Wlad resume vs Lewis resume

I know all will say Lewis' is better but by how much really...We're not talking who is the greater fighter or who would win if they fought we're talking accomplishments...How far is Wlad from reaching and surpassing Lennox ?

 

Lewis is a superior fighter...and has the much better resume...

 

MUCH better really? better but not MUCH better at all

 

Lewis' Resume > Wlad's Resume...



REED:hammert:

 

Lewis beat a "prime" Golota

 

Lewis' is > than Wlads

 

Opponents who were top-10 challengers when they were beaten

Wlad: Chagaev, Byrdx2, Chambers, Thompson, Ibragimov, Brock, Peter, McCline



Lewis: Holyfieldx2, Tyson, Vitali, Rahman, Tua, Grant, Briggs, Golota, Akinwande, McCall, Mercer, Morrison, Bruno, Tucker, Ruddock

Both also beat plenty of top-30 challengers, Wlad more since he has been more active. Also both got KOed against guys who they should have beaten

So even though Wlad has much better resume than give credit for and his record of 54-3 (48) is damn solid, Lewis has the clear edge. No shame in there though: Lennox' resume is second only to Ali in the history

 

disagREED

 

It isn't close. At all. If Wlad beat say Vitali, Haye, Adamek & Valuev it might open up a discussion. But still a pretty short one.

Wlad's is maybe about as good as Tyson's. Vitali's not even anywhere near that good.

 

name?

 

You need to take Lewis's resume in context though. You can't just blindly say he fought Holyfield twice and Tyson when the versions of them that he fought were far removed from their primes. It's like giving ODLH credit for fighting Chavez twice and Sweet Pea.

I think that their resumes are a lot closer to being equal and I think Wlad's will surpass Lewis's before it's all said and done.

 

We aren't morons, mate. I think people are taking that into account....but even the Holyfield Lewis beat in 99 was better than anyone Wlad has beaten. The likes of Vitali, Ruddock, Morrison, Tua, Bruno, Golota, Mercer, McCall are also far more dangerous fighters at the time Lewis beat them than anyone Wlad has fought.

Eddie Chambers, Chagaev, Byrd & Sam Peters are Wlad's best wins for fuck sake. The conversations a complete joke.

 

Holyfield was still #2 in the world when the fights happened and Tyson was seen as a top-10 contender too a he had a great year right before meeting Lewis. I left out big names who were not competitive at the fight time

 

Lewis resume and reputation are better, and rightly so.

However, a lot of people perceive the gap as greater than it really is.

This is augmented by their failure to account accurately for the largely unsatisfactory series of fights Lewis had with Tyson and Holyfield, with all 3 fights taking place many years after they should have. Lewis performed badly in both fights with Holyfield, arguably winning the first with a disjointed performance.

In fact, Boxing Monthly described the first fight as a case of "Lewis Wouldn't, Holyfield Couldn't"

He plain lost the second fight and probably got the decision off the back of sympathy for how he was "treated" in the first fight.

The Tyson fight was gratuitous in every sense of the word, but it pandered to the American demand for hype and noise, everyone got paid etc. From a pugilistic p.o.v, it was a joke. Tyson was finished as a proper fighter as early as 1997, some 5 years previously. Steve Farhood has argued that Tyson was finished as early as 1992.

Even the Vitali fight has seen Lewis get the benefit of the doubt, with clairvoyants declaring that Vitali was going to get knocked out anyways, and that Lewis took the fight on short notice. The reality is that Vitali took the fight on shorter notice and projections about how Vitali was on the verge of collapse need to be juxtaposed with the image of Lewis collapsing onto his stool and standing motionless in the center of the ring as Vitali thumped him in the shoulder and ran around the ring looking for a rematch, climbing in the turnbuckle and exalting. This reality sits uncomfortably with the perceived reality that Lewis finished stronger and was going to KO his man. Baloney. Never happened. Not even close to what happened. All we can affirmatively say is that Klitschko was badly cut, Lewis was utterly exhausted and then...BOOM...they pull the plug. Let's face it, we have seen lesser fighters dig themselves out of bigger holes than the one Vitali was supposedly in.

Lewis, for me, was the best HW the division has ever seen. That doesn't mean he didn't look like a schmuck from time to time either.

Golota's pre-fight injection, Mercer arguably beating the guy, getting layed out in South Africa by Rahman, failing to make the fight with Bowe, struggling with Bruno.......I mean it cuts both ways. There is a lot to consider, on both sides.

 

This is where I feel a lot of posters make a big mistake.

Was Holyfield a great fighter? Yes. Of course.

That said I can identify at least 5 nights in his pre-2000 career where a guy like Wlad would have killed him.

The night he fought Lewis the first time was one of them.

The night he fought Moorer was another.

The night he fought Bert Cooper was another.

Or the night he fought Larry Holmes.

Or the night he fought Riddick Bowe III

..........Holyfield was like a guy who had a loose connection, or an unreliable supply of steroids. If you got him on the right night, he could come up flatter than an 8 year old Chinese chick.

 

Yes...and even Ring Magazine, not exactly a bastion of anti-American sentiment, immediately stated after the fight that both Holyfield and Lewis were far too highly rated and demoted both men off the pfp list in a hurry.

The fact that Tyson was a top 10 contender with wins over Botha, Etienne, Julius Francis and an NC against Golota tells you all you need to know about the state of the heavweight division back then. :crafty:

Tyson got that fight because it pandered to the idiots in boxing, and their $55, who thought Tyson could win. It pandered to the sanctioning bodies and the fans and the fuckheads and the whores and all the other shits who permeate boxing.

 

Tyson was not Lewis' fault. Tyson paid Lewis $4 million in stepaside money so Tyson could lose to Holyfield the first time. BTW, how far from his prime was Evander when he fought Lewis? Lewis beat him decisively both times regardless of what Eugenia Williams thought.

Bowe blatantly ducked Lewis. Giving up a belt rather than fighting the guy who whipped him in the Olympics.

Like you said, take it in context.

Both have KO losses to underwhelming fighters, but I'd take a prime Oliver McCall over Lamon Brewster and a prime Hasim Rahman over Corrie Sanders. Rahman fought a poorly-conditioned Lewis and stopped him in 5---then Lewis turned around and won the rematch. Sanders crushed Wlad in 2. No rematch.

Details, details...

 

Tyson was not Lewis fault, this is correct. Still...cannot have been much of a division where a wasted former champ could buy his way out of trouble like that.

I won't go into the Holyfield fights....I think they deserve their own redux in a thread all of their own. Suffice it to say, Lewis deserved the nod the first time but, in the immortal words of Angelo Dundee, blew it down the stretch, with Holyfield taking a lot of the later rounds.

Yep. Again regard needs to be had for the state of the division where things like this could happen. I'm not even sure Bowe was the prime antagonist in this little seance, I am sure Cock Newman had some role to play.

Okay then...........

Prime Rahman and prime Sanders did fight and Rahman came out slightly better in an up-and-down-brawl. It's close Buddy, pretty close. Sanders probably had more success with Rahman than Lewis did a few months later. Sanders was also poorly conditioned for the Rahman fight- he suffered a training camp injury to one of his feet, which flared up again when he was supposed to fight Mike Grant in 2002 I believe, that fight eventually being nixed as Sanders camp said they didn't want to make the same mistake twice. You want details.....I think there were valid reasons for Wlad not making a 2nd Sanders fight- just look at the chronology. Sanders took the Vitali fight 1 year later. Wlad was always going to be expected to take some sort of a comeback in the interim. It's more a case of the fight just not happening than anything else. This is not a "belt-in-trashcan" scenario.

 

Nice. Are you going by memory or opinion or Ring rankings or what?

I think maybe Rahman and especially Brewster might belong on Wlad's list. Maybe Austin, too. It won't change the outcome, though, even if all are included.

 

Holyfield can be considered 'great' (as a heavy) only because of 3 fights..tyson, tyson, and i guess his lucky rematch against Bowe. Otherwise, he was not. Overall, I don't think he was. I don't think his poor performances were because of a loose connection, I just think he was a tough guy who matched up against some fighters better than others.

I also disagree with everyone who thinks he won the Lewis rematch. He fought better, but the scoring still wasn't close if scored correctly.

 

Lewis

1. Beaten every fighter he's met in the professional ring, having avenged his two losses by KO/TKO
2. Ruddock, Morrison, briggs, tyson, Holyfield, Grant, Vitali, McCall, Rahman, Golota, Tua, Biggs, Bruno, Mason, Mercer...

With the exception of Bowe who shamefully ducked him..if they were a big name in the 90s/00s Lewis fought them and beat them.

We should be discussing Lewis vs Ali and Louis....not Lewis vs Wladimir Klitschko (and I'm a big Klitschko fan)

 

Lewis resume is overrated. Briggs??? Grant ?? Who is Mason ?? McCall (that shouldn't even count as a win)....

 

I think your characterization of the Holyfield fights is embarrassingly bad.

 

Klitschko couldn't even kill Sultan Ibragimov.

 

I must agree. If you go by what Boxing Monthly said about the fights, then you should also point out that according to them (and more specifically Graham Houston) Lewis won the rematch 116-112. Glyn Leach, who reported about the first encounter, saw it as a draw and was the only one

 

Bowe was robbed blind against Lewis in the Olympics. An outrageous stoppage.

 

Do you really want to spend much time debating him on this topic?

Just do a few of these :bangh: instead and call it a day.

 

Bad comparison, as Sultan refused to come anywhere near Wlad, which Holyfield would have done at every stage of his career. Not to say Wlad would have killed him either, but you can't really compare guys who fight that differently

 

Etc. This reasoning is silly. Holyfield is history's absolute quintessential 'fight to your opponent's level' guy. The Lewis rematch was really his last hurray, but he's sure as fuck of beaten Sam peter, Ibragimov or Eddie Chambers on that night and that's not even debatable.

No 'big mistake' is being made. The 90s were better than the 00s, Lewis was better than Wlad and this whole thread is a waste of kilobytes.

 

I disagree. It was a very typical stoppage for amateur rules. Different sport. Because of that, it doesn't tell you much about their possible pro fight. The fact that Bowe refused to take it, IMO, does