rank higher wlad or lennox lewis?

[Robbie Barrett]

See that's where we differ in opinion. Everyone thought he should fight Wladimir before he faced Vitali but after that fight, everyone knew Vitali got the better of LL and he needed to 'prove' that he could beat him without winning by lucky cut in a fight that he was losing 2 to 1 at the time of stoppage.

Wlad lost to Sanders before Lewis fought Vitali. You really are a poor liar.

[BattlingNelson]

See that's where we differ in opinion. Everyone thought he should fight Wladimir before he faced Vitali but after that fight, everyone knew Vitali got the better of LL and he needed to 'prove' that he could beat him without winning by lucky cut in a fight that he was losing 2 to 1 at the time of stoppage.

Nah. Vitali had been mandatory for 2 years. Lummox did everything he could to a word the fight. Then a sudden unexpected cancellation of a fight gave lommux the chance to get Vitali out of the way thinking that there’d be no way Vitali would accept a fight for the biggest title in sports on just 10 days notice but he did.

So an underprepared Vitali beat up lummox who just got a lucky break with the unfortunate cuts. Oh well. Lummox knew he wouldn’t win a rematch and retired.

[RJJ-94-02=GOAT]

No one here is going to allow you to spew this nonsense and make everyone dumber for having read it.

He didn't allow anyone to be great? I guess by that token than Bernard Hopkins fought in the best middleweight era ever, murderers row, but they looked mediocre because he was so good? We all know there were a lot duff defences with Hopkins, and his era was a relatively weak era, because we use our eyes to measure ability and talent, and use results to support it.

We know Hopkins was GREAT because of his highly competitive loss to Jones, because of his demolition of a young undefeated Glenn Johnson, because of his one sided beat down of a HOF calibre fighter moving up in Trinidad, because of his move up in weight and wins over Tarver, Wright, and Pavlik.

Your problem is you can't make those claims with Wlad's career, so you have to make up an alternate reality to delude yourself. He beat ZERO HOF calibre fighters. Hell at least Vitali competed with one, and showed he belonged at that level.

Lennox Lewis beat a still very good Holyfield, a guy that was past his best, but coming off an unbeaten run from 95 and the Tyson wins 2 years earlier, he still had the goods. Do I think that the fight would have been different if it had happened 3 or 4 years earlier? Yes I definitely think its a tougher fight for Lewis, I think Holyfield had just regressed enough to allow Lewis to be superior. Trying to compare that to the 40 year old shot Holyfield that fought Byrd is mind boggling. Holyfield is a come forward, boxer puncher, who relied on his energy, speed, and toughness. A fighter like him is not going to last as well as a Klitschko or a Lewis, if all things were equal in terms of life style, dedication, discipline.

Lewis also beat Vitali - whether you like it or not it was a legitimate stoppage and win. That is two HOF'ers, one just out of his prime, the other in his prime, whist Lewis was probably just out of his.

After that there isn't much in there resumes, Lewis has most likely beaten more world champions, where they became champions before or after he beat them. Ruddock, Bruno, Mercer, Tua, Briggs, to name a few. Wlad also beat a lot of solid guys, a few good guys, no great guys. His claim to greatness is in his consistency and longevity.

You also can't ignore that Wlad was knocked down close to 15 times over his career, but yet you claim he is the most dominant heavyweight in history. He was knocked down a bunch of times even at a lower level, despite having a serious amateur pedigree. He lost to Purity, a guy with a 24-13 record. He then got destroyed by Corrie Sanders, a loss which he never avenged but had big brother do it for him. Not to mention big brother was champion alongside him, for much of his reign, so this total domination you speak of, didn't really exist did it? You do him a disservice, because I find myself undermining a great career, but you asked for this by claiming he's something he's not.

Even Manny Steward is on record several times claiming how poor the heavyweight division was during Wlad's reign. His own trainer. If you want an honest, accurate assessment here it is:

Q: Vitali Klitschko retired for several years before he came back to reclaim a portion of the heavyweight title. Does Vitali Klitschko still have time to be remembered as one of the greats?

A: I don’t think he’s going to enough time because even though he had his biggest claim to fame, and he tells me that and we laugh about it, he says, ‘The biggest thing that made me famous was losing to Lennox Lewis’, and he has still done nothing to really exceed that believe it or not still. It’s just a case of not having any fighters around for him to be the big name and the fact that he won’t be around long enough where you can say, well, he didn’t have any big name fighters but he had a reign for like five years or six years so you have to give some credit for that even though he fought a bunch of nobodies, but I don’t think he’s going to have that long of a career and that many big heavyweight championship fights to really reach that level. So I don’t think he’s in a good position to be considered a great yet, but who knows. He still may have a fight, you never know. He could end up with a high profile fight with David Haye possibly himself, or Nikolai Valuev with two of the biggest men ever. That would definitely be fights that would really be standouts in his career when people look back at him, but right now he would need about two more years to continue if he just dominated over these types of guys.

Q: Emanuel, where do you think the fighter you’re currently training, Wladimir Klitschko, fits into this discussion of heavyweight greats?

A: Right now, I think his last fight even though it wasn’t seen that much, is the first time that people are taking up notice that maybe we may have something special on our hands that we’re not really appreciating. I’m just reading what I see on these internet comments, and oh he’s been too cautious, he’s too this, he’s too that—but I think the public is starting to look at all of the knockouts, still, that he’s accumulating. So he’s right there still, just starting to get on the borderline where I’m just reading the fans that, the people have said maybe he is possibly going to be a great fighter because of his unbelievable one punch knockout power that you just don’t see from anyone, but right now he hasn’t arrived yet.

There’s, unfortunately for him, no big super fights but if he continues this totally dominating run for I say two years, and the way it looks maybe three years, he’s going to be considered up there. You’ll see these printouts about what would Wladimir Klitschko have done with a George Foreman—he would have moved into that era of those types of conversations. A David Haye fight would throw him right into that mix of being considered if he had an impressive knockout over a David Haye or something like that. It would throw him into the mix where maybe being like, whoa, this guy with his size, and jab, and everything, and his punching power, and his left hand, right hand would put him where people will start at least thinking and say, ‘Well, can’t just say that any fighter of any era would have beat him because nobody is around in this era’, but he hasn’t had that signature fight yet and he may never get it, so I think the only thing he can do is just continue having a long run and if he runs off about ten or twelve more defenses, I think that will qualify him to be considered when they talk about possibly the top heavyweights in history, but right now he hasn’t arrived at that.

He just is starting to get people to start thinking a little bit about the fact that he may be a little better than we give him credit for, just the fact that he’s still holding onto the title now after about almost two years or three years.

Q: On a somewhat related note Emanuel, a lot of fans claim that the heavyweight division is weak right now. Can you recall any time in history where the division had a similar state and what do you think needs to be done in order for this to recover in the eyes of the fans?

A: I think that the heavyweight division is the weakest that I ever saw it, that I can recall, I would put it this way, but if you look back at history it happens like this. I think it’s worse now because you don’t have anything coming from the amateurs. That’s what troubles me. It used to be weak, but you always had the George Foreman or even Klitschko. He is the last of the amateur program fighters from ’96. He’s the last product that came from the amateur system to the pros and that was what, about fourteen years ago now, and that’s what the problem is. There’s nothing coming from the amateur system, and I don’t see it worldwide, even these Cubans or whatever and the Russians. I don’t see much coming. I don’t see anything else coming up. It’s a weak heavyweight division and I don’t see anything too much coming up that’s going to make it any better in the future.

But if you look back through history, Joe Louis had that era when he went on the “Bum of the Month Club” as they called it and he was fighting with ‘Two Ton’ Tony Galento, the bar tenders, and this and that. Then I remember when Tyson was the same way. Nobody was up there for Mike. He was at the time considered fighting Pinklon Thomas and them, but I still thought those were better fighters but the public thought he was that dominating, but that was still a tough era. They said the same with Lennox. Lennox was having a weak division, but I thought that was better still. You still had guys such as Shannon Briggs and good competitive guys out there.

This is the weakest that I have ever seen it but it’s part of heavyweight history and that’s why we have these “Bum of the Month Clubs” and all that, and all of a sudden out of nowhere—somebody explodes on the scene. Right now, the biggest explosion has been David Haye and it’s nothing he did in the ring. Just verbally running his mouth he’s created a lot of excitement and a big buzz about himself. But it is weak, and I never saw it this weak and I hope that it will change but I just don’t even see it changing for maybe about another five years.

🙌🏻🙌🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻The TRUTH.
“Substantiated” by Emmanuel Steward himself. Someone who’s boxing knowledge and particularly HW boxing knowledge far exceeds anyone else’s on this forum!

😭😭😭Ganstaz got absolutely schooled again😭😭😭

[chrisJS]

30 pages on something that's as easy as "is water good for you"? Wlad was nice, but Lennox is arguably great.

[Holler]

Nah. Vitali had been mandatory for 2 years. Lummox did everything he could to a word the fight. Then a sudden unexpected cancellation of a fight gave lommux the chance to get Vitali out of the way thinking that there’d be no way Vitali would accept a fight for the biggest title in sports on just 10 days notice but he did.

So an underprepared Vitali beat up lummox who just got a lucky break with the unfortunate cuts. Oh well. Lummox knew he wouldn’t win a rematch and retired.

Just as an aside, why call him 'Lummox'? Whatever your opinion of the relative merits of Lewis in comparison to Wlad or any other heavyweight, the guy won Olympic Gold and was undisputed champion of the world. Surely worth at least a basic level of respect that you'd accord anyone brave enough to put it on the line in the ring?

[RedZmaja]

Just as an aside, why call him 'Lummox'? Whatever your opinion of the relative merits of Lewis in comparison to Wlad or any other heavyweight, the guy won Olympic Gold and was undisputed champion of the world. Surely worth at least a basic level of respect that you'd accord anyone brave enough to put it on the line in the ring?

He doesn't deserve that much respect considering he DUCKED Vitali and retired in shame rather than give the boxing fans what they wanted - the rematch.

Klitschko fought hungry young lion Yoshua when he was 41 years of age after a year and a half out (and his previous fight was against another big and dangerous fighter Tyson Fury). He went out of boxing like a real champ. He fought until he could pass the torch in style.

Klitschko never ducker anybody.

[Robbie Barrett]

He doesn't deserve that much respect considering he DUCKED Vitali and retired in shame rather than give the boxing fans what they wanted - the rematch.

Klitschko fought hungry young lion Yoshua when he was 41 years of age after a year and a half out (and his previous fight was against another big and dangerous fighter Tyson Fury). He went out of boxing like a real champ. He fought until he could pass the torch in style.

Klitschko never ducker anybody.

Only in Klitschkoland is going out on a loss better than a win.

[RedZmaja]

Only in Klitschkoland is going out on a loss better than a win.

Klitschko fought until he found a proper heir to his throne, a man who could beat him. He did what was the best thing for boxing rather than retiring with his titles. He faced dangerous contender Tyson Fury and another dangerous guy Joshua afterwards.

Lewis lost in the eyes of fans when he DUCKED Vitali.

[Robbie Barrett]

Klitschko fought until he found a proper heir to his throne, a man who could beat him.

Lewis lost in the eyes of fans when he DUCKED Vitali.

Lewis beat Vitali. How did he duck him? Wladimir found quite a few men that could beat him, which is why he has 5 losses.

You're talking about "in the eyes of fans", well "in the eyes of fans" Lewis is a greater fighter. Deal with it.

[JAB5239]

Lewis. He beat the better comp and fought in the better era. Wlad slides into the tenth spot for me based on his longevity and dominance, but Lewis beat the far superior fighters and ranks between five and seven for me though it's been a few years since I've done my list.