Why is Lennox Lewis considered a dominant champion?

Lewis more dominant than Tyson???

I think we’ll leave this here now

 

The issue I have here, is that I don’t think anyone could say with a straight face that Lewis was actually a better heavyweight than Tyson. Not even as a p4p fighter which is obviously Tyson, but even with Lewis’ size advantage, the facts remain Tyson beat a better set of heavyweights in a much more impressive fashion so there really is no argument as to who the better heavyweight was.

The other issue is that whilst Tyson may have hurt his greatness with the ear bite, Tokyo fiasco etc, Lewis isn’t all that great himself.
ON PAPER, Lennox Lewis should be the best heavyweight ever, but the reality remains that Lewis wasn’t even that impressive in his own era upon the eye. The closest he came to meeting the best of his era was a 36 year old Holyfield ffs. Lewis even in his prime was a hot and cold fighter who was consistently lackadaisical, unpolished, lacking passion and had 2 of the most embarrassing losses ever. I tend to think it’s obvious Lewis was a large underachiever or simply nowhere near as naturally good as his fans make out. One of the 2.

The simple fact remains that Lewis never put in a phenomenal championship performance where he fought to the absolute best of his talents. You can clown Tyson for whatever but the reality remains he consistently delivered complete sensational performances to the best of his abilities on the highest level. Heck you can clown Bowe for his weight, CTE, short prime etc but Lewis has absolutely nothing a patch on Bowe’s performance in the first Holyfield fight.

Give credit where it’s due. Lewis didn’t expire like the great contemporaries of his era and outlasted them where their young man styles declined with age. He has an awesome resume too. Olympic gold. Beat every man he faced.

But that really means little when Tyson was a far more impressive fighter in his prime and Lewis was no great overachiever with a special aura to him when he fought for me to refer to him as a great.

Conclusion. The jury’s out whether Lewis even was a great fighter. Also ATG subjective rankings mean nothing. Tyson was more dominant. That is a fact.

 

Cheers.

The debate is going nowhere now. I think I’m going to leave it. The lack of common sense being applied is winding me up a little now.

I’ve been lurking on here for a while and notice posters struggle to be objective about LL. He seems to be very popular on all the forums/social media I look at. I’m surprised, he was boring and doesn’t have the iconic superfights.

It’s strange.

 

I think we’ll agree to disagree here.

You are mashing together all these statistics and facts that I think the argument is getting silly.

I’ll leave it at this.

Was Lennox Lewis dominating the 90s? No, Holyfield was more often that not the real champ.

Was Lennox Lewis dominating the 2000s? No he made 3 defenses before getting starched by a rubbish fighter and was lucky to get an undeserved rematch. Great work after that, but enough to erase the embarrassing loss and be constituted as a dominant champ? Not for me.

 

This is a good post.

I think Lewis gets a lot of credit for beating a washed version Holyfield and the corpse of Tyson. FWIW I think Holyfield’s wins over Foreman/Holmes were a better pair.

My issue is when people reward Lewis for facing old versions of Holyfield/Tyson and say oh he’d have beaten them prime for prime anyway. I thought the Holyfield rematch was close and I think it’s undeniable that with the rematch strategy a fresh early 90s Holyfield would’ve beaten Lewis there with a comfortable decision. Whereas if you go on a prime Holmes/Foreman vs Holyfield thread you’ll get a ‘oh they won a few rounds at 40 and looked decent so it will be easy for them’. Perhaps it’s true but the logic doesn’t follow.

I tend to think Bowe/Holyfield/Lewis are on the same level H2H below my top 3 of Ali/Tyson/Holmes. So I find it disingenuous when people say Lewis was the best of his era, simply because I don’t believe he was.

 

I’m not claiming that Holyfield was a dominant champ but throughout the 90s he was more often than not the champ.

In the years where Holyfield was champ 90-92, 93, 96-98, Lennox Lewis was not the champ. When Holyfield beat Tyson he was THE champ. Not Bruno or whichever King fighter was around with the WBC. So that leaves exclusively 99 when Lewis was THE champ. There is no claim that Lewis was a major championship presence in the 90s. Holyfield was.

Just asking when Holyfield won the WBA against Ruiz and Lewis held the other belts, would you consider Holyfield a proper champion? I wouldn’t.

I agree that Holyfield was the greater p4p fighter. I don’t even think it’s remotely close. I think the jury’s out whether Lewis was even a better heavyweight than Holyfield if I’m honest.