I feel that fate really robbed us of a legit heavyweight Fab Four... If Only Tyson peaked later on and kept his life in order. If Bowe didn't eat so much and had a risk taking manager.. If Lewis was more marketable. We might have seen the greatest heavyweight era of all times. These four guys if their primes aligned.. could have given us a series of insane heavyweight fights. (Lewis would have beaten everyone and went down as GOAT over Robinson too)
Wow you guys selling Big Lennox short here. I said IF he beat them all he would be the GOAT.. Why the Hell not? If Lewis had beaten them all (realistic scenario) his resume will look like. Mason 35-0 Biggs Ruddock Tucker 48-1 (in place of Mercer-Briggs-Morrison-Henry A-Bruno-Zeijko) he would have: Bowe Bowe Holyfield Tyson Holyfield Tyson he'll still have Golota.. because by than he'll have clean out the division. +Tua+ Grant+Vitali. That's ****ing GOAT. Not to mention .. Bowe would have achieved his peak potential in this time line and would have gone down as an ATG. So he would have had FOUR ATG'S on his resume. All during the PEAK of their careers. That's god damn GOAT.
Could have been a fab 4, but the fab 4 of the 1980s had different styles and backgrounds and weights. It was unique.
that glass jawed ****** Lewis would get murked by prime versions of Tyson, Bowe, and Holyfield He never even beat McCall truly ... barely a top 10 heavyweight
It's not Lewis's fault McCall was a ****ing crackhead and had Don King as his Manager. :-( The way I see it: 1) Lewis (If motivated beats all) 2) Holyfield (beats Tyson, Losses to Lewis, Draw with Bowe) 3) Tyson (beats Bowe, Losses to Holyfield, Lewis) 4) Bowe (beats Holyfield, Losses to Lewis & Tyson) The ones I feel are tossups are prime Tyson-Holyfield, Bowe-Lewis & Tyson-Bowe.
A fully mentally ok Golota could have made it the fab 5. Bowe had a great jab, but it got completely neutralized by Golota who had an ever better jab.
Yeah...But they wouldn't have been who they were. Tyson was never going to last long. His style was vastly dependent on a type of speed that doesn't last forever. We saw what happened when he lost it, he started to lose IT. Add his mental problems, and he was always going to be a star that exploded then died out. Bowe with discipline is some other fighter. His limitations, even at his best, were exposed; He took too many punches and fought neglecting his best skills and strengths too much. Was always going to burn out. Lewis achieved exactly what he was capable of, but he was a late bloomer in a lot of ways; The younger Lewis had grave technical flaws, for all his talents, which McCall exploited and Steward slowly corrected. Lewis rebuilt himself masterfully after McCall, and became a complete fighter and a sound boxer, but he might not have had the room to do so fighting a murderers row of killers. Holyfield fought everybody under the sun whenever possible. Undersized and overpowered, he still achieved great things. History works out for a reason, sometimes. It wasn't fate that robbed us, it was man; Tyson was mentally ill and Bowe just did not have elite discipline.
I think the Lewis-Bowe fight that was scheduled to happen in late 1994, early 1995, would have been interesting. It was signed and sealed, but never happened as Lewis lost to McCall. Got to mind this was the pre Steward, Lewis, who telegraphed his punches and had balance issues. Who wins this one?
I think Bowe ****s him up, the roles reverse once LL gets with Manny and becomes better Prime for prime.... genuine 50/50 fight.
Although these guys are similar ages, i do believe they had their own eras. The Tyson era was 86-91 until he lost to Douglas and/or went to prison. Holyfields era began after he won the titles off Douglas, his era overlapped the end of Tysons and ended around 97. The Lewis era really took off from 97 onwards and beating Holyfield just cemented that. Bowe never really had an era.
The quartet of Hall of Famers Bowe, Holyfield, Lewis, and Tyson, is the Fab Four that was! The 1990s heavyweight boxing scene belonged to them! It was an era when the great American heavyweight tradition was unfolding which made the 90s one of the richest and most competitive periods in the history of the division (Lewis was the only non-American part of that run). Why do you think there was not a single Eastern European lineal heavyweight champion during this decade? Please bear in mind that 200-plus pounders from Eastern Europe were already fighting for world titles in the 90s. Only Vitali Klitschko was able to get his hands on a belt in the 90s, and the trinket he gold hold of was the WBO strap, which is the least regarded of the four major sanctioning bodies in boxing. The dimensions of this heavyweight quartet's success arguably sit at the same level as the incredible feats of the Four Kings of boxing: Leonard, Hagler, Hearns, and Duran.
With the exception that they never fought each other. I alway have thought that if Bowe really felt he could beat Lewis then not fighting him was one of the biggest strategic blunders in boxing history. If he would have win he would have had victories over a prime Holyfield and a close to prime Lewis thereby ranking him easily in the top 10 and likely ahead of Lewis and Holyfield and Tyson so that was easily one of the biggest non fights to ever happen. Had Lewis won, which l stI'll believe to be the most likely outcome, that too would have enhanced his legacy greatly.
