Riddick Bowe

Rock Newman had his fighter, Bowe, throw his belt in the bin rather than fight Lennox Lewis. Make of that what you will.

Bowe had the ability to beat Lewis in '93, and he also had the ability to beat the Tyson of Ruddock II and beyond.

 

His manager Rock Newman milked him against tomato cans for as long as he could and at every opportunity. He was supposed to sign to defend his title against Lewis if Lewis beat Ruddock (which he did), but he reneged that promise and threw one of his belts in the trash, for which he was roundly criticized. Tyson was in jail at the time Bowe won his title.

He's untested/unproven against big punchers. He turned down possible big fights with both Lennox and Ruddock, so there's reason to believe his people were wary of putting him in with punchers as well. I don't think he ever would've beaten Lennox; it's possible he might've beaten Tyson, but that would depend on if he could survive Tyson's early round onslaught, which is open to debate.

 

There are generally two schools of thought on that. One is that Bowe's manager, Rock Newman, outsmarted himself. He wanted Bowe to ride the gravy train for awhile and get a couple of easy money fights under his belt before taking on anyone dangerous, (although it should be noted that they probably expected to face Ray Mercer for Bowe's second defense, as they drew up a contract to face the winner of Mercer-Jesse Ferguson, but somehow Ferguson won) and that stunts like the garbage bin would add something to the rivalry. Instead what happened was that Bowe got disinterested after 2 easy fights in a row and promptly lost the rematch to Holyfield. Oops.

Lennox, meanwhile, had fought just a month before Bowe-Holyfield II and both he and Bowe would only have one more fight apiece before Lennox lost the WBC title to McCall in what almost everyone thinks was a premature stoppage. Suddenly there were no titles on the line, no prestige, no pay-per0views for a Bowe-Lewis match, and Rock Newman had finessed his way right out of a megafight. (And just to add insult to injury, Bowe was starting to act more and more unstable at the time. Bowe had been built up as a big, friendly, funny, loveable guy, but was incresingly doing weird things like hitting opponents who were on their knees, sucker punching guys at press conferences, etc and nobody could figure it out).

The other school of thought is that Bowe was scared of Lewis. Personally, I find it hard to believe that a guy who took the sort of brutal ass whipping Bowe took from Golota and came back for more was too scared to get in the ring with someone who beat him when he was an amateur. I think it's much more likely that Bowe was getting bad advice.

Tyson was in prison for most of Bowe's prime. Three months after Tyson's first fight after getting out, Bowe was concluding his trilogy with Holyfield, and his next fight after that was with Golota, and that was the end of Bowe's career. (at least the end of any career that counts).

 

By the way, this is a total tangent, but I have to say I've always found the state the alphabet titles were in when Tyson got out of prison fascinating. For your champions you have Bruce Seldon, Frank Bruno, and the IBF title is vacant for awhile before Michael Moore recovers it.

Guys who are not champions during that time: Holyfield, Bowe, Lewis, Mercer, Foreman, not to mention rising prospects like Tua. If Don King didn't somehow orchestrate that so Tyson could swoop in and be the Heavyweight savior (making multi-millions on every fight) then it could have hardly worked out better for him.

 

Not necessarily. Both of those fighters had experience against punchers, unlike Bowe. We don't know how Bowe would handle being in against a big puncher for the very first time as a pro.

 

Bruno's experiance with punchers had always been pretty bad. I think it's wrong to assume just because Bowe didn't come up against a puncher that must mean he couldn't do it. He'd hang with Lewis, he had all the attributes to be toughest ever assignment. Who knows.

 

Because he was too busy figthing Jessie Ferguson, Michael Dokes, and Ellijah Tillery.

 

I tend to think that though he showed flashes of brilliance he was over-rated. I was extremely unimpressed over his foul-ridden win over Coetzer. Beyond that, he fought Holyfield, bums and got the crap beaten out of him twice by Golota.

 

Bad experiences are better than no experience.

He blasted out Gerrie Coetzee in a round, and he was leading against Bonecrusher and Witherspoon before they were finally able to catch up with him late. After fighting Lewis, he went on to beat McCall for the title. He proved himself far more willing and able to deal with punchers than Bowe ever did.

You can't actually do something if you're not willing to do it in the first place. Bowe turned down every big puncher that was proposed as a match for him.

 

Fair point.

I still feel Riddick Bowe had all the attributes to give Lewis a very tough fight, even if he didn't believe it himself.

 

Another one who never fulfilled his potential. I could n't see him ever beating Lewis. Lennox would have hit too hard,and too athletic.

 

This is probably the most realistic description of what was really going on with Bowe. There are many people who come up with wild speculation that Bowe avoided punchers but thats not the case. If it was, Newman and company certainly would have avoided Bert Cooper on the way to the title. Herbie Hide was coming into his fight with Bowe undefeated with all but one of his fights ending in KO. Gonzalez undefeated with a big KO record, Dokes and Seldon werent feather fisted themselves. So its really just ridiculous to hear that.
It was just a strange time in the heavyweight division. Bruno wasnt really in contention at that time, Ruddock had been beaten by Tyson and Lewis. Besides Lewis there was no laundry list of punchers he avoided. The Lennox Lewis fight should have always been there, but it just never happened. Who knows what would have happened, but I believe Lewis would have gotten schooled had Bowe actually fought him after winning the title. Had it happened after the third Holyfield fight Lewis would have schooled him.