Why Lennox Lewis is a top10 HW

Thanks for the compliments. I'll have to re-watch the Mercer fight before further adressing that, memory has once again proven to not be a reliable thing.

Well, Vitali Klitschko had never been stopped before or after. It was not a clean KO, but those cuts were caused by punches nonetheless.
Tucker had never been knocked down going into the Lewis fight, but was down twice and in trouble on several occasions. Lewis stopped Ruddock in two rounds while Tyson couldn't really put him away in 19 rounds.

That said, i would say Louis and Tyson were better or more effective finishers. More aggressive, too. I don't think they punch harder however; probably about the same level: ****ing hard.

Holyfield was not as good as he'd been before, but he was very good still. In fact i think the Ruiz wins are under-rated because Ruiz is so hated. Love him or hate him, his resume is pretty impressive and Holyfield at age 39 officially went even with him in 3 fights - most thought Holy edged it. After that he also beat Rahman and many years after that, a few fringe contenders in Savarese and Oquendo.

So, while he was not at his best, he was still very good. He knocked out Tyson just two years before and went on to do good business afterwards.

The fact that he looked bad against Bean doesn't mean much to me. He looked bad against an old Holmes too. Looked bad against Moorer. Looked bad against Bowe. None of them stopped him from having great performances afterwards. Holyfield wasn't the most consistant fighter as you could see from the difference in performances in both Lewis fights.

I would go with Lewis but it's anyone's guess; Wladimir's offensive arsenal was fantastic (watch the fight with Ray Mercer) and he certainly could've knocked out Lewis. But i think Klitschko's chin is a bit lesser than Lennox's, and chin is often the deciding factor when two big bangers with comparable ability otherwise go at it.

And more important, Klitschko lacked experience of what to do while hurt. You can have all the talent in the world, but if you don't know what to do in those situations, you're out. Against Sanders, after he was badly stunned, what did he do? Try to knock the South African out, during which he was caught with another huge counter left and went down.

Experience is a big factor and Lewis had tons of it by then. That would've probably made the difference, even Wlad had the potential to end it with one punch.

Tell that to Frans Botha, he got knocked out by a single punch in the fifth round after Tyson tried to break his arm earlier and was frustrated already.

97% of the people did.

If you were going with Holyfield, great job. A lot of people claim they do. But reality is that people thought Holyfield was done and wouldn't make it out of the early rounds, with Tyson looking awesome against Bruno.

And i still think Tyson looked impressive against Holyfield. Look at his handspeed, the snap on his punches, etc.

I do think Holyfield is a master boxer. The way he took Tyson apart and neutralised his aggression time and time again was very impressive. I will concede that he was far from always using his master boxing skills, most notably against Riddick Bowe.

He was out-everythiniging him. Outjabbing, outpunching, even inside. I can recommend you both fights; Golota shows beautiful skills and there's plenty of action as well. The second is just brutal. Two of my favorite 90's fights.

True, but as said, there have been plenty of fight where the champion was down after 6 rounds but came back late to pull it out. In this case, he stopped his opponent. You don't win fights after 6 rounds.

Ali and Louis i won't argue with.

Holmes however...
Consider that his first win over a contender was in '78. He continued doing that until '85. After that, he went inactive, retired, un-retired and came back to beat Mercer in '92, but lost to Holyfield and mostly fought mediocre opposition otherwise.

So while his win over Mercer in 92 was impressive, his real run was from 78-85. Lewis beat contenders from 91-03. That's 13 years. Holmes' initial run consisted of 8 years as well as one year after retirement when he beat a ranked contender. 9 years total. Because the Mercer win came at such advanced age, i wouldn't mind calling it even, but let's not forget that the other fights with ranked contenders during that period, even if they were great ones, were barely competitive.

I think Johnson is even as well. He had a bit longer streak but during his last championship years he fought inferior opposition and went out losing to Willard whereas Lewis went out winning vs Klitschko at the same age.

So, i would make it 5-3-2.

I disagree. There's no doubt that Lewis was badly hurt, but he was on his feet and you could see from his "what the hell?" gesture right when the referee stopped it that he was fully aware of what was going on.

You could argue he got up too quickly. Holyfield was lying dead on the canvas for something like 5 seconds against Bowe and only then got up very slowly, and was allowed to continue. Lewis should've gotten that chance as well. Holmes needed the ropes to get up and went down afterwards with not even a punch landing!

I do think McCall would've finished it and in the end it was a blessing in disguise because he hooked up with Steward afterwards to improve himself.