Why Does Vitali Get More Credit for Losing to Lewis than Rahman Gets for Winning?

[Ray*]

Lol this is actually one of the best question/thread since I have been on here lol.

[Ray*]

If Lewis wouldn't have taken so many punches, he would have won more than 2 rounds.

He won the fight lol, Pacquiao won more than 2 rounds again JMM and he still lost.

[Ray*]

The "Lewis was old and out of shape" line is a joke. He was all of 6 pounds over his normal fighting weight lol.

The same people who use this excuse will also discredit Wlad by saying he lost to a fat golfer named Corrie Sanders even though Sanders was in the best shape of his career going into the fight.

I think the reason Vitali gets more credit is that people believe Rahman was lucky and Vitali was not.

Yes Rahman was "lucky" by actually doing what Vitali couldn't do to Lewis which was to KO him.

[elfag]

Vitali was outboxing lewis, rahman won by one punch KO.

I wouldnt say vitali really gets more credit though. Rahman became lineal champion for one fight. Rahman got a rematch which although he lost got him a lot of money. Vitali never got the rematch that the public demanded which is why it is talked about more.

That is why there are a million posts on what would happen in vitali-lewis 2. We already seen what happened in rahman-lewis 2.

[Simurgh]

Although relatively inexperienced Vitali took Lennox to life and death match - something no one did before (maybe Holyfiled was the closest of doing so). I don't count 2 KOs..

He proved he is in the same league as the bests ever. He lost the fight but they were pretty much equal in that fight (lennox's words).

As for Rahman if he knew when to retire he would get much more credit for KOing Lennox.

[Redd Foxx]

It's because it became clear that Vitali had his number. I don't think the same can be said for Rahman.

[Hond]

He was all of 6 pounds over his normal fighting weight lol.

Lewis entered the ring regularly at 230 in the early to mid-90s.

[Simurgh]

Lewis entered the ring regularly at 230 in the early to mid-90s.

I don't know why people are talking so much about Lennox weight and condition in that fight. He didn't look bad at all. Actually I think he looked better than in majority of his fights (he looked better than when he fought Rahman, Mavrovic or Holyfiled). He was pushed to the very limits and he reacted very good (kudos to Emanuel and his tactics).

[prinzemanspopa]

The general feeling tends to be that Rahman caught Lewis on a bad night and that the subsequent blowout in the rematch validated this.That while Lewis may have been rusty,may have seen a tad overweight,he still didn't want anything to do with a rematch with Vitali,in spite of it making sense,legacy and business wise.

That's probably because no rematch was necessary as he was got stopped in the first fight. Rahman actually won his first fight.

The stoppage and win was legitimate,but to say a rematch wasn't necessary is just silly.It was an anti-climactic ending to a great fight in which many thought Vitali had the edge in.The interest in a rematch was significant,and it's a topic that continues to generate a great deal of discussion to this day.

[The Gambler1981]

I would say it almost exclusively has to do with how their careers went post those moments. Rahman was never able to get close to recapturing that glory which enforced the whole notion that he got lucky, while Vitali went on to beat up a lot of riff-raff looking good for the most part in the process so people use that losing performance against Lennox to try and predict about how he could do against better opposition.