Overlooked War- Clifford Etienne vs Lawrence Clay Bey

In a night where the main event (Lennox Lewis vs David Tua) didn't hit expectations a fight on the undercard surpassed it. Two undefeated heavyweights had a great fight. They aren't great heavyweights. It wasn't a historically important fight. I felt like the winner won clearly on points. But it was a fantastic fight. Plenty of hard punches threw and landed. Lots of courage and heart on display. Who here remembers this fight? What do we think of it?

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I've heard it name dropped countless times in discussions about great lesser known heavyweight wars of the recent past... I've never actually watched it to be honest.

 

Its worth watching. It's not the greatest fight ever. However in terms of pure entertainment value its very good. It also reminded me how much I disliked George Foreman as a member of the commentary team

 

It was a very good fight, definitely outshined the main event.

The part at 40:46, geez.

 

Etienne had a crazy first round against Brewster as well.

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It's hard to work Etienne out. In the Brewster and Clay-Bey fights he looked like a real handful; a strong, relentless swarmer who was not easy to catch to clean. Against Oquendo he fell apart, and lasted less than a minute against the shell of Mike Tyson who would soon lose to Danny Williams and Kevin McBride. His chin also betrayed him in the draw with Botha.

Form seems to fluctuate more for heavyweights than any other division, but he really seemed to drop off a cliff with the Oquendo fight. Maybe it's also a case where his style was only as effective as his chin, and once this was dented he wasn't the same fighter.

 

Etienne --Brewster is one of my favorite fights in recent years. But everything was wide with him---left hook and right hook. And he'd be wide open for counters. But what an engine and workrate. I thought the guy was going somewhere until Fres clipped him on the top of the head and he's on the deck. I thought he'd taken better shots from other guys but sometimes those temple shots can have strange results.

 

I stumbled upon this fight completely by accident. I was watching a YouTube highlight video of knockouts months ago and there was a heavyweight fight which looked around the same time era where one of the guys gets dropped many times only to keep getting up. For some reason I was convinced it was this fight, but apparently not.

 

Sounds like Oquendo/Ettiene.

 

I just looked it up. Thats the one. I'll check it out. As well as the Brewster fight. I like Ettiene's aggresive style.

 

I think Clay Bey could’ve been a contender had he slimmed down to cruiser. He didn’t really have heavyweight power.