{"id":296376,"date":"2025-07-27T17:08:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-27T17:08:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/296376\/"},"modified":"2025-07-27T17:08:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-27T17:08:09","slug":"hasim-rahman-names-the-greatest-heavyweight-ever-and-its-not-muhammad-ali-nobody-beats-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/296376\/","title":{"rendered":"Hasim Rahman Names The Greatest Heavyweight Ever And It’s Not Muhammad Ali: “Nobody Beats Him”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Muhammad Ali<\/a> is often regarded as the best heavyweight of all time, both for his boxing achievements and cultural impact. Two-time world heavyweight champion Hasim Rahman believes otherwise.<\/p>\n

Ali, at the time known as Cassius Clay, first became heavyweight world champion in 1964 with a win over Sonny Liston. After losing his license due to draft refusal for the Vietnam war in \u201967, Ali\u2019s second reign with the title began in \u201974 with a win against George Foreman and his third when he beat Leon Spinks in their rematch to avenge a loss in their first meeting.<\/p>\n

His speed, style and innovation in the heavyweight ranks make him stand out amongst the rest<\/a>, though many look further back to the likes of Joe Louis when picking their number one greatest of all time.<\/p>\n

Speaking on the BBC, Rahman instead opted for a more recent champion when asked to name the best big man ever: \u2018The Lion,\u2019 Lennox Lewis.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cI\u2019m finding it hard to put somebody ahead of him. I\u2019m finding it extremely hard to put somebody ahead of him. I just think, in any era \u2013 all time; I just really don\u2019t know who could beat him.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Ali, Dempsey, Marciano\u2026] Those guys were to small. Those guys were just too small for him. I mean, Ali was too small for George Foreman back then, when he was a smaller version of Big George, so how could he deal with someone like Lennox \u2013 who is huge and can move, and can use his distance well? I just think it\u2019s really unfair to compare eras, but I just don\u2019t know who could deal with that man.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Rahman had first hand experience of Lewis, shocking the world when he beat him by knockout in 2001. Lewis \u2013 as he did with the other loss on his record against Oliver McCall \u2013 avenged it in the rematch.<\/p>\n

When all was said and done, Lewis had beaten Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield, Vitali Klitschko, Ray Mercer and Frank Bruno, amongst others. He was, until Oleksandr Usyk<\/a> came along, the last man to hold the undisputed heavyweight championship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Muhammad Ali is often regarded as the best heavyweight of all time, both for his boxing achievements and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":296377,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4108],"tags":[1935,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-296376","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296376\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/296377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}