Bigger upset at the time: Rahman-Lewis or Tarver-Jones?

LOL

It's definitely KO2 imyo

 

You sound like a casual, because Rachman was ONLY an unknown entity to the mainstream. And I could care-less about the mainstream.

He wasn't JUST know for the Maskaev KO loss. He also won a very underrated war with Corrie Sanders (on the undercard of Maskaev vs Derrick Jefferson), and got screwed over by the ref in the Tua fight, in a fight he was well on his way to winning.

You saying stuff like that makes it super ironic that you accuse others of not following the sport.

 

So the circumstances of Rahman matter but the circumstances of Jones don't?

Lewis was known as chinny, and had already been beaten by someone WORSE than Rahman.

Roy had come down from HW, handedly beaten Tarver already was seriously being pegged as the Greatest of All Time.

 

Couldn't* care less.

 

You're wrong about Tarver's win not being shocking. It was the RESULT itself that augmented the upset, yes, but the win itself was shocking.

And once again I'll say, that proves to me you weren't around back then.

Places like this give you a better indication of how a fight might go than some stupid odds.

Trust me when I say, 95% of boxing fans thought Roy was gonna thrash Tarver in the rematch.

 

Sorry lol. Rushing while typing, while multi-tasking work lol.

 

The second part is correct. But the prevailing thought was Roy had a bad night. People weren't thinking that Tarver was a tough opponent for Roy, then were thinking Roy wasn't Roy.

The assumption, by nearly all, was that Roy would be Roy in the rematch.

 

In my lifetime, there's only been two fighters who had a TRUE aura of invincibility around them... prime Tyson and prime Jones. I can't speak for a Duran, or Foreman, because I wasn't alive in the mid 70s.

Lennox Lewis was never "that guy" that we thought of as unbeatable.

People NEVER EVER thought Roy Jones would lose. And you not comprehending that leads me to believe you weren't around.

 

Definitely Tarver. If You didn't grow up or live in the 90's you might not realize how big of a shocker this was. Jones was a multi media star. Not only was he the biggest name in boxing filling a much needed void after the fall of Tyson, he was a rapper and an actor. His music was fairly popular and was even in the Matrix movies. You can Google how successful the Matrix movies were but again, unless you lived through that era you won't realize just how huge of a deal they were and also for Roy to appear in all 3 of them. For the record his single "That was then" peaked at #2 on the hot rap singles chart and his "cant be touched" music video has more than 190 million views on YouTube.

Jones was a PPV sensation and had done more than 200,000 buys for several fights prior to the Tarver loss. His biggest fight was the John Ruiz fight which got more than 600,000 buys. People were talking about Jones as possibly being #1 across all weight classes due to his incredible historic conquering of belts all the way from middleweight to heavyweight.

So with that being said, the stage was set and the whole world was watching. Roy was probably the most popular active boxer on the planet and was pretty well known. When the knockout happened, everyone in school talked about it, even people who didn't watch boxing. People in barbershops talked about it like it was the NBA Finals, that's how huge it was. Lewis had gained some notoriety for the Holyfield and Ruddock fights along with his role in the movie Oceans 11 but by no means was he on Roy's level of popularity.

Both made major news because neither Jones nor Lewis were expected to lose. It was almost as shocking as Tyson vs Douglas but not quite on that level.

 

Every new post that comes in just proves that Kev wasn't around.

I think you really needed to have been around the forums at the time to get a TRUE feel for how big it was, because there was no social media at the time and the sport had far less exposure than it does now.

Boxing message boards WERE the boxing world in the early 00s. And trust me when I say, it was far and away the most significant boxing result in the history of the internet.

Every... single.... post was "I can't believe what I just saw."

That wasn't the reaction when Lewis-Rachman 1 went down. The common reactions were "Always knew he had a glass chin! Tyson kills him!"

 

I actually wish @Dubblechin would chime in here, since he's the one name I can reference who was posting back then.

He'd tell you for certain the aftermath of Jones-Tarver was much, much bigger among us boxing fans.