Bowe was not "past it" when he was throughly dominated by Golota. That would be a cop out. The shortest "prime" of any Heavyweight champ ever.
Thank you for bringing some sense to this thread. I think Ruddock was by far his best pre-Steward win and performance. Rahman II was great and I actually appreciate Holyfield II more than most.
thats pretty much sums up the whole point ... Golota's skills were high, technically he could outbox/beat the guys who are at the top 15-30 on the ATG list, he hoverer didn't have in the physical prime mental strength to finish properly the job. If he had his brain from 2009 in 1996/7 we could speak about him in terms of top 10-20 ATG. However as the fight with Lennox show his comparison to boxers who are considered as top 10 ATG is poor, injection or not Golota is not in their league ... but that not a shame at all I think?
Yep and at the time many thought Bowe was still the best heavyweight out there despite his weight as he had just beaten Holyfield for the 2nd time. Strange how nobody was saying Bowe was shot against Holyfield. Bowe clearly wasn't at his best but then he hadn't been at his best since he fought Holyfield the 1st time. Bowe was exposed in the 1st Golota fight, boxers with good jabs would always give Bowe problems. Smaller men like Holyfield and Hide were able to make Bowe look bad when they boxed and moved behind the jab but they didn't have the size of Golota. By the second fight Bowe got himself down to proper fighting weight but he had lost it too fast and it left him a shell of the fighter he was just a year before. Then after the second beating at the hands of Golota he was definately shot, nobody takes that much punishment at heavyweight and is the same.
lol, Lewis did crush him. No excuses. It was his choice to inject that needle, he lives with the consequences. And bad luck had nothing to do with Golota pummeling Bowe's balls with shot after shot, in not one but in two consecutive fights. Tyson also destroyed him and that shot that broke his face and dislodged his verterbrae was no fluke either.
Bowe DID look like a SHOT sluggish zombie in Holyfield 3. Hep-B Holyfeild was beating him senseless, knocked him down And then gassed from Hep-B and got stopped. When you take massive punisment from combos, while in terrible fat shape, in destroys your body.
He didn't look great against Holyfield but only with hindsight can you come to the idea that Bowe was shot. In fact it was Holyfield that came out of that fight with the perception he was shot, not Bowe. Clearly Holyfield was not shot as his performance against Tyson proved and I don't think Bowe was shot either. At the time of the Golota fight nobody thought he was shot despite his poor performance with Holyfield. I remember an article in ring magazine at the time and it was the first time I had even heard of Golota and they gave him no chance as Bowe was deemed one of the top heavyweights at that time. I personally think Bowe had declined due to his weight and poor discipline but he was far from shot in the first Golota fight.
I heard he died immediately in the hospital. This match shouldn’t have been allowed to happen in the first place. Golota wasn’t even breathing for god sake
Join my topic to continue debate - you can copy And paste stuff you already said.... http://www.eastsideboxing.com/forum/showthread.php?t=291654
Bowe was young and had just come off a Holyfield win the same year as he fought the Golota fights. Saying Bowe was past it is a ridiculous statement. Bowe and his camp openly admitted that Bowe was in the best shape of his career for the 2nd Golota fight. Too bad it made no difference.
Can you provide a source please? One of substance...not that NY Times bull****, all they do is write down what people tell them at face value.