/risk-reward motivation for Dempsey's failure to face an outstanding #1 contender, it is a "BIG black mark on his legacy." Dempsey would be worse, as Wills was #1 contender for most of his title reign, but it is a similar concept.

This is largely semantic, depending on what one considers "great." Patterson is my #16 all-time heavyweight. And yes, if one slaps together some negative adjectives and a disgusted emoticon, it looks silly to have him relatively close to Lewis, but in reality, he did not have only "half the wins," he had a lot more losses but faced much better competition, he had several very noteworthy career accomplishments, and he was much more than the negative caricature you're drawing up here- he was an absolutely lightning fast pressure fighter with a deadly hook, a tricky peak-a-boo style, always came prepared and had a load of heart. Ali called him the most skilled man he ever fought. He was beating and hanging with elite fighters in one of the toughest periods of competition ever in the heavyweight division for a 15-year time period nearly unbroken. It is no shame to be three places ahead of Floyd Patterson.
Liston utterly obliterated a top 20 all-time heavyweight (in my opinion, most other observers' opinions, and probably even your opinion, I would guess) who was square in his prime, not once, but twice, both times within a single round. That is amajoraccomplishment and a huge display of head-to-head prowess.

Yes, but this is not what we were discussing before- remember:
1. We were discussing how many ranked contenders he beat, not how many total fights he had against ranked contenders.
2. I said that guys like Butler should not really count as "major" wins, and you agreed, hence I did not include him on my list. Butler, and probably Mason as well (nice win-loss record, but never beat a top 20 heavyweight) were guys who were flash-in-the-pan fringe contenders who peeked into the top 10 very briefly and then were gone.
3. This is, of course, all squabbling over semantics; ultimately, Lewis has an impressive depth of resume. However, it is not the best in terms of quality or in the top five, in my opinion, nor is it the best in terms of quantity, or in the top three, and the losses are worse than those anyone in my top 10 suffered during their heydays.

It's generally a bad idea to pull the "bias" card and try to read emotion into other peoples' texts across the internet. Frankly, I think you have a pretty pronounced bias in favor of Lewis, and the language/emoticons/punctuation you're using suggest plenty of emotion; notice, you just typed a large, emphatic paragraph containing capitalized words, accusations of bias, swearing and strong punctuation, all in response to a small side note I put beside a name on my list which I still included and counted. However, the fact that you may have an emotional stance in this conversation does not make your views or arguments in and of themselves illegitimate, and so I have not used it in an effort to weaken your footing/credibility in this discussion, and will not begin to do so. Your arguments are factually grounded, and I will address them as such. Mine are as well.
Now, as to the arguments you put forth here about Tyson's status at the time of the Lewis fight:
Yes, Tyson was undefeated in the last five years, but he had only had six fights in the last five years, none of them against elite opponents, and two of them had been no-contests. The very best he'd fought were Botha and Golota; of those two, neither was close to being a serious title challenger. I don't believe Botha was top 10 going into the Tyson fight (he had no wins over top 25 opponents going into this match and largely made his name off giving Tyson trouble and subsequently drawing with Briggs). I believe Golota was in the bottom of the top 10 at the time, but he had lost all his major fights, and the match was officially a no-contest, although we know that Tyson won. This was over a year-and-a-half before Tyson fought Lewis.
Counting the Golota fight as a win (the Norris fight can't really be, as Tyson knocked him out with a punch after the bell), Tyson- since his two brutal losses to Holyfield, one in even more disgraceful fashion than the ones you're continually trashing Liston for- had won five fights in the last five years before facing Lewis, with only one against a (lower)top-10 opponent. Given this information about any unnamed fighter, one would hardly think that the fighter was an eminently serious contender and deserving of a title shot.

 

I see some of your points about Holmes' non-rematches. I concede Holmes is marginally worse in this matter than Lewis.

On Byrd, it is true that Byrd was given little chance against Lewis, as it stylistically comes across as a bad match for him, but the same point can be made about Dempsey and Wills. Wills was a stand-up tall guy who didn't have a great chin- just the type of opponent Dempsey liked. And as Dempsey himself candidly admitted to having avoided Langford in the teens and thought Langford was a bad match for him, I don't see why he shouldn't also be trustworthy in saying that he thought Wills was a good style for him (which would seem evident anyway) and was willing to give Wills a shot, having even signed for the fight.

As to the not-meeting-opponents argument, I think you're reaching somewhat with the "Tyson-legacy-fight" thing, really. The Tyson fight didn't take up all of Lewis' time for three years. Why was he fighting Rahman (not a deserving challenger) beforehand and not fighting at all for over a year, then coming back to face Kirk Johnson (not a deserving challenger)/Vitali Klitschko (not a deserving challenger- filled in as a replacement)? Was Johnson an enormous pay-per-view draw? All-in-all, this is a considerable block of time in which Lewis made defenses against undeserving opponents, took a long layoff after a fairly easy fight, and all-around stayed completely away from the top challengers for his title. Granted, I do not believe he was afraid to face those men or that he wouldn't have had push come to shove, but this is a bit of a hole in his legacy.

 

yes this is true. however lennox also had his hand held on his way climbing up the ladder, unlike walcott. lennox had an exstesive amatuer background, with top trainers, plenty of time to devot to boxing training only, hot healthy meals every night, and a bed to sleep in unlike walcott did until 1945.

 

right. just like say if marciano had lost his first title shot to walcott that would have been irrelovant?

Is foreman losing to ali irrelovant?

 

You have seen cleveland williams on film. answer me this, is their more than 5 heavyweights in the world 1959-1960 that you would pick to beat him?

 

Talking about who was ranked/who deserved to be ranked just goes to illistrate how weak the heavyweight division is at most times.

Also, the magazine rankings are UTTER GARBAGE most of the time, in my opinion.

Like someone mentioned Tyson was ranked highly by the magazines going into his fight with Lewis. I remember the British magazine BOXING MONTHLY had Tyson rated above the champion Hasim Rahman in summer '01 !
By summer '02 I reckon Tyson should have been low in the top 10, but the big fight marketing, hype and nostalgia for his reputation put him way up the top.

And this is just one example.
RING magazine rankings have been crappy for years.
Magazines aren't immune from financial corruption, personal favouritism, lazy misjudgment.

But it doesn't matter so much when we realize that the quality in the heavyweight division varies a lot, but more often than not there are "genuine contenders" who really have very flimsy credentials.
Maybe insisting on a top TEN is the mistake, because at times anyone outside the top 4 or 5 can be dismissed as flimsy.