Why didn't Lewis face Ruiz and Byrd?

Yeah, he should have fought Byrd, I've never said that he shouldn't have. But boxers by the tail end of their reigns tend to pick some easy touches. Even in the legendary Mike Tyson's run you always talk about, 3 last title defences were against lower rated contenders while Evander Holyfield was the number 1 contender accroding to all the alphabet bodies and The Ring Magazine for 2 years. And Lewis ended up fighting Vitali, so it's all irrelevant. He didn't do the rematch because he didn't have it in him anymore, simple as that. Would I like to see that? Yes. Would that be good for his career if he won the rematch? Yes. Is it a stain that he didn't to the rematch? In my opinion no. He won fair and square against the next bext heavyweight (for a year or so but still) and drove off into the sunset.

 

This post comes across somewhat harsh but there is truth in it. Lewis peaked late while his biggest named contemporaries had already aged out in Holyfield and Tyson. I remember back in 1995 the announcers were really down on Lewis during and after the Mercer fight. ( And does any fighter get more revisionist praise than Mercer?) Lewis was already 30 years old by this point and greatly trailed Holyfield, Bowe and Tyson in legacy. His 3 main peers. What happens that follows is Bowe gets destroyed in two absolute wars with Golota and retires. Neither fighter was the same after those bouts. Holyfield rises from the dead after being Ko’d by Bowe in their 3rd fight and looking like absolute garbage against Bobby Czyz of all people, to stun the boxing world and put a beatdown on Tyson. Then Bite fight and the circus that followed. Tyson’s post prison career is all smoke and mirrors anyway his career ended when he was incarcerated. While all these bouts are going on what is Lewis doing, he’s fighting drug addict Mccall in a bout that should not have been sanctioned, hugging Henry Akinwande, overrated Briggs, and that Euro guy who showed a lot of heart but couldn’t punch and disappeared right after. Throw in Golota who was not the same in a hyped bout after he already lost by back to back Dq’s to Bowe. It isn’t exactly a murderers row that Lewis faced.
I like Lewis but as the poster rightly says he was basically the last man standing. He came in late and did mop up duty on Holyfield and Tyson. Avenging Rahman matching him with a one punch KO was sweet revenge and going out on a high note, stopping Vitali was smart on his part. Vitali going on to have solid career enhanced Lewis greatly.

 

There are two possibilities: either you know that Tyson had signed a contract with Holyfield before the fight with Douglas but you ignore it, or you don't know it. Either way, it doesn't reflect well on you. You should also know that the longer this fight was postponed, the better for Holy.

 

Because he didn't need them.

 

Yeah - All that 'cup is half-empty' perspective and picking apart of Lewis' resume and he still walks away with a better Heavyweight ledger than Holyfield, Bowe, Tyson and anyone who's come after him since... ... ... ... ...

 

I think he was afraid of killing them.

 

so what is his greatest victory? Bowe won against the 30-year-old Holy in much better style than Lewis against the 37-year-old. 42-year-old Holmes won in much better style against 30-year-old Mercer than 31-year-old Lewis won against 35-year-old Mercer. The fight with Klitschko is so doubtful that Lennox chose to quit boxing rather than prove he is better on the biggest pay day of his career. What does Lewis have better than Bowe or Holyfield?

 

I will make one more observation.

There was a perception at the time that Lewis did not have the best chin, which meant that there was was always interest in matching him against a puncher.

I remember the edition of Ring Magazine before the Tua fight, and a lot of people picked Tua.

The hype surrounding Michael Grant was huge, with many people expecting him to be the next big thing.

Even Goltoa was seen as being something of a head to head monster.

Now with the benefit of hindsight, we might draw different conclusions about Lewis's chin, and the merits of these challengers, but at the time I got the impression that Lewis was just going with the crowd.

 

The fact that he signed the contract doesn't change anything in that regard. Evander Holyfield was rated just behind Mike since late 1987. After beating Spinks, when Holyfield was rated as a top contender by every sanctioning body and The Ring Magazine, Mike managed to fight Frank Bruno, who wasn't in the Top 10 at all at the time, Carl Williams, number 2 contender, and Buster Douglas, contender number 7. Not the stuff the real champions are made of. According to your logic, he's a paper champ then.

Following that logic, good for Byrd Lewis didn't fight him at all then, lol. Saved him some brain damage.

 

Nice strawman since, when it comes to rating the quality of a ledger, such a rating doesn't stand on a single win. But, I'll entertain it...

This is a matter of opinion. What does "much better" mean? Are you able to quantify this?

Holyfield, at 205lbs, attempted to stand toe-to-toe and be a warrior against a much bigger, harder-hitting opponent in Bowe (I). Against Lewis he might have been older (36; not 37) but he was also bigger, stronger, more seasoned and wilier, having vanquished his apparent nemesis Mike Tyson less than two years earlier.

From a technical standpoint, Lewis' performance was superior to Bowe's and would be, every time, because he was the better technician. No one had dominated Holyfield in such a fashion over the distance like that before.

The way you use the relative age of the Boxers when they competed as the sole factor for determining the quality of a win is pretty ridiculous.

Sure, age is a factor, but your reliance on it ignores other perhaps more salient factors like the action in the actual fights themselves. Where each Boxer was in their career at that point. The styles and tactics that were used to shape the bout and its eventual outcome.

Mercer's age didn't change the fact that he was going into his 19th pro fight in his third year as a professional against Holmes, after having have scored two come from behind KOs on the bounce (Damiani and Morrison). He was still raw, had no jab to speak of and was effectively a hard-hitting slugger that Holmes could see coming a mile off.

Following his loss to Holmes, Mercer would cultivate a jab and learn to work from behind it, developing some more thoughtful combinations. When he met Lewis in a phone-booth size ring in '96, he had already shown considerable improvement against Holyfield in his last fight and he was geared up for the challenge.

Lewis was in transition. Post-McCall (I), he was now under Steward, who wanted to capitalize on Lewis' physical frame, stack on the weight and have him overpower opponents. He was not moving as well, in my opinion, at this stage, and it took a few more fights for him to weather in at 245-250.

The size of the ring, Lewis' increased weight, combined with Mercer's strong forward assaults behind the jab, left Lewis electing (for the most part) to slug it out. In almost every way that matters, it was an entirely different fight to Mercer/Holmes - mainly on account of Mercer being a different type of fighter back then.

It's not good enough to simply say Holmes beat a younger Mercer more impressively. And, even if you want to view it in the simplistic way that you do, what has Holmes got to do with my previous post?

TKO 6

So, full circle.

Do you think Bowe has a stronger resume than Lewis on the strength of his Holyfield wins alone?

I don't. It's more or less all he has. He has four other registered wins against rated men and one of those is Golota when they fought in their rematch and Golota's rating here is, quite ironically, due to the shellacking he gave Bowe the first time around, despite losing on a DQ.

Lewis utterly demolished Golota.

As for Holyfield, he had a great career but in 18 contests against Ring-rated opposition he went 10-6-2 - and amongst the Losses and Draws are a series loss to Bowe, a series loss to Lewis and a shambolic trilogy with Ruiz, which evened out as 1-1-1. In addition, having perhaps gone on for too long, he took several bad losses as well, against unrated opposition.

Lewis also has 18 contests against rated opponents going 15-2-1 and the draw probably represents his finest performance of all (the glory of which was robbed from him). Lewis beat every man he ever faced, avenging both losses, and he never suffered a loss against an unrated opponent.

Lewis walked away from the sport as a Top-10 ATG (arguably Top-5). He has a strong case for being considered the best of the 90s - That he sealed his place in history at the back end of his career, during the early noughties and trounced his would-be heir only reinforces this view.

He never looked back, never came back. His ledger is better than that of Holyfield, Bowe or Tyson. No Heavyweight since Lewis retired has equaled or bettered his ledger.

 

The same Golota who argubly beat Byrd and Ruiz back to back 7 years later and Lewis slaughtered him with ease.

 

I’m wondering why Byrd and Ruiz didn’t fight each other.

 

I am not.

That would have been the biggest stink fest imaginable.

They both needed Lewis more than he needed them.

 

Agreed. But if you’re going to claim that you’re worth a shot at the best then a good place to start is with some of your fellow ranked piers and belt holders.