Why did Bowe refuse to defend his strap against Lewis?

My question is why did Bowe call out Lewis like he did when LL was doing a stint of commentary on a Bowe fight,just to bin his belt publicly like he did??

 

Lewis won the fight with Bowe clearly and there was no biased judging involved. Bowe was scared or just thought Lewis would be to good for him.

 

bowe was a slob and a puss

 

ditto

 

Mofo couldn't throw a decent right hand if his life depended on it. Always to the back of the head, and thats why I think Golota was stupidly using his own dirty tactics (low blows), cause neither ref, Wayne Kelly or Eddie Cotton wouldn't say anything about that crap Bowe was throwing.

But that was like 13 freakin yrs ago.:nut

 

Come on man Bowe was getting owned by Lewis the fight was barley competitive.

 

Nah, he wasn't really. Emmanueal Steward summed it up really, when he said Bowe outboxed Lewis early on, so Lewis just got physical and Bowe couldn't deal with it.

That is the amatuers though.

Still, I think that the time of the fight Lewis was still very right hand happy, and it's all very well for Bowe to get into a brawl with Holy and take punches on the chin, I don't think he could do the same against Lewis. Still had the chance to 'do a McCall' - but don't think he had the brains nor the trainer to spot that flaw, and capitalise.

 

Depending on who you like and don't, the answer is either'

"it was a smart business decision by Bowe...."

or

"Bowe was shitting bricks at facing Lewis"

 

He saw what Lewis did to Ruddock.

 

Bowe, or his people, were more interested in milking his title for all it was worth and fighting nobodies. I'm not sure that he would have even fought Holyfield the second time around if he didn't have to.

To be fair, I have plenty of respect for Bowe. But, I take issue when people try to make him out to be an ATG. He really accomplished very little as a champion and either didn't fight or didn't perform well against other contenders outside of Holyfield.

 

There are generally two schools of thought on this. The first the the Bowe or his management was scared of Lewis and wanted nothing to do with him line of thought, while the second says that it was an attempt by Bowe's management to play the system, artificially develop a long term interest/rivalry in the fight, and make a superfight out of it. Both arguments have their weaknesses.

As far as Bowe being afraid of Lewis goes, Bowe had other amateur losses. Somehow I doubt he was at home shaking in his boots at the thought that someday he might have to defend his title against any one of them. On the other hand, Bowe and his management had to see that Lewis would, at least, be one hell of a test for Bowe, therefore he was too dangerous to risk fighting, especially just after they'd won the title when there were easier paydays to be had. Lewis was dangerous, he had just blown out Razor Ruddock in 2 and done it easily. It would hardly be the first time that, whatever a fighter himself might think, that fighter's management would decide on not exposing their man to risky fights.

The other idea is that Rock Newman was aware that despite Lewis' skills as a fighter, he wasn't a well known name yet, with the Ruddock fight being his first major international exposure against a fighter who was both a decent name and wasn't shot to pieces. Lewis' fights just prior to this included a lot of bouts against fighters with records like 19-4, 10-5, 24-10, etc. A couple of fights for both guys, and a few more good performances by Lewis, and there would be real mainstream interest in the bout. So just let a little time go by, let both guys look good holding onto their respective titles, and everyone wins, right?

If that's the case, it backfired spectacularly. Bowe was set to fight Mercer to show himself as a fighting champion, all Mercer had to do was get by journeyman Jesse Ferguson. But Ferguson inexplicably beat Mercer, derailing that bout, and adding to the idea that Bowe didn't want to fight anyone who was a threat. Lewis wasn't doing that great himself, he beat Tony Tucker by decision but struggled in all sorts of ways against Bruno before winning. Only a month after that, Holyfield gets his rematch against Bowe and takes the decision throwing everything into a choas from which it never quite recovered.

The weakness to this argument is that, while Lewis might not have been a big name is the US yet, there were a couple of really easy ways to hype the fight without needing to spend a couple of years building it up. First, Lewis had beat Bowe at the Olympics, so a rivalry should be easy to manufacture for the press. Second, all you have to do to get the general public interested is keep replaying the Lewis-Ruddock fight with a tagline like "Ruddock went 19 rounds against Tyson... but couldn't last 2 against Lewis! Now can even Riddick Bowe stop his old nemesis?" It might not have been as big as it would have if they spent the extra time and fights building it up, but it still would have worked.

So, make up your own mind on things. I lean towards the second idea being the bigger factor, although I do think Bowe's management didn't want the fight with Lewis until they had more paydays under their belt and had made themselves richer first. Bowe, I think, would have probably been content to fight whoever they put in front of him, but once they started letting him get lazy by fighting bums and shot ex-champs without continuing to improve his skills or keep him busy, he started rapidly falling apart physically and with his erratic behavoir in front of the media/in the ring.