MachoMan09 wrote:
Yes. His chin is grossly underrated precisely because of those two stoppage losses. Both those shots were nuclear. To have faced the guys he faced and only get dropped twice is some going.
I don't think they were anymore nuclear than the shots that dropped Larry Holmes. The difference being that Holmes got up off being dropped by people who were known for their punching prowess. Lewis got dropped by McCall who Steward described as a club fighter and Rahman who was a very ordinary heavyweight.
Both McCall and Rahman had huge digs but I don't disagree with the gist of your post. Larry had better powers of recovery than Lennox - just as well given he was easier to hit.
I wouldn't say that Holmes was easier to hit than Lewis, after all he only got sparked the once by Tyson and it's fair to say that he wasn't at his prime, was out of shape and had been retired for a few years. If you look back at Lennox's career he could often be very pedestrian if he under-estimated his opponent which was the case too often with Lennox and those occasions he got caught quite a lot. The best we ever saw of Lennox was when he had a point to prove (Rahman II) or he genuinely thought he needed to be on his A game, ie, Holyfield and Tyson.
