Where does Lennox Lewis rank in HW history?

if you go to websites like cyberboxingzone you get these historical geeks claiming such balderdash. dempsey can be considered one of the most overhyped fighters for that reason.

 

I think if there was a big HW tournament I'd perhaps favour Lewis to win it.

Holmes would give him a tough fight though.

 

I love Lewis, but Holmes beats him imo.

That jab was immense

 

I'd take Holmes over Lewis too... but it would be Larry's best win by a mile. No guarantee.

 

I agree.

Lewis is top notch, a very tough opponent and can adapt well, but as they say, styles make fights, and Holmes' style is kind of kryptonite to what Lewis has to offer.

I only wish that these kinda fighters were STILL around now, in Heavyweight boxing.

I'm sick to death of these David Haye type of persona characters, if this makes sense as i'm quite drunk now, but these kinda guys who give it all the mouth and produce shit....i wish they'd fuck off.

 

Damn, you and I agree completely.

Did you renounce Canadian citizenship or something?

 

Lewis would bomb Holmes out if he followed instructions from Manny. This isn't Gerry Cooney we are talking about here folks.

 

He isn't serious. I wouldn't like Dempsey's chances against Andrew Golota let alone Lewis.

 

oh shit, in that case... :laughing:

 

Lewis kills Dempsey

Dempsey deserves full marks for revolutionizing the sport from an offensive standpoint, but he was a 185 pound man fighting guys who were still learning the benefits of jabs and combination punching...

As for Patterson... the idea that he does anything but killed by Lennox Lewis is absurd... Lewis KO1 100 times out of 100

Patterson gets murdered by every skilled, two-handed hard hitting heavyweight in history

Tyson, Louis annihlate him

 

I'd give a sharp Lewis as good a chance as anyone, agreed

 

thats absurd

 

I agreed that Lewis beats Patterson in a series. I don't think Patterson wins one fight with Lewis. What do you want me to say!? Lewis wins a 1,000 to placate you?

 

People typically get too hung up on the size difference. I'd never dismiss it, but people need to seriously look at the speed difference. It's every bit as massive.

 

Size is tangible and measurable. Speed, especially when you're talking about a fighter from the 20's, cannot be accurately compared. It's pure speculation.

You have no clue as to whether Dempsey was faster than Lewis. None.

 

Okay, mate.

 

Jack Dempsey would be no greater than a club fighter at any weight if he even fought as modern as the 60s.

He had no boxing craft and had awful defense and he was a probable cheat at that. The idea that he'd just bullrush Lewis with some incredible arsenal of punches is absurd, especially considering how wide Dempsey was with his overhands/hooks and how he 100% of the time left his hands down during those famous attacks.

Lewis would bomb him out so violently he'd probably kill him.

 

You're forgetting about Dempsey incredible speed advantage. I know this from the hours of old, black and white, 16 fps film of Dempsey.

 

Dempsey looks fast shit-kicking Jess Willard

But then again, so would Tex Cobb

Dempsey could have been 15 times faster than he was and it still wouldn't be enough for him to deal with a guy like Lennox Lewis

It isn't just the size either

It's the skills

Dempsey revolutionized boxing with his style, it changed everything and in my opinion led to the rapid development of the more defensive aspects of the game... If you watch elite fighters from 1930 and compare it with footage of elite guys in 1920, it's night and day.

I remember growing up reading about Joe Gans being this master boxer... when I finally got around to being able to see film of him I was disillusioned, to put it mildly, by what I saw.

Even allowing for the grainy, faded, mistimed quality of this ancient footage, what I saw shocked me. Here was this guy, "The Old Master", a guy who Nat Fleischer picked to beat guys like Ike Williams and Carlos Ortiz and Joe Brown without hesitation, on a film throwing one punch at a time, flatfooted, no head movement, non-stop clinching and wrestling... there was none of the educated footwork I had heard so much about, anything that even looked kinda/sorta like a jab seemed to be little more than an accident... Perhaps I had just seen Gans on a bad day... I checked out more and more old-old-timers, as many as I could get and every time I saw the same thing... This was essentially stand-up wrestling with occassional haymakers thrown in

When I saw Dempsey, I felt a little less deceived by the hype... His crouching, attacking style looked a lot more like boxing than anything dated earlier had looked and his power was obvious and very real... But neither he nor his opponents looked anywhere near as polished or skilled as the guys I had grown up watching, like JC Chavez, Tyson, Whitaker, Starling, etc. ... again, I came away appreciating how much progress had been made since Gans's time, but I felt very comfortable that Joe Frazier could run over Dempsey quickly.

The earliest fighter I saw where I actually felt he was truly capable of being outstanding in any era was Tony Canzoneri...

This guy actually did what the various stories described... he was sure footed, defensively cute... he was versatile, threw combinations sometimes while other times he scored with single hard counteprunches split-seconds after coolly side-stepping an opponent... in other words, he looked like a boxer, not a wrestler

from Canzoneri onward, I became much more willing to accept that THESE guys really were great... When I saw Willie Pep, I couldn't believe it... he really WAS that great... Ezzard Charles really was amazing...

Point is, even a prime Benny Leonard, frequently touted as a boxing genius, a slickster to end all slicksters, looks crude compared to Canzoneri and we are talking about a guy whose career (not counting an ill-advised return out of retirement 7 years later) ended in 1924 and comparing him to a guy whose career began a year later... yet the difference between one and the other is quite significant... Canzoneri looks sophisticated and modern, he looks like he is a good fighter in 1930, 1960 or 1990

Leonard looks like he's getting killed by pretty much any top 20 lightweight as early as 1940

 

The footage that exists of Dempsey is extremely poor. Not much of note can be gleaned from it, certainly not an accurate interpretation of his speed.

So you say to yourself: 'Not really much to judge the guy on, I'll look at what the news at the time and boxing historians say.' Unfortunately, it's a trap.

News at the time will almost always paint the champ in a favorable light. Boxing was hugely popular and you didn't have 100s of 'champs' in every weightclass. Today it's very rare to find a positive article on boxing in popular press. In fact in Australia, you'll be lucky to find any boxing news at all.

Historians almost universally hate boxing today for what it has become (as do most of the hardcore fans) and as such almost to a man overrate champions of old. They become mythical beings rather than men. The Golden Age of boxing.

There is no basis in fact to say that Dempsey could ever beat Lewis. None. Size, power and style is drastically in LL's favour. Before anyone goes nuts, by style I mean the manner in which the fight will be conducted. LL was a big guy and fought like one almost exclusively against smaller guys. Dempsey eats the jab for as long as LL chooses the throw them and would get put flat on his back if a big right connected (which it would).

This is a terrible mismatch. I wouldn't pick Dempsey in this fight even if he had horseshoes in both gloves.

 

Ding Ding Ding... We have a winner.

 

What is this crap? Lewis would have Dempsey for lunch!

 

dempsey beating lewis?

*blinks*

ok..

 

Good post.

One of the old-timers that I have watched who I think would do well in today's game is Max Schmeling. However, if you boxrec him, I'm guessing I'm wrong. I just think his style is well-suited for today's game.

Another one, who I haven't seen enough of to know for sure is Gene Tunney. Boxrec does back up him being capable.

Nothing visual or boxrec supports Dempsey being good in today's game. But he does have many historians from the past on his side. Sort of like a James Toney/Roberto Duran situation where if you ignore their shit performances, you can make thing look pretty dominant for comparison purposes.