The Top 100 Pound for Pound All-Time Greats

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#94 Lennox Lewis (41-2-1)

A discussion of Lennox Lewis’s all-time great status generally descends into an argument about step-aside money paid by Don King and/or a disagreement about the legitimacy of the British heavyweight’s TKO victory over Vitali Klitschko.

I am not conflicted on either of these issues. The circumstances surrounding the payment of step-aside money that Lewis accepted from Don King to postpone a fight with Mike Tyson doesn’t matter. Lewis is great without any provisos. The Vitali Klitschko victory is very simple to appraise: a 256 lb. man punched a 248 lb. man in the face until he was no longer able to continue with the fight. That is what boxing is, precisely.

Aside from the outstanding achievement of beating his immediate successor as the world’s best heavyweight, Lewis beat every man he ever faced as a professional. He beat more Ring ranked contenders at heavyweight than anyone aside from Joe Louis and Muhammad Ali. He won the European title in his thirteenth fight, the British title in his fourteenth (from the enormously tough Gary Mason) and was still matching top contenders thirteen years later.

Lewis has not inspired the fans in the same way that Joe Frazier and George Foreman have, but he has terrified the opposition. David Tua, Andrew Golota, Henry Akinwande and even Mike Tyson are the world-class heavyweights who quit to him in one way or another. Capable of outboxing the boxers and outpunching the punchers, his chin will remain in doubt based upon those two knockout losses to Oliver McCall and Hasim Rahman but it is also true that beating heavy hitters was his meat and bread. He destroyed the opposition (Michael Grant KO2, Hasim Rahamn KO4, Donovan Ruddock KO2), he patiently outboxed the opposition (Evander Holyfield twice, Zeljco Mavrovic, Tony Tucker, all UD12).

He beat a huge array of fighters and styles and is the most dominant heavyweight champion since Joe Louis.

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He ****ing was though, wasn't he? He fought like it, anyway.

 

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#92 Joe Frazier (32-4-1)

Frazier snorted his way from an Olympic gold medal to the professional ranks without fanfare; perhaps the frustration informed his killing style.

He hit the ground running and by 17-0 had dispatched top names Oscar Bonavena, Eddie Machen, Doug Jones and George Chuvalo. The legend that belongs to Mike Tyson and Sonny Liston in truth should be hung upon Joe Frazier who ripped the massed ranks of the deepest heavyweight contendership in history to pieces before he had boxed twenty times.

Buster Mathis, Manuel Ramos, Jerry Quarry and Jimmy Ellis all followed before 1970 was out and then Frazier painted his first legitimate masterpiece by breaking a helpless Bob Foster into two clean pieces in two scintillating rounds. Frazier had mounted one of the most rarefied peaks in heavyweight boxing history.

For all that Marciano is the pressure fighting juggernaut that ranks highest upon this list—you’ll have to wait to see where—it was Frazier who executed the definitive pressure-fighting performances at the weight. Even upon investigating the more mobile pressure fighters who occupy the lower weights it might be the case that no lesser a fighter than Henry Armstrong is the only boxer that bears a positive comparison. In the 1971 Fight of the Century, in spite of high blood pressure, in spite of deteriorating eyesight, Joe Frazier turned in arguably the best performance ever filmed at the weight. Watch carefully as Ali, still in possession of some of the fastest feet in the division’s history, bounces from rope to rope and the attack dog Frazier moves with him, never more than a half step behind and usually in perfect tandem. The left hook he threw to drop Ali to the canvas in the fifteenth round is said to be amongst the best ever thrown; it’s nonsense, of course, but not many men other than Joe himself threw better.

He eventually lost the series to Ali and would later be rag-dolled by the formidable George Foreman. What these two proved between them was that you had to all but kill Frazier to beat him.

What is clear is that in his savage prime, there are but a handful of men that could have held out the merest hope of doing so.

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