BoxRec

Heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis ended a career last week that will almost surely land him in the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
Yet the 6-foot-5-inch, 250-pound Lewis had numerous detractors despite going 41-2-1. He won the undisputed heavyweight championship and held a share of the title for 10 years.
But Lewis might be remembered more fondly in due time, one boxing expert said.
Nigel Collins, the longtime editor of The Ring magazine, said he thinks Evander Holyfield, not Lewis, is the greatest heavyweight of this era. However, Collins said Lewis' abilities and performance are sometimes underrated.
"He's a guy we'll appreciate more in maybe five years, when the title just bounces around all over the place," Collins said. "Lennox was never fully appreciated in this country, partly because of his personality, partly because he is English -- sort of -- and partly because he never really had that one defining fight."
Lewis' biggest wins came over Holyfield and Mike Tyson, both former undisputed champions. But Holyfield and Tyson were past their prime against Lewis. The Tyson that Lewis stopped on June 8, 2002, was a shell of the fearsome man who dominated boxing in the late 1980s.
Former heavyweight champion Larry Holmes, rated among the top five heavyweights ever by most boxing experts, had little good to say about Lewis, questioning his sexuality and his courage and saying Lewis had few skills.
"Lennox doesn't want to fight anyone who could fight -- and he never has," Holmes said. "People will remember two things about Lennox: They will always wonder if he was gay, because he was never seen near a woman; and they will remember he didn't have any heart. He was always scared he would get his (butt) kicked.
"Lennox Lewis could have been a good fighter -- a great fighter -- but he was lacking a left jab and a big heart. You need both of those to be a great fighter."
Lewis' losses came via knockouts to Oliver McCall on Sept. 24, 1994, in the second round and April 20, 2002, in the fifth round to Hasim Rahman. In both cases, Lewis wasn't in shape and gave little heed to trainers' warnings that the fights could be dangerous. He had a role in the movie "Oceans Eleven" as he was preparing for Rahman and weighed a then-career-high 253 pounds.
He avenged both defeats, but losing to journeymen fighters hurt his reputation. The Ring's 2002 annual, in which it ranked the greatest 80 fighters of the previous 80 years, rated Lewis 53rd overall and 12th among heavyweights.
"When you look at Lennox against the all-time greats, where he comes up short is he didn't show the degree of consistency through the championship years as those other guys did," said Bob Goodman, the matchmaker for Don King Productions and a longtime observer of the division. "He fought some great fights, but he also fought some really bad ones, and that makes it difficult to gauge him against other great champions who were so consistent for so many years."
Showtime boxing analyst Steve Farhood, a former editor of The Ring, said he can't rate Lewis among the top eight heavyweights because of the knockout losses he suffered. He said Holmes, Rocky Marciano and Jack Dempsey, among others, went down but were able to get up and win those fights.
Farhood said he thinks Lewis will be remembered primarily for his size, rather than his skills.
"I think we'll remember him as the first great, truly supersized heavyweight," Farhood said. "He's 6-5, 250, and he is the prototype of what is now the 21st-century heavyweight. There are a lot of guys like that around today, but when he came up in the late '80s (and) early '90s, there weren't any, at least not any who had any skills.
"Lewis had a good jab and a strong right hand, but I don't think he had anything that people 50 years from now are going to say, `Oh man, you should have seen this Lewis guy's jab.' I think it's just the fact that he started the trend toward the super heavyweights."

In his recent sunday newspaper column allegedly rated Marciano at No.10 on the all time list behind Holyfield and Liston

Yes, and he has Tyson at number four!

And that is why he is a retard

By the way, after reading your article; I didn't get the title of the thread.

Larry Holmes couldn't carry Rocky Marciano's jockstrap

He most certainly could. Holmes had very big hands.

It's probably fair to say Holmes doesn't like Lewis then, eh?

i struggle to try and put lewis in my top 10 lists, there are simply too many champions, who in my mind, did a lot more, and where better. Consistancy which was also mentioned, i believe is a vital issue, and this was lennox lewis' problem. As for larry, well he is #1 on my list, and i believe vastly underrated

Go on then, name all these heavyweights who did more than Lewis did.....

I can only think of 3 myself....

Primo Carnera, Carl Williams and Butterbean...there's three for a start :P

Eh?

Dave1armedTua wrote:And that is why he is a retard

By the way, after reading your article; I didn't get the title of the thread.

Larry Holmes couldn't carry Rocky Marciano's jockstrap

He most certainly could. Holmes had very big hands.

It's a play on Larry's bitter and infamous, "Rocky couldn't carry my jockstrap" quote, after he had failed to equal the great Marciano's record by losing to Mike Spinks. Some of Marciano's family were at the press conference where he said it.

The Power, you mention consistency, but don't forget, Larry had a couple of pretty controversial decisions, Carl Williams and Tim Witherspoon.

Lennox does have the distinction of having beaten every fighter he ever faced, something neither Ali, Holmes or Louis can claim, as he never beat Ezzard Charles or the Rock.

Now I rate Ali, Louis and Holmes above Lewis, but after that, I struggle to place anyone ahead of Lewis. Marciano didn't really have a great level of competition, and wasn't champ for that long, Dempsey didn't defend his title even once a year, and lost twice to a light heavy, he was great on the way up, but as champ didn't really fight often, 7 times in 10 years is not impressive in my book.

Liston again, not champ for long, probably already past his peak by the time he beat Patterson, whupped by Ali, never got back to title contention.

Frazier, whupped by Foreman, never regained title.

Foreman, whupped by Ali, never regained undisputed title, got a version back from weak champ Moorer after retiring, hardly consistent is it?

Who the hell is left that rates above Lewis?

I think the arguments you've put forward concerning Rocky Marciano are similar to Lewis (well, certainly the level of competition).

I am going to get rediculed here, but on achievements I have to place Holyfield above Lewis. Lewis was only "the man" from 1999-2004. Holyfield was the man from 1990-1992, then 1993-1994 and also 1996-1999.

The arguement concerning Bowe and Lewis never rung true for me, I wasn't at the negotiation table. Bowe might well have ducked from Lewis, but he ducked from Lewis to face Holyfield, who most people (at the time) still ranked above Lewis.

Jack Johnson I would rank above Lewis and also George Foreman, but its all subjective.

Lewis would definitely be in my personal top-10 ATGHW list (possibly top 5) if he hadn't been KO'd not once but TWICE in his prime by little more than journeyman. That's the thing that separates Lewis from the guys that clearly must be in the top 10, many of whom you mention in your post:

jamesmcdonnell wrote:The Power, you mention consistency, but don't forget, Larry had a couple of pretty controversial decisions, Carl Williams and Tim Witherspoon.

Very few great champs don't have a few CD's on their records - Ali's dubious 2-1 record vs. Norton, for instance. But the fact is, Holmes's first official losses (also controversial) came vs. Mike Spinks when Holmes was 36 years old, and the two CDs you mention also occurred in the 2 years immediately preceding the first loss to Spinks. Fact is, Holmes was never KOd (or even clearly beaten) in his prime. His first obvious loss was the KO at the hands of the young Tyson - Larry was a few months shy of his 39th birthday and had been out of action for nearly 2 years at that point. Even after the Tyson loss, he was competitive with a prime Evander Holyfield (at age 43) and Oliver McCall (at nearly 46! McCall had just beaten Lewis at that point), and was easily beating all the less-than-top guys he faced during that time, including several top-20ish guys and fringe contenders.

Lennox does have the distinction of having beaten every fighter he ever faced, something neither Ali, Holmes or Louis can claim, as he never beat Ezzard Charles or the Rock.

Bit of an artificial metric there, don't you think? Yes, it tells us that he avenged his 2 KO losses, but again the fact that he suffered those (when he was still far from being over the hill, to boot) in the first place weighs against him. Like Holmes, Ali was never KOd in his prime, and Ali survived some of the most murderous punchers in heavyweight history in order to be able make that claim. The only 2 losses Ali didn't avenge were his final 2 fights (KO at the hands of Holmes, UD10 loss to Berbick), when he was nearly 40 and clearly greatly deteriorated due to age and his many epic ring wars. No one in their right mind counts those 2 unavenged losses against him. (And he had avenged the loss to Leon Spinks 2 years before losing to Holmes, even though it took everything of the little he had left in the tank to do so - and he should've retired and stayed retired at that point.)

Louis was KO'd in his prime, in the epic first bout with Schmeling (who also deserves to be at least in the ATG top 20, IMO). But that was the only loss he suffered close to his prime, and like Lewis, he avenged it convincingly. Plus, he had that remarkable string of title defenses - even though many were against clear second-raters, it shows a consistency of excellence in his prime.

Now I rate Ali, Louis and Holmes above Lewis, but after that, I struggle to place anyone ahead of Lewis. Marciano didn't really have a great level of competition, and wasn't champ for that long

But Marciano never lost. All you're saying is that due to the relative weakness of the HW division during his tenure, the Rock never got show whether he was a true top-5 guy, or just a top-tenner - there can be little doubt about the latter.

Dempsey didn't defend his title even once a year, and lost twice to a light heavy, he was great on the way up, but as champ didn't really fight often, 7 times in 10 years is not impressive in my book.

Which LHW are you referring to, exactly? I don't count the two losses to Meehan against him very heavily, because they were in 4-rounders, and were on points. The only convincing loss Dempsey suffered close to his prime was a 1st-round KO at the hands of Jim Flynn when Dempsey was 21, which was avenged via an equally convincing KO1 a year and a day later, on St. Valentine's Day 1918. The two points losses to fellow ATGHW Gene Tunney were when Dempsey was in his 30s, and the effects of all those brawls and all that hard living (guys didn't take care if themselves then like they do now) had definitely taken their toll.

And by the time Tunney fought Dempsey, Tunney was no longer a light-heavy - their weights were virtually identical (both around 190) in both fights. For you to paint Dempsey/Tunney as some kind of Louis/Conn-style size mismatch is ludicrous.

Liston again, not champ for long, probably already past his peak by the time he beat Patterson, whupped by Ali, never got back to title contention.

The fact that you admit he was already past his prime when he beat Patterson (2 consecutive KO1 wins) tells me he's a top-tenner. The only guy that ever "whupped" him was the consensus #1, in his absolute physical and mental prime - even Frazier never faced that Ali (then Clay).

Frazier, whupped by Foreman, never regained title.

Frazier, first and only man to beat Ali close to his prime. Involved in FOUR Ring Magazine Fights of the Year (1969 WTKO7 Jerry Quarry, 1971 WUD15 Ali, 1973 LTKO2 George Foreman, 1975 LTKO14 Ali); won arguably the greatest heavyweight fight in history. First loss was to the much bigger, then-unstoppable George Foreman, a fellow ATG top-10 guy.

Foreman, whupped by Ali, never regained undisputed title, got a version back from weak champ Moorer after retiring, hardly consistent is it?

Foreman - 40-0-0 with 37 KOs at the time of his first loss, to Ali. Only Ali's unsurpassed heart, chin, skill and incredibly unorthodox tactics allowed him to win that fight - It says more about Ali's greatness than any lack thereof on Foreman's part. Only other close-to-prime loss was a 1997 UD10 to the tricky Jimmy Young. Like Frazier, involved in 4 Ring Magazine Fights of the Year (1973 WTKO2 Frazier, 1974 LKO8 Ali, 1975 WKO5 Ron Lyle, 1977 LUD12 Young.) Came back from a 10-year retirement to win a version of the HW title from Michael Moorer at age 45.

Who the hell is left that rates above Lewis?

These nine guys definitely do:

Ali
Louis
Holmes
Marciano
Johnson
Foreman
Liston
Frazier
Dempsey

These guys (together with Lewis) are on the cusp of top-10 greatness (I list them in strictly alphabetical order):

Charles
Corbett
Holyfield
Jeffries
Lewis
Sullivan
Tunney
Walcott

(I may have forgotten one or two guys who should be in that second list - I hope not, but I'm not ruling it out.)

Larry Holmes is a tad bitter because he never got the respect and adulation he should have. I feel for him as I consider him one of the top 3 greatest heavies ever... but he never got that recognition, then here comes Lewis and some people are saying he is the new Ali and a great champ and all that nonsense, Holmes is probably thinking at the injustice of it all when he in fact was a far far superior fighter to Lewis.
I remember Holmes at the begining of his reign being a very likeable gentleman, very modest and easy going... the change came after the Cooney fight, something happed there due I think to how so many people jumped on the Cooney white hope bandwagon... Holmes was treated terribly at the time and afterwards I think the whole episode hardened him and made him a little bitter as I remember his public persona changed markedly after that... culminating afcourse in the infamous remark regarding Marciano.
Holmes would I think have beaten Marciano quite convincingly... too fast, skillfull and strong.

No Holmes was always a pretty bitter individual. Before the Norton fight he was trash talking and pushing the mild mannered Ken around - came across as pretty nasty as there was no real need for it.
I was cheering for Norton watching the fight.

He wanted to live up to the Ali image, but his pre-fight talk always came across badly - just didn't have the humour Ali carried.

Still, watching the the Norton epic I couldn't help but become a big fan of Larry Holmes.
Still got a chip on both shoulders though...

silkov wrote:Holmes would I think have beaten Marciano quite convincingly... too fast, skillfull and strong.

I too think Holmes would have beaten Marciano if they had ever met, but one shouldn't underrate Marciano's boxing skill - it wasn't just his youth, stamina and KO power that allowed to him to destroy guys like Louis, Moore, Charles and Walcott. Yes, most of these guys were past their primes. But Moore and Charles were still superb ring technicians, and let's not forget that in their first fight Marciano beat Charles (then a month shy of 33) on points. Both Moore and Louis are on record as expressing surprise at Marciano's skills - Louis asked him after their fight whether he'd started his career as a southpaw, he was so surprised at the way Rocky was able to use his left hook.

All I'm saying is that, given that Marciano did beat every one he ever faced (inlcuding several all-time greats, some not so far from their primes), it's unfair to count the fact that he never faced a really skilled big man near his prime against him. Yes, one can (and should) factor in the perceived strength of a guy's opposition, but you can't assume he would've lost to so-and-so had they ever met. We do know that Lewis did lose to a pair of so-and-so's despite the fact that he had a size advantage over nearly every fighter he ever faced, so it's not imaginary stuff (like people so often bring up with regard ti Marciano) that's being counted against him.

So to sum up my take on Lewis: Top-20? Definitely. Top-10? Maybe. Top 5? No way.

Eric the Viking wrote:Lewis would definitely be in my personal top-10 ATGHW list (possibly top 5) if he hadn't been KO'd not once but TWICE in his prime by little more than journeyman. That's the thing that separates Lewis from the guys that clearly must be in the top 10, many of whom you mention in your post:

jamesmcdonnell wrote:The Power, you mention consistency, but don't forget, Larry had a couple of pretty controversial decisions, Carl Williams and Tim Witherspoon.

Very few great champs don't have a few CD's on their records - Ali's dubious 2-1 record vs. Norton, for instance. But the fact is, Holmes's first official losses (also controversial) came vs. Mike Spinks when Holmes was 36 years old, and the two CDs you mention also occurred in the 2 years immediately preceding the first loss to Spinks. Fact is, Holmes was never KOd (or even clearly beaten) in his prime. His first obvious loss was the KO at the hands of the young Tyson - Larry was a few months shy of his 39th birthday and had been out of action for nearly 2 years at that point. Even after the Tyson loss, he was competitive with a prime Evander Holyfield (at age 43) and Oliver McCall (at nearly 46! McCall had just beaten Lewis at that point), and was easily beating all the less-than-top guys he faced during that time, including several top-20ish guys and fringe contenders.

Lennox does have the distinction of having beaten every fighter he ever faced, something neither Ali, Holmes or Louis can claim, as he never beat Ezzard Charles or the Rock.

Bit of an artificial metric there, don't you think? Yes, it tells us that he avenged his 2 KO losses, but again the fact that he suffered those (when he was still far from being over the hill, to boot) in the first place weighs against him. Like Holmes, Ali was never KOd in his prime, and Ali survived some of the most murderous punchers in heavyweight history in order to be able make that claim. The only 2 losses Ali didn't avenge were his final 2 fights (KO at the hands of Holmes, UD10 loss to Berbick), when he was nearly 40 and clearly greatly deteriorated due to age and his many epic ring wars. No one in their right mind counts those 2 unavenged losses against him. (And he had avenged the loss to Leon Spinks 2 years before losing to Holmes, even though it took everything of the little he had left in the tank to do so - and he should've retired and stayed retired at that point.)

Louis was KO'd in his prime, in the epic first bout with Schmeling (who also deserves to be at least in the ATG top 20, IMO). But that was the only loss he suffered close to his prime, and like Lewis, he avenged it convincingly. Plus, he had that remarkable string of title defenses - even though many were against clear second-raters, it shows a consistency of excellence in his prime.

Now I rate Ali, Louis and Holmes above Lewis, but after that, I struggle to place anyone ahead of Lewis. Marciano didn't really have a great level of competition, and wasn't champ for that long

But Marciano never lost. All you're saying is that due to the relative weakness of the HW division during his tenure, the Rock never got show whether he was a true top-5 guy, or just a top-tenner - there can be little doubt about the latter.

Dempsey didn't defend his title even once a year, and lost twice to a light heavy, he was great on the way up, but as champ didn't really fight often, 7 times in 10 years is not impressive in my book.

Which LHW are you referring to, exactly? I don't count the two losses to Meehan against him very heavily, because they were in 4-rounders, and were on points. The only convincing loss Dempsey suffered close to his prime was a 1st-round KO at the hands of Jim Flynn when Dempsey was 21, which was avenged via an equally convincing KO1 a year and a day later, on St. Valentine's Day 1918. The two points losses to fellow ATGHW Gene Tunney were when Dempsey was in his 30s, and the effects of all those brawls and all that hard living (guys didn't take care if themselves then like they do now) had definitely taken their toll.

And by the time Tunney fought Dempsey, Tunney was no longer a light-heavy - their weights were virtually identical (both around 190) in both fights. For you to paint Dempsey/Tunney as some kind of Louis/Conn-style size mismatch is ludicrous.

Liston again, not champ for long, probably already past his peak by the time he beat Patterson, whupped by Ali, never got back to title contention.

The fact that you admit he was already past his prime when he beat Patterson (2 consecutive KO1 wins) tells me he's a top-tenner. The only guy that ever "whupped" him was the consensus #1, in his absolute physical and mental prime - even Frazier never faced that Ali (then Clay).

Frazier, whupped by Foreman, never regained title.

Frazier, first and only man to beat Ali close to his prime. Involved in FOUR Ring Magazine Fights of the Year (1969 WTKO7 Jerry Quarry, 1971 WUD15 Ali, 1973 LTKO2 George Foreman, 1975 LTKO14 Ali); won arguably the greatest heavyweight fight in history. First loss was to the much bigger, then-unstoppable George Foreman, a fellow ATG top-10 guy.

Foreman, whupped by Ali, never regained undisputed title, got a version back from weak champ Moorer after retiring, hardly consistent is it?

Foreman - 40-0-0 with 37 KOs at the time of his first loss, to Ali. Only Ali's unsurpassed heart, chin, skill and incredibly unorthodox tactics allowed him to win that fight - It says more about Ali's greatness than any lack thereof on Foreman's part. Only other close-to-prime loss was a 1997 UD10 to the tricky Jimmy Young. Like Frazier, involved in 4 Ring Magazine Fights of the Year (1973 WTKO2 Frazier, 1974 LKO8 Ali, 1975 WKO5 Ron Lyle, 1977 LUD12 Young.) Came back from a 10-year retirement to win a version of the HW title from Michael Moorer at age 45.

Who the hell is left that rates above Lewis?

These nine guys definitely do:

Ali
Louis
Holmes
Marciano
Johnson
Foreman
Liston
Frazier
Dempsey

These guys (together with Lewis) are on the cusp of top-10 greatness (I list them in strictly alphabetical order):

Charles
Corbett
Holyfield
Jeffries
Lewis
Sullivan
Tunney
Walcott

(I may have forgotten one or two guys who should be in that second list - I hope not, but I'm not ruling it out.)

Surly one of the greatest posts of all time, i agree with it in its entireity,

When Holmes starts by saying "Lennox has no jab" - you know how seriously to take the rest of the piece.

Larry is a zup-headed old man, who is bitter than he never got his due as champ, because he was in the shadow of Ali.

I don't see why he feels the need to berate Lewis, it's not like anyone in their right mind rates Lewis above Holmes.