How in Gods name did Bowe get away with stunts like .. A..... Donald incident..... B...... Buster Mathis incident.. C..... Ellijah Tillery incident..... mmmmm .. ???
Well, the Mathis Jr. incident where Bowe hit him when he down did cost him an official victory and ruled a no contest. As for never getting fined for any of the stuff he did, my guess would be that the early 90's were just before the mentality of zero tolerance started being comonly used. I would say that if Bowe did those things in 2008, he would recieve fines and possible suspensions. PS- I think the worst incident was the riot his people started after the first Golota fight in MSG.
He claimed boxing ruined his brain and in a way it did, He was once a trucker hat wearing charismatic young gentleman with the boxing world at his feet but he really did seem to lose some of his control after the holyfield wars, it clearly affected his brain
I did see a massive change in his attitude at press meetings, weigh ins, public shows of actual affection towards fans in casinos etc... he went from personality #1 to ******* of the century and almost unnaproachable..
seems a massive shame....did he actually ruin his own legacy ?? Turning down a fight against Lennox Lewis an doing his own bum of the month campaign.... Had he even fought Lewis he probably would have been financially secure nowadays an not even have had to bother wanting to fight recently... Regardless of who would have won, I could have seen a series of fights happen between the pair.....alas history decided on another path :bbb
With the benefit of hindsight, not fighting Lewis hurt Lewis bad in the short term, but long term was even more damaging to Bowe.
I want to add that recently Bowe had been training with Goody Petronelli at his Brockton gym. He was great with everyone there. he even sparred 5 rds with my son , an undefeated light-heavy. At times my son`s speed got through to Bowe, being younger and quicker. But bowe was excellent with him, never taking advantage of his size. The one time he clipped my son with a decent shot, he stopped right away and made sure he was ok. he was gracious with everyone at our gym And went out of his way to give our young fighters some pointers and words of wisdom. He also is pretty comical, and a good practical joker. What he has left as far as fighting, who knows. But I got the sense that he liked being in the atmosphere of the gym. I alsp told him that I thought his best fight was Holyfield #1. But I enjoyed his beatdown of Gonzalez (the 6`7`` Cuban) the best. He got a chuckle out of that...
Another blessed man! It has always been my dream to meet Bowe. Hell, I would even settle with a phone conversation.
Maybe he's learned some humility and mellowed out in recent years. Suzie Q didn't have anything but nice things to say about him as well. In your opinion does he "brain damaged" to you, Waynegrade? I've heard it said that he's extremely bad and on the flipside he supposedly faked it to receive lenient punishment in the courtroom.
I've heard the same things about it as well. I have seen his most recent interviews and I will definitely say that his speech has obvious slurring, but he can still form very intelligent sentences. So imo, yes, he has a bit of damage and so can't speak well without slurring his words, but it isn't like he is drooling on himself.
He does have some slurring. As for his thought process, or how he conveys them. He still seemed pretty sharp. He still has that big smile, and is a happy sort.He talked about his past great fights, and his memory is still sharp. He asked me how he looked sparring, how his `educated` jab(this is what he called it) was looking. His memory in general was sharp, the only are that wasnt` sharp was the speech. We all took pics with him, and he seemed genuinely happy with how he was recieved. Also, he is one big dude!!!
Gonzalez was always good at rubbing people up the wrong way...remember how he was practically stalking Bowe for a year or so, turning up wearing his big black cowboy hat at Bowe press conferences and fights?
Glad to hear he's happy. How good is his conditioning compared to the Zumbrun fight? What about in sparring, does he look as though he has anything left?
It's almost sickening to imagine him fighting again. To your list of stunts I would add low-blowing Coetzer into submission whilst the ass of his shorts was completely ripped out. Sure, he was beating feather-fisted Pierre but he really didn't hurt him badly until the low blow. I guess he got his just due with Golota. All the pushover fights he had made one think he might have been over-protected or that his management knew something.
Agreed. And Bowe threw tons of rabbit punches in there as well. And like lots of guys, when he's the guy getting fouled--like in the Golata fights--he complains to the ref immediately. When Bowe fouls the other guy, he kept throwing, like that coetzer fight.