The case for Lennox Lewis being GOAT

You are way off.

I used to rate Dempsey as much of the forum dose bellow fighters like say Marciano and Frazier based on his paper resume.

As I started to peice together Dempsey the fighter from various sources I gradualy came to the same conclusion as Ray Arcel, that he was the most perfect ofensive machine the heavyweight division ever produced except maybe Joe Louis.

On acomplishment Dempsey could reasonably be ranked in the bottom half of the top 10 but head to head he might well beat anybody. Pound for pound he is totaly off the scale among the heavyweights.

 

Thing with Dempsey is that his "most feared fighter" image comes against horrible opposition. Jess Willard? Washed up light-heavy that hurt him Carpentier? Not defending the title for a full 3 years? When he met better opposition he struggled (Sharkey controversial and behind on cards) or lost in one-sided (Tunney) fashion.

That and the fact that Lewis dwarfs him would make me very nervous come fight time if i had put money on Dempsey.



And Lewis' chin is not as glassy as some of you might believe. Put Lewis in with lightheavies, mediocre cruisers and big abominations like Willard and his chin will look like pure steel. Put Dempsey in with big heavyweight punchers like Tua, Klitschko, Bruno, Tyson, Morrison, Mercer, McCall, Grant, Akinwande, etc. I'm guessing his chin would look a lot less good. Did you see Lennox Lewis get knocked down by a former light-heavyweight? Sorry but you have to be realistic here and look past the grainy footage and put things in perspective of their time.

 

Dempsey was taken out by Flynn.

Indeed he was never taken out by a single punch, but come on. Dempsey faced a pathetic set of punchers over his career.

When Willard or Firpo (who makes Samuel Peter look like Floyd Mayweather) are the best punchers you faced during your career, you know you have a really weak resume on your hands. Firpo even dropped Dempsey twice, by the way.

 

I like jack dempsey and rate him as one of the best heavyweights of all time but leenox lewis is a terrible match up for him, he is a giant of man with a big arsenal , he could box and his chin was solid(even though some would say different). He is not a big oaf like willard or canera the guys people use to justify the likes of dempsey and marciano being able to comptete with fighter's like lewis. If marciano and dempsey where alive today i doubt they would even be fighting at heavyweight, they would be cruiserweights.
In terms of the lewis loses he wasn't able to slip punch's very well when he lost to mccall, this is a legit loss and he took up with manny afterwards and this didn't happen again. The rahman fight it was obvious lewis hadn't trained properly and only lost becuase of this a motivated lewis destroy's rahman 10/10 times as shown by the rematch.

 

What you have to ask is how Lewis and Bowe would have fared against Evander Holyfield if he had top end power like Dempsey.

Bowe would have been in big trouble and Lewis could well have droped one. Size dosnt offer you next to no protection against a puncher like Dempsey, Louis or Tyson.

 

Lewis was a solid technician with good hand speed for a big guy. Good right hand as well. He was smart and athletic enough to make mediocre fighters look very bad, but as far as I'm concern he never came into the ring against great heavyweight in or near their prime and dominated them the way some of the other heavyweights who've been mentioned in this thread had.

Lewis having a glassy jaw isn't a question. He had one. In tactical fights, Louis could look like a master, but if someone like Joe Louis or Joe Frazier came into the ring with their conditioning, athleticism, and ferocious agression, I see Lewis crumbling. Obviously, that's an opinion, but I've never seen anything from Lewis to convince me otherwise.

I think GOAT is insanity, top 5 I'm in firm disagreement with, and top 10 is still a stretch as far as I'm concerned. Sorry UK.

 

Your nobody to listen too though, how did lewis have a glassy chin that is utter bull****, he took countless huge shots that would have koed alot of the fighters and didn't fall then, i would like to see the likes of fraizer,dempsey,marciano and louis take the shots lewis took from vitali and stay standing. Lewis is not the goat but he is easily a top ten heavyweight and to discount this is just nuthugging old fighters. I would like to see your top ten list if lewis aint anywhere near it.
In regards to smokin joe that has to be one of the worst matchups of all time to try and make lewis look bad, getting smoked by foreman hardly makes me confident he could stand up to lewis a bigger guy than foreman with as simular power(at least in the right hand) and superior boxing skills.

 

This post is a pretty good summation of everything I posted previously. But I don't apologize to the UK. For me, the nationality has zero to do with it. I'm actually a huge soccer fan and have always followed individuals before nations. Any brit out there might be interested in knowing my favorite athlete is keegan -- and I'm from the states!

As I've said ad nauseum, Lewis was great for his era, but he does not in any way stack up to the all-time greats. I'm still floored that there's a guy out there that thinks Frazier wouldnt win a fight against Lewis. That's insane.

 

I don't know what "nuthugging" is, but I don't think I'm guilty of it.

I still think you're guilty of what I described in my original complaint: you're really not thinking too deeply or acknowledging how good people from other eras were. it's kind of weird to me. it's as if people walking around think current means best. hardly.

 

Wtf fraizer gets smoked easily by slow but big hitter foreman but he can beat a guy who is more skilled, is larger and hits just as hard, how does that work?
Also just becuase i think lewis is an alltime great doesn't mean i don't rate old boxers, it just means i am a realist the likes of marciano etc are to small to compete with a guy like lewis. I rate the likes of louis and ali way above lewis and conisder guys like dempsey and marciano better p4p fighters but who have they beat to be conisdered better. Newer isn't always better but neither is older, at least i have seen lewis fight and can compare him with other boxers, how many of dempseys etc fights have you seen to compare him with the modern fighters. In fact how many people have seen much of all of these old fighter barring grainy old clips that can't really proove anything either way.

 

Lewis had an excellent jab, as well as size and who can name a 6'5 240+ fighter with the boxing skills of lewis.??