Who Was Better - Ron Lyle Or David Tua?

I agree, he was never in the fight against Lewis but I thought the Byrd fight was fairly close. He just didn't let his hands go enough imo. It was very frustrating.

 

Lyle came very close to beating the two best he faced, unlike Tua.

 

Again, that's not really true. Ali was in one of his lazy moods. It's not like Lyle hurt Ali or had him in serious trouble. He was simply the busier fighter.

Lyle was also shut out twice by Young who was unrated in at least one of their fights.

 

The first time around, Young had just had a draw against Earnie Shavers in his previous fight, the most impressive result of his career at that point.

The second time around, Young was only a few months removed from a very close controversial loss to Ali, and in his next fight beat Foreman, and by any reasonable standard was a top 5 HW.

 

What's the difference?

 

Yeah especially when you compare how Lyle did vs the Chris Byrd of his era aka Jimmy Young, I've heard Lyle was pretty much shut out in both fights.

I also thought Tua/Byrd was somewhat close aswell, no doubt Byrd won the fight. But Tua possibly won 4 or 5 rounds in the fight it wasn't a shut out by any means.

The only real fighter who beat Tua handily was a prime Lennox Lewis. But for some reason Tua decided to come in way out of shape, for the biggest fight of his life which made no sense. And unfortunately Tua was lackluster and couldn't really present much of a challenge.

 

Head to head is who you'd favour to win in a fight between the two.

P4P is who you think is the better fighter relative to their respective sizes.

 

Tua came close to beating Ibeabuchi and even Byrd. Lyle didnt have to fight Lewis.

 

Yeah but p4p was created to give all the little guys below heavyweight their dues. No one uses it for the heavyweights. No one ever comes up with a lists of the greatest heavyweights p4p or thinks that Marciano was a greater fighter than Ali or Lewis p4p

 

Someone made the distinction in this thread, a couple of related posts later you responded asking what the difference was, I just answered your question.

No one ranks Marciano above Ali p4p, I agree. I think there's a good case for having him above (Lennox) Lewis p4p whilst being below him at HW, though I suspect you may have meant (Joe) Louis.

 

But Lyle did fight , and nearly beat, Ali and Foreman...who were both better than Ike and Byrd.

 

And he lost to Quarry, Shavers, Young x 2, and Lynn Ball. Were they all better than Ike and Byrd or is your point imaginary?

 

Quarry and Young might very well have been. Ron beat Shavers and Lynn Ball is a low blow, given how it was a tail end part of his career, ten months before his ancient remains were blasted by rising Cooney.

 

I can’t see Quarry and Young beating Ike.

Shavers was an error by me, but he’d beaten LeDoux and Bugner fairly close to when he lost to Ball.

 

Bugner fight happened almost three years prior, and Ledoux fight if anything showed how much Lyle faded. SD and he hit the canvas. I reckon prime Lyle would fare better.