I think he looked ****ed against McCall. Dare I say it, in those last two or three rounds..... he ought to have had a point taken really. Williams was a decent one, but he did labour a bit IMO.
The Williams fight was quite a good display of boxing, had to slightly change the tactics as he picked a cut up over the eye, I was in the dressing rooms afterwards when the doctor put the stitches in his eye, Frank put in some very good performances over the years, Anders Eklund chopped him down like a tree, Cotetzee, Tillis- fantastic upper cut that broke the nose, Bugner - ram rod jab for eight rounds, Ribalta, Coetzer ( although a bit too heavy ). Most of Franks better performances was when George Francis became his trainer. Even though he lost the Lewis fight for a great performance just ashame that Lennox come out with excuses afterwards ( too cold etc ) instead of just saying it was one tough fight but I dug deep . As mentioned on this thread there was a lot of needle that was more personal than most realised. Lennox's brother Dennis' father is a guy called Rupert Doaries, he with Franks Masseur and had worked with Frank for years and was actually in Franks corner at Cardiff. Frank and George brought in a guy called Keith Morton, a martial expert to work on flexibility, power and speed, resulting in Frank out jabbing Lennox for 5 rounds. Frank was a much better boxer than he got credit for, not the most talented but extremley determined and always kept in shape. Part of the problem with Frank is the image he helped portray of the joking friendly boxer helped endear him with the general public alienated the boxing purists. comments regarding ' selling out' greatly upset him. It was very easy for Lennox to criticise Frank and call him an Uncle Tom but the publics acceptance of Frank certainly made it easier for other black boxers in the future.
The truth was Bruno fought Williams with a classic Bomber performance... He looked a Million Dollar early, but eventually sucked, against a fighter way past his best. That said, kudos to Frank for finding a way to win, in a fight in the 80s, he would of lost. As stated previously; there cannot be an argument, the Bombers best performance was against Bugner, not least for making Terry Marsh jump off a bridge!
McCall definitely. He was up against a guy that he could not stop who would be there to bring it on at the end. He triumphed which was not certain going in.
Its interesting that people cite the P. Cotzier fight and Wlliams context in 92/93. They followed after one another and in my view it was the best time of his career and his wins showing endurance, good body punching, inside fighting and guts to grind out wins. Muhc better fighter post 1991 and obviously the Lewis fight in the same period (he lost one round on my scorecard)
I was there, and that simply did not seem the case. He was competitive for the entire fight, but the fight was close, Bruno was not dominating! And despite everyone around me being a Bomber fan, the feeling was Lewis was going to get him sooner or later. Indeed post fight, a friend of mine, a big Bruno fan, was having a few post fight drinks bemoaning that Bruno was going backwards, saying he went 11 rounds with Witherspoon...
Performance wise I would say Lewis as he was so fired up after Lewis had goaded him and came out behind a solid jab which I think took Lewis by suprised, but satisfaction wise obviously Mccall fight seeing Frank finally win a world title is something I will never forget.
I’d pick Lewis, it was unexpected that he would do that well and was basically kicking his ass for a while there. Tyson 2 was a strange one which was probably his worst, I’m not sure why frank seemed so scared seeing as Tyson was coming of a long lay off and would likely be rusty. I guess as said earlier in the thread, he knew he could never really beat Tyson. I remember him saying “I’m gonna be a mean ******* in there”, which wasn’t that convincing. Bruno was around in a tough era.
I was in the other stand opposite the toilets, thankfully! (The Old Arms Park use to have a urinal wall that leaked down on to the fans below. And people wonder why it was rebuilt!)
His career best performance was McCall It was his one and only win in a world title fight, and his only win against an elite world class HW. Doing well against Lewis, and then getting stopped for me cannot compare to that. The result counts.
Question for those in the know about this, Smith stopped him in his 13 fight while Bruno was 20+ with matching knockouts. How much of a shock was this at the time as Smith would have been relatively unknown. Does it just come down to bad matchmaking or was the fight an eliminator of some sort? (Smith fought Holmes in his next fight for the IBF). Ironically it was Smith who knocked out Witherspoon after he beat Bruno. While Smith had moments of brilliance in his career he also turned out to be delicate around the whiskers.
Beating Rudi Pika in the amateurs , really didn,t see a lot of improvement after that win, the most robotic of fighters, didnt seem capable of absorbing the simplest of rudiments, to make him a better fighter !! granted a fine chap.
