By Charles Brun: Former heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis hinted that he’d have beaten current WBC champion Tyson Fury if he’d had fought him during the peak of his career.
Fortunately for Fury, Lewis (41-2-1, 32 KOs) didn’t fight during the same era because the mauling tactics he used to win fights wouldn’t have been effective against him.
Fury’s lack of hand speed, power, and pawing jab would have been no match with a prime Lewis. It would have been too easy.
Unfortunately, this era of heavyweights is woefully deficient, with flawed maulers like Fury and the stamina-plagued Joshua holding belts.
Specifically, Lewis’ inside game with his powerful uppercut would have taken away Fury’s tendency to hold & lean on his opponents. Fury’s fighting style is a simple style that many ham & eggers use.
Fury has gotten away with his mauling tactics in his last three fights against Deontay Wilder & Dillian Whyte because those fighters lacked Lennox’s inside game.
“I refuse to answer easy questions! Listen, Tyson Fury’s a great champion,” Lennox Lewis said to Piers Morgan Uncensored. “He moves well, he punches hard, and he’s got a great jab and uppercut now.
“All he has to do is clean up the division like I did, then beat the next generation. You can’t put two Kronk Gym fighters against each other. That’s naughty,” said Lewis.
It would be nice if Fury would stick around and at least try to become the undisputed champion by facing the winner of the Oleksandr Usyk vs. Joshua rematch, but he’s chosen instead to retire.
Some boxing fans believe that Deontay Wilder knocked the ambition out of Fury after dropping him four times and knocking him clean out in their three fights.
You can’t blame Fury for wanting to retire after the punishment that Wilder inflicted on him. Wilder knocked Fury out in the 12th round in their first fight, only to watch a referee give a count while he was unconscious on the canvas.
It was unbelievable to see Fury being given a count in a fight that should have been stopped on the stop. In their third fight, it appeared to many fans that Fury was given a long count in the fourth round after Wilder knocked him down.
If it had been Lennox that had knocked Fury down in those fights, he’d have indeed finished him off. Don’t get me wrong. Fury is a good basic mauler type of heavyweight, but very basic, and someone that gets over on size alone.
You couldn’t have put Fury in with talents like Lewis, Mike Tyson, George Foreman, or Larry Holmes and expect him to have beaten those guys. Fury would have been too limited to beat those guys.
If you look at Lewis’ fight against Michael Grant in April 2000 to have an idea of what the fate would have been had Fury fought him in his prime. I hate to say it, but Lewis would likely have trounced Fury.
