Lennox Lewis-Is He An All Time Heavyweight Great
Rumours of Lewis's Comeback Are Not True,But How Good Was The Briton
Feb 20, 2009
It is perhaps not surprising with Samuel Peter having been exposed as a fraud, and with the Klitschko brothers rise to the top of the heavyweight championship, that there should come calls for Lennox Lewis to step out of retirement and clean the whole mess up. After all, Lennox was the last heavyweight to have been able to legitimately lay claim to being the undisputed best of his era.
Dominant Heavyweight
That Lewis was the dominant heavyweight of his time is not open to question – but where does it place him alongside the all-time greats of the flagship division? Does Lewis bear comparison with the likes of Muhammad Ali, Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano or Jack Johnson?
His record was sound on paper: only 2 losses in 44 contests, with both those losses avenged in emphatic style – Lewis can claim to be only one of two Heavyweights in history to have beaten every man he faced - which should place him squarely at the top table of any all-time heavyweight list.
Yet for all his undoubted abilities, Lennox Lewis was never able to quite grasp the imagination of the boxing public in the way that Ali, or Tyson, or even Holyfield was able to. There are striking similarities with the career of Larry Holmes, who fought in the shadow of Ali despite being a true and great champion, in that Lewis was never able to generate the kind of excitement at fight-time that Mike Tyson was able to engender. Of course, the public tuned in to Lennox’s title contests as they dutifully do whenever two men are pitched into a contest for the heavyweight title – but never with the same throb of anticipation that accompanied Tyson as he prowlingly approached a ring.
Lewis Safety First
Maybe this was because Lewis appeared to adopt a safety first approach to his boxing too often, something that certainly could never be said of Holmes, Holyfield or Tyson. It’s true that the general public, not necessarily steeped in the beauty of boxing for boxing’s sake, likes it’s Heavyweight Champion to be a brawler, a predator, a man evincing menace and thuggery – and if they can’t have that they look for an entertainer, a man dripping with charisma and charm, disdainfully dismantling his foe with wit and wisdom. They want the bull, or the matador, and will shout equally for both.
Lewis was a good, big heavyweight in an era when that was often enough to get him through. He struggled with Evander Holyfield, a small but highly skilled protagonist, and got himself knocked out by two smaller men in McCall and Rahman. It has been said that had Lennox had an opponent worthy of him, a Frazier to his Ali, then he would have been more highly thought of. Many people believe that that opponent should have been Riddick Bowe, had he not frittered away his promise on cheeseburgers and paranoia. It' too late now, although one suspects that given the problems that Holyfield presented for Bowe, the latter was not perhaps destined for the heights that Lennox himself managed to climb.
In conclusion, then, Lewis was good, but not great. It's unlikely he would have beaten the likes of Dempsey, Louis, Ali or Johnson – and in fact, he would probably have been taken out by an in-prime Tyson (ie before Kevin Rooney jumped ship).
