The Boxing Thread

Lennox’s body of work * all over Fury’s to be frank.

I think people have gotten a bit carried away tbh. Wilder is a one dimensional plodder with one weapon in his entire arsenal. Lennox Lewis, he ain’t. Not even close in fact.

Lewis’s best wins include:

Tyson
Holyfield
Ruddock
Bruno
McCall
Rahman
Grant
Mason
Morrison
Vitali
Tua
Briggs
Golota
Mercer
Tucker

He is a very legit all time great heavyweight.

 

I’m not doubting that he was exposed to boxing given the environment he grew up in, but that’s a long way away from even being a decent open class *.

The only record I can find shows his first * bout taking place when he was just shy of his 16th birthday, which would be considered a late start in boxing. Not entirely unique in heavyweight boxing, but by no means the norm either.

 

Sure, there are a handful of less than stellar fighters on that list, but you cannot argue that Lennox has a FAR more impressive resume.

 

Wrong, he started boxing when he was 10.

 

There would be dumplings on every fighters list of their top 15 wins. Many moreso on Fury’s than Lennox’s.

 

Going to need more than your word on this one.

 

This is his first ever * bout here, where he’s 16.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/talk.../727162/tyson-fury-aged-16-amateur-fight/amp/

 

He's comically thick

I'm on the floor here haha..

 

It's on his Wikipedia page, with a link to a Telegraph article.

 

You’re not seriously going to double down on your ‘Joshua is a *’ comment, surely?

Fury has absolutely everything to do to come close to matching Lewis’s resume. He would need to put his foot on the gas like never before, keep it there for years to come, and even then he could fall short simply due to the absence of big names outside a select few heavyweights.

He may have lost a couple that he avenged, but he does have a clean record when it comes to PEDs, so there’s always that in Lewis’s favour….

 

The article is behind a paywall.

His own brother says 14, and that’s backed up by what is described here as his first coach:

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www....n-fury-coach-deontay-wilder-b1933276.html?amp

Starting training at 14 and fighting at 16 would also be much more typical than training at 10 and not fighting until you’re 16.

Seems largely irrelevant, but I think the bulk of the evidence available suggests he fits the ‘late starter’ tag.

 

I agree with the general sentiment that standards have improved across sport with time, but it’s not as immediately applicable to boxing as it is to, say, fitba.

Boxing history is littered with athletes of all weights who sacrificed their every waking hour to become a champion LOOOOOONG before we saw a similar dedication happening with other sports (like fitba). Why? M-O-N-E-Y! Boys who grew up dirt-poor had a chance to make themselves rich and famous through boxing - that’s a * of a motivator. Other sports really didn’t compare with the boxing paydays - and that showed in the levels of professionalism.

It’s probably why we can still reasonably argue that the likes of Sugar Ray Robinson is the pound-for-pound boxing GOAT 80 years on from when he turned pro.

Where we should have seen real growth (pardon the pun), is in the heavyweight division - 200lbs was BIG back when the boxing weight classifications were made (we’re talking almost a century ago), but it’s not these days. Humans have gotten bigger. 200lbs is TINY for a heavyweight now! And that’s why it gets a bit harder to compare heavyweights from different eras.

I think there was an exponential improvement in the Heavies right up until Lennox retired. A few things happened in the mid-noughties. The world had largely fallen out of love with boxing, and there was a real dearth of talent in the heavyweight division - particularly in the States! Wladimir Klitschko was a model pro and a classy guy, but he GENUINELY wasn’t even the best heavyweight in his family. He carried the division through a fairly dark period, but by * it was tedious… and then emerged a gigantic Clown Prince in Fury and an articulate handsome Adonis in AJ. It stirred a level of new interest in boxing - particularly in the UK. These 2 were on an exciting collision course… but then Fury’s mental health imploded.

Meanwhile another Adonis had picked up a heavyweight belt in the States. Wilder! He could throw a home-run punch, but sadly he had ZERO boxing skills. He was the human equivalent of bambi-on-ice! His career was carefully managed, opponents carefully chosen (nothing wrong with that), but the truth is that he blasted his way through a bunch of bums. He was one of the few American heavies that could have walked down just about any street in the US and no one would have recognised him. They didn’t rate him (and IMHO, they had good reason not to). Ortiz was the best of Wilders opponents thus far - the Cuban was decent, although no trailblazer - but that said, he was well over the hill by the time they fought (nearly 40) and he wasn’t in great shape. Ortiz * all over Wilder in their first fight. It was ridiculously one sided… and then he sleepwalked into a Hail-Mary late on. Wilder may have won, but no one was convinced!

Fury v Wilder 1. This is where the hysteria starts. Fury was in horrible shape and he hadn’t fought anyone of note in yonks. It should have been a routine nights work for any reigning heavyweight champion, but Wilder was so inept that he * it up… spectacularly! Credit to Fury though - he was as tremendous (in the circumstances) as Deontay was *. It gave Fury the shot in the arm that he needed to start taking boxing seriously again, but more importantly, it gave the sport a real shot in the arm - Fury had really caught the public’s attention (mostly with his ‘journey’).

Fight 2 and Fury looked even better. But Wilder was even *! An utter shambles. Even a blind man could see that Wilder was a fraud.

And then AJ loses to a small fat Mexican man with limited boxing skills! The dream is crumbling. The small fat man goes on the mother of all celebratory benders for months and AJ wins the rematch by boxing extremely conservatively. The Fury v AJ dream isn’t quite as exiting as it once was, but it’s back on again.

And then AJ gets beaten… again… by a small, but supremely talented Ukrainian bloke. The dream is in tatters!

My take on AJ? He’s very similar to Frank Bruno. Yes, he’s bigger than Frank, but Frank had a bigger heart. I’d actually pick Frank in a contest between the 2 of them (prime for prime - assuming, of course, that we have seen AJ’s prime).

Fury v Wilder 3. The fight nobody really asked to see. But by * it was surprisingly enjoyable though! Largely because Fury chose to ‘fight’ Wilder rather than ‘box’ him. Who knows why, but I’m glad he did as it was very entertaining. Wilder was more aggressive in this fight and he showed tremendous heart, but he still demonstrated that he couldn’t box worth a *! The ending was quite uncomfortable to watch.

And here we are today… debating whether Fury is now the best heavyweight of all time… based on a fight with the steady, but unexciting Wladimir Klitschko, and three pantomimes against possibly the least talented fighter to ever hold a major heavyweight title.

Its madness!

Don’t get me wrong - a fit and motivated Fury is an awesome sight. 6’9” men shouldn’t be able to move like him, or have an engine like he has. He’s undoubtedly the best heavyweight of THIS era. But there’s just not the depth of talent in the division these days to allow us to properly evaluate him against fighters from the Golden Periods. My best guess is that he’d have been a freak show also ran in the 70’s, and he wouldn’t even have made it to the Big Time in the 90’s. Moreover, Liston would have spanked him in the 60’s, and Holmes would have schooled him in the 80’s.

And there’s no shame in any of that. The 70’s, and 90’s we’re exceptional times for heavyweight boxing… and Liston and Holmes were exceptional fighters.

Fury is great - I wasn’t a fan, but MkII Fury won me round. Love the big mad * now. But there’s no way he stands amongst the divisions all time greatest’s. He’s a clever guy though and always seems to come up with a winning plan, so I concede that there could be more surprises to come… but as I said before, we can only evaluate him using the other fighters of his era as the benchmarks… and by and large, they were pretty poor.

 

Good post - although I personally was really looking forward to Fury vs Wilder 3. Entertaining if unnecessary.

The GOAT for me is Sugar Ray Robinson, and I say that based on what I’ve seen from him in terms of footage as much as anything else. Absolute poetry in motion, an ability to knock a man out with any shot from either hand, absurd chin and conditioning etc.

I don’t think boxing has changed in the same manner other sports have either, mainly due to its simplicity. We can dress it up anyway we like, but it’s fundamentally just two blokes punching one another. There’s not really technique or strategy development in the same manner as other sports, and I would actually argue that elements of the inside game had been largely lost in recent years (although they’ve made a partial comeback now).

Heavyweight would be the one division where there has been a clear shift over the last 20 years to bigger fighters, although there does seem to be an optimal fighting size even for the big lads - it isn’t purely a case of bigger being better.

 

Size doesn’t make a good boxer, but a huge man with a talent for boxing is very dangerous. At the rumble in the jungle, both fighters were 6’3 and weighed about 15.5 stone.

 

Honestly mate, fantastic post. You’re clearly a big fan of boxing and I really enjoyed reading your insight. I do think you are underestimating Fury’s boxing ability though. Watch that first fight with Wilder again. Watch his fights with Chisora. Watch his fight with Klitchko. The man is a supremely talented boxer and right up there with the greats of the division in my opinion.

 

Mate I’m not even a boxing fan and know this is a horrific shout

Nearly as bad as you’re McGregor MMA GOAT one