Why doesn't Lennox have universal approval ?

Sure.

Lewis lost twice in his entire career spanning almost a decade and a half and 44 fights. His list of victories is comparable to almost any Heavyweight who ever lived.

Yes he has two losses but there are stories to both and he more than avenged them.

He was pre peak against McCall and an accident waiting to happen. I have it somewhere here in an article that predicted he would lose at any point right before he did. It was the best thing that ever happened to him. His training camps were woeful, his sparring partners and setup was terrible. Being honest he was also a flawed fighter not getting the best out of his immense ability. Steward shored these deficiencies up and turned him into a much more complete and better prepared fighter. His loss was ain to Joe Louis' and both came back better fighters for it.

On top of this he could easily have been allowed to fight on, especially being champ. I've seen Holmes allowed to fight on when just as bad. Who knows, it could have been a defining moment for him. Fighters in much worse condition have come back to win many many times and it would have been interesting to see how he responded.

He'd been around forever by the time Rahman stopped him and had only himself to blame. He was a 20-1 fave and acted like the bout was a mere formaility. It's common knowledge he was more interested in making his movie and besides slacking off did not give himself time to acclimatise to the altitude. Training in Vegas until 2 weeks before the fight and taking days off to act did not exactly help his cause.

By contrast Rahman trained in the mountains prior to arriving a full two weeks before Lewis did. He did everything right and reaped the rewards while Lewis paid the penalty.

He only had himself to blame and didn't cut any corners second time around and schooled Rahman before dispatching him heavily.

He has any amount of fine wins on his resule beside Tyson and Holyfield and there's nothing to say he would not have defeated them earlier. The good thing is that when they finally fought he did beat them. One can only imagine the furore if he lost.

He punched half of Vitali's face off and that's certainly one way to win a bout. The damage to his face was certainly conclusive and the fact of the matter is he beat the heir apparent when old, faded and not overly motivated. It's a big tick if anything.

You can slice and dice any Heavyweight any which way you want, it's easy to bang out negatives. They all have them.

 

So, the story is: excuse him for losing to McCall down to bad preparation, woeful training camps, being pre-peak, not a complete fighter yet .... etc. .... but that was all fixed by Manny Steward later on. The deficiencies were all "shored up". Okay.

Yet, the excuses for losing to Hasim Rahman seem almost exactly the same as some of those for losing to McCall.
Bad preparation, amateurish attitude. etc.

Not only that. Anyone can look at the ending to the first Rahman fight and see Lewis was sloppy and amateurish to be taken out like that.

I seem to remember Hasim Rahman never made any excuses for losing to Lewis.
He said, "well, at heavyweight, the top fighters, we can all beat each other." or something to that effect.
Contrasting nicely with Lewis's immediate response to getting KTFO earlier that year : "There's no way Hasim Rahman can beat me."

 

Yes, but that's part of the exercise in rating the greatest fighters all-time.
It's a process of elimination to establish a hierarchy. Unfortunately a lot of that will involve looking for negatives amongst the positives.
The standard is the highest standard, so every negative will be examined.

Lennox Lewis's loss to Rahman was especially bad.
For the company you want to rate Lewis alongside or above or close to, that kind of defeat has a dire impact.

 

Q. Where do you think he should rank?

 

Definitely not in the top 5.

 

If he's top 5, I think Wladimir ought to be close to top 5 too.
But Wladimir is lucky to get accepted into the top 10 around here.

 

Joe Frazier lost to Ali and Foreman only, and has a GREAT win over an undefeated Ali.
Yet I see many people here will insist Lewis deserves to be ranked clear higher than Joe.
So Frazier should have lost to Rahman/McCall level fighters instead, with one-punch stoppages, I guess.

It's a stretch to put Lewis above Frazier at all, nevermind the kind of gulf some here would have it.

 

Another thing that irks me a little is Lennox Lewis being regarded as a direct contemporary to Holyfield and Tyson, when he was clearly from the "next crop" of HW fighters.
Holyfield and Tyson were established 2 - 3 years before Lewis even turned professional.
Holyfield was starting on the decline when Lewis was coming up, and Tyson was post-Douglas and jail.

People will then say "Lewis ranks above them, he was the best of that era". But they weren't direct contemporaries.

The flipside of course, to Lewis's credit, are his wins over fighters of the "later crops", eg. Tua, Vitali.

 

Top 7?

 

This is fair comment.

 

Neither Frazier nor Marciano make my ten.I'm sure most would emphatically disagree with that.

 

He isn't in mine.

 

I doubt it but he might scrape in at #7.

 

I'd put them above Lewis, almost certainly.