Was Holyfield robbed in his rematch with Lennox Lewis?

I can’t see any way to demonstrating that Holyfield clearly won 5 rounds in the rematch. Whereas, Lewis clearly won several rounds.

In other words, the scores only become close if you give all the benefit of the doubt to Holyfield and none whatsoever to Lewis. And, this approach (taken by some) seems to neglect the comparatively and obvious lack of output from Holyfield, who was consistent in three areas: throwing less; landing less and missing a whole lot more than was Lewis.

If the same approach to scoring the fight was taken in favor of Lewis, one could reasonably argue for Lewis winning 118-110.

 

Not even Holyfields own grandmother had the first fight remotely close.

In fact professional boxing opinion at the time was universally agreed that it was a robbery and Holyfield only won 2 rounds.

Lewis dominated Holyfield completely in the first fight.

 

It was universally accepted that Lewis landed more blows and had all the best moments. It was NOT universally accepted that Holyfield won just 2 rounds.

Lewis had all the best moments but because they were contained within 4 of the 12 rounds It left far too much room for argument. Lewis could have taken care of business but he failed to.

 

I cant believe you are doubling down on the 1st fight being close.

I looked at the boxing journalists cards from both the USA and UK. Not one single one gave the fight to Holyfield or gave it a draw. Most gave Holyfield only 2-3 rounds. Compubox numbers had Lewis outlanding Holyfield by 348-130 (just looked it up). Yes Lewis had big rounds but he also outworked Holyfield in the closer rounds too. You are acting as if Lewis has to win every round big in order to be given the round. It doesnt work like that.

There wasnt ever an argument about it even being close.

The 2nd fight. You can make an argument for that being close and that was the point of this thread.

It is important to also consider the consensus view as well as your own. Maybe you are just extremely bias in favour of Holyfield? That is the only conclusion I can make. What did you score the second fight as?

 

As Bill Nack might have put it, "a monument to indecision." ^^

 

You obviously don't know chok very well

 

How did you get to 117-115? Do you have the round by round card?
Also, writing it 4-6-2 Lewis looks like you had Lewis losing. Just FYI.

 

It is the first time I have noticed this dudes name when posting. So thanks for pointing that out!

 

The "benefit of the doubt" is a turn of phrase. You know this and I think you've either missed the point of my post or for no adequately explored reason decided on giving a brief tutorial in semantics and stating the obvious, but never mind.

And, Holyfield obviously didn't get any favors from at least two of the three official judges, who had, in my opinion, a more realistic perspective on the action they'd witnessed. This is as it should be, since it was not a difficult fight to score, with Lewis clearly taking the majority of the rounds.

You maintain it was a close fight. How many of the 12 rounds do you think were that closely contested, anyway?

 

One does not need punch stats to determine that Holyfield threw less; landed less and missed a lot more than Lewis - and did so consistently throughout the bout, save a couple of rounds, midway.

 

it was an unpopular decision, I will give you that. maybe you are too young to remember, some boxing people did make it a draw. The mainstream press ran with the bigger story of it being a scandal and the woman judge scoring Lewis’s biggest round for Evander and the overall punch stats being much higher for Lewis. But both factors don’t really make a controversy. You can win a round by one punch and lose a round by 100 punches.

obviously Lewis doesn’t have to win every single round. But he did not show enough aggression in at least 7rounds which on some cards can conceivably make it a draw. As you know I did have Lewis winning six rounds to four with 2 even in the first fight. He just left far too many rounds open to interpretation when you consider the dominance he was able to show in some moments. The undisputed championship was on the line after all.

maybe you don’t remember. It wasn’t popular. But it was no landslide.

yes the consensus among mainstream media was Lewis was robbed. Boxing people also mostly thought Lewis had “done enough”. But it wasn’t some hysterical outrageous thing.

I shall review it. At the time I thought Evander did slightly more than Lewis but I couldn’t really blame anyone for choosing Lewis. Both decisions were not really enough to take somebody’s title away. The two fights were disappointing really.

 

It was a very straightforward point but, in boxing, there are a myriad of conditions that will drive someone who is scoring a fight to lean towards a 'one' or a 'zero' (a '10' or a '9'). The 'judgment' behind a binary decision means, by definition, that you have to, at some stage, 'favor' one result from another.

Personal bias might be a condition under which judgments are made, at times, but giving the benefit of the doubt rarely, if ever, explicitly refers to giving "favours" - which is what you have espoused.

So, yes - you have misunderstood and erroneously distilled my post down to a connotation, which misses the point.


Getting back to the real point and, as queried in my previous post - to no avail - You maintain it was a close fight. How many of the 12 rounds do you think were that closely contested?

 

Roflmao Lewis was robbed blind in first fight That must have cost King a fortune. Lewis won both EASY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

"LAS VEGAS – Now, they are even.

Eight months ago, Evander Holyfield got the benefit of a disgraceful and possibly criminal decision when two alleged fight judges named Jean Williams and Larry O’Connell gifted him with a draw in a fight he clearly lost to Lennox Lewis.

Last night, Lewis got the birthday present, courtesy of three judges who should be subjected to even more scrutiny than those two hapless souls faced after the Agony at the Garden.

Last time, the job was pulled off by a crew of two. This time it was a Gang of Three, and they made off with boxing’s biggest prize of all, the undisputed heavyweight championship.

Lennox Lewis gets to wear that honor today, the first “Englishman” to hold it since Bob Fitzsimmons lost it in 1899, and no doubt he will wear it proudly.After all, this is a man who took the WBC belt out of a garbage can, won another belt over a man who was in the middle of a crying jag, and only this week was happy to strap the belt of something called the IBO around his waist, again without winning a fight.

But with the exception of the way he fought the ninth round, Lennox Lewis had little to be proud of last night.

In a fight that had two great rounds, two good ones and nearly a half-hour of posing, pawing and clinching, the names you will remember today are Bill Graham, Jerry Roth and Chuck Giampa.

They are the ones who decided that last night would be Lennox Lewis’ night, even after Holyfield had cut him, shook him up in the third, nearly stopped him in the seventh and pushed him all over the ring in the 12th.

And despite the presence of more than 10,000 Brits in the 19,000-seat Thomas & Mack Center, the chant that reverberated through the hall in the closing minute of the bout was for Holyfield.

Maybe this is boxing’s way of telling Holyfield it is time to quit, or maybe the message is coming from an even higher authority. But if Holyfield can’t win a decision after the way he fought last night, perhaps he just can’t win anymore.

It wasn’t his greatest performance, as he had predicted it might turn out to be this week, but it was enough to intimidate Lewis after three rounds, leave him gasping for breath after seven, and reduced him to resorting to a pitiful, after-the-bell flurry as the fight ended.

Holyfield did everything he failed to do in the first fight, when he was spared a loss despite doing nothing.

Last night, he did it all for eight rounds, tired for three of the last four, and closed te show with a decisive round 12.

His reward this time was a kick down the ring steps, a shove out the door.

“I hit him with some good shots and I thought it would catch up with him,” Holyfield said. “I did all that I can.”

It should have been enough. Is this the way boxing plays even-up, by making up for an atrocious decision with one that was even worse?

“The big thing in life is that you give it your all,” Holyfield said. “When it falls into the judges’ hands, you have to live with their decision.”

Holyfield left the ring with a sad little smile on his unmarked face as a good chunk of the crowd rushed to meet him at the bottom of the ring steps.

Lewis, puffy-faced and cut over the right eyebrow, was serenaded by the British fans as he left, but this time, it sounded forced and almost embarrassed.

“Right now, I’m gonna chill out and relish the moment,” he said. “I went through some trials and tribulations with him in there.”

And in truth, Lewis showed one quality he had rarely shown in his previous 36 fights, the ability to stand up to a pretty good beating and fire back.

But the 10th round could have been subtitiled, “Lennox Lewis, This Is Your Life.” After leaving Holyfield so shook up he literally stumbled back to his corner to end the ninth, Lewis fought the 10th as if he had suddenly been thrown into a cage with a lion.

He posed, he pawed, he tried to hold Holyfield off with an outstretched left arm. He did everything but press his advantage at the only point in the fight where he had a real chance to win it decisively.

It was his entire career boiled down to a three-minute segment, and even the highly-partisan crowd jeered when he went back to his corner at the bell.

Once again, Lewis could not force himself to cross the fear threshold. Presented with the perfect opportunity to knock out Holyfield out, he could not overcome his own fear of being knocked out.

It was perhaps the most shameful round ever fought by a man daring to call himself the heavyweight champion of the world.

By contrast, Holyfield, giving away 25 pounds and three inches in height, continually risked his safety to bore inside Lewis’ long arms. He outworked Lewis in nine of the 12 rounds, shook him with right hands in the third and seventh, and walked through Lewis’ best shots.

And even if somehow, the Three Blind Mice had it close entering the 12th round, there is no way they could have given the last round to Lewis. Holyfield won the round, and the fight, going away.

The Post had Holyfield a 116-112 winner. Roth’s card was 115-113, Giampa 116-112 and Graham, who is 83 years old, somehow marked his card 117-111, all for Lewis.

In the first creditable move it has made in years, the IBF announced after the bout it would declare the title vacant, but for the wrong reason: Lewis, feeling he had been robbed the first time, refused to pay its sanction fee.

This time, it should be Holyfield who holds onto his money.

After all, last night some thieves made off with his Belts. "

NYPost

Surprised almost nobody here wants to admit it was at least a close fight.

 

Rather disengenious to leave out his 3 biggest victories in Tyson 2X and Foreman.