barry wrote:Lewis can certainly be listed as overated as it pertains to truly great heavyweight champions, but in the vein of heavyweight champions in general he is just outside the very best heavyweights. He certainly beat, he did not dominate, his era, with the exception of Bowe, and at their very best I think Bowe would knockout Lewis. As big and as powerful as Lewis was, he should have destroyerd opponents, which he did on very rare occasions, such as Ruddock & Golota, but Ruddock was greatly overated based on knocking out a couple of old heavyweight champs and lasting the distance with a past his prime Tyson!
As far a truly overated h eavyweight champions...I really like him, but Max Baer is overated as an all-time great heavyweight...Ingo Johansson, Wladimir and Vitali are both huge and hard to fight, but overated in terms of greatness...Sonny Liston most definately overated!
This is a bizarre thing to say! "Lennox beat everyone he ever fought.........but he should have beaten them better".
Lennox was a naturally cautious fighter but you use that as though it's a negative point, which isn't necessarily the case. Granted it worked against him in the Holyfield fight but on the flip side of that, you could easily point out Holyfield's LACK of caution in his fight against Bowe and how it made him a less effective fighter overall. In the vast majority of Lewis fights his cautiousness allowed him to wear his opponent down until he felt a KO was achievable and there's nothing wrong with that. It certainly isn't detrimental to his standing in the ATG rankings.
Also, I disagree with the posters who are saying that the 90s was a weak division.
Lennox higher tier victories include Razor Ruddock, Tony Tucker, Frank Bruno, Tommy Morrison, Ray Mercer, Andrew Golota, Evander Holyfield, David Tua and Vitali Klitschko.
Second tier victories including Gary Mason, Hasim Rahman, Michael Grant, Tyrell Biggs, Mike Tyson among others.
This record and opponent list is superior than anything Tyson put together in the late 80s and I personally rate the 1990s as one of the top 3 or 4 eras in the history of the sport, with Lennox as the dominant heavyweight of that period.
