Mercer saw Lewis as a bigger fight than his match with Holyfield. So, Mercer was both focused and in shape for Lewis - and it showed. It seems some are willing to pretend that Mercer neither learned anything from the Holmes fight nor from the four years that ensued. Relying on Mercer's weight to determine with absolute confidence that Mercer was out of shape for Lewis is Boxrec warrior stuff.
After having a close match with Lewis ( A reason for re-match ) Mercer won his next fight vs a still decent Tim Witherspoon. I'm not buying Mercer was shot and could not do well in a re-match a year later. The year before the re-match with Wlad, Brewster was in a great fight with Liakhovich! The year before that Brewster beat a good Krasniqui, and Golota in convincing fashion. He was not shot for Wlad. Wlad's jab was in top form for the rematch and he punished Brewster with it to the point where his corner have to save him. I agree Brewster was good. He hit hard ( harder than Mercer ) and might have had an equal chin. Going off tangent for the moment, this board seems to be running as good I can can recall with a bad apple out and another given a warming.
Brewster suffered career ending injuries in his fight with Liakhovich and was out for a year getting treatment on one of his eyes. Lots of hard fights took a toll on Brwster even before the Liakhovich fight which was the tipping point from semi-prime to shot beyond belief. Brewster took big shots from Wlad and was in a war with Meehan one fight after. Meehan shattered his jaw and gave him a bad beating throughout the fight. He deserved to win , he actually did a lot better than Klitschko did. Brewster was on the way out after those two wars. So Brewster was obviously a shot ghost version of himself when Wlad finially decided it was time for a rematch. Mercer , like Brewster , was out of the ring , having fights with Golota fall through due to medical issues. Lewis saw no reason to fight a medically unfit and inactive Mercer. Wlad tho ... He wouldn't immediately rematch Brwster , he waited till he was half blind and shot to bits.
This is true^ and, at the time of Lewis/Mercer, Lewis was also in the middle of a court battle to force Tyson to defend his world titles against him. Lewis wanted his title back. Ultimately, he ended up wit McCall in '97,for the title Tyson had vacated. So, an immediate Mercer rematch was not realistic, either. As you correctly suggest, Post-Witherspoon, Mercer was physically wrecked with his injured neck. He would come back for one fight after that, only to be diagnosed with hepatitis, causing yet another long lay off. By the time Mercer came back again, in late '99, Lewis/Holyfield had happened twice and Lewis was the Undisputed Heavyweight Champion. I'm not 100% sure, but I don't think Mercer was ever found in the Ring's Top-10 Heavyweight Ratings, beyond 1997.
Nobody says Ray was out of shape for the Lewis fight, he just was not in tip top shape like when he fought Larry Holmes.Against Holmes, Ray was considerably lighter and carried less fat.Those are facts.
Excellent insight. Mercer barely had a jab at all when he fought Holmes. It improved immensely after that crash course which could be seen in later bouts.
But wasn't it a jab that nearly knocked Larry unconscious in the first round? Or could that be classified as a straight left.
It was a jab but i'd hardly say it nearly knocked Holmes unconscious. It's a funky one as he was looked hurt for a short time but it looked pretty innocuous. Landing a rare hard jab somewhere hardly makes for a good jab tho. It's all about utilizing it often and utilizing it well.
You stated earlier that: If, by stating that Mercer wasn't "well prepared" for Lewis, you didn't mean Mercer was out of shape then, my mistake. It did seem that way. Having read back, I would still suggest your line of argument fails to acknowledge the difference in Mercer's relative experience, between Holmes and Lewis. And, to flatly contradict @mark ant , who reasonably claims that Mercer was improved against Lewis (and didn't mention anything to do with physical conditioning), on the basis of less than 10 lbs in weight difference is, quite frankly, a bit of a reach. I also maintain that you cannot gauge Mercer's level of conditioning, by a difference in the official weights between the two fights. Yes, it's a fact Mercer was heavier for the Lewis fight but this doesn't establish what you're suggesting it does. It might have been better to point out that Mercer was several more years past his physical prime, by mid '96. But even this doesn't refute a claim that Mercer was better when he faced Lewis, than he had been against Holmes.
Indeed, and I seem to recall Mercer saying in an interview that he learned a lot from his fight with Holmes.
He didn`t nearly knock him out he just wobbled him and Larry recovered pretty quick on the ropes, his balance was bad more than anything else.
A small clarification when we talk about Merciless or better about his potential more or less expressed...it should be noted his career was marred by many physical troubles such as a severe neck injury and the contraction of a virus, if im not wrong it was Hepatitis type B from which he luckily was saved.
