Yeah sure, Lewis was taken to the shed by two Palookas with ONE shot.........Bowe sucked it up twice against Golata and made him quit twice......Bowe was shot beyond shot in the second fight and the Polish Mental midget still could not get it done.... Why do you think Golata kept going low especially in the first fight ? Because Bowe took everything Golata dished out but kept on coming............no low blows and Golata gets ko'ed or quits, fact not fiction...........well, it is actual fact , Golata quit twice and never ever won a meaningful fight in his career, could have would have but he never did, hell, he got waxed by a shot stoned Tyson.
So you are saying Golata was not that good, correct? I do not think he was either. So do not have a difficult fight with the guy. So why didn't Bowe destroy the guy like everyone thought he was going to? Bowe was the prohibitive betting favorite going in. He had 2 chances, So we are definitely not talking about climbing mount mckinley to get a win. And consider that same Golata that lasted a grand total of 4 rounds between Lewis, Brewster & Tyson. Collectively. And Bowe was pulling his same old crap in there against Golata as well. Lots of rabbit punches. Hitting on the break. Lots of low blows---he just throws 2 follow up shots quickly after landing the low blows. But he was landing low himself. What a guy like Golata does is to answer back with illegalities of his own & does not bother to wait for ref warnings. So if you think now or thought at the time, the guy was going to pull a Coetzer or a Mathis, you hadn't watched enough Golata fights. He just fought a guy that would retaliate and would fight dirty himself. But that doesn't dismiss not being able to capitalize on Andrew Golata's defense, does it? Other opponents sure did. Why didn't Riddick Bowe?
I watched some of this fight today. I remember being surprised at how bad Bowe looked. He just looked lethargic. Golata fought great though. Unreal how he lost both fights. I do remember one fight where Bowe sounded disturbingly bad in a post fight interview. He sounded ok before the fight and then after, he slurred everything. It shocked me. Bowe never had much defense. He just leaned in a lot and took shots. Maybe they were just jabs but he got hit. Biggs stung him I think. Tubbs landed some clean shots. He just didn’t have a style that let him avoid shots like a Larry Holmes. Golota was on his game though.
because his head would not get out of the way? LOL teasing i dunno man it was bowes time to lay down and golota was on the come up ..it happens ..
sometimes it happens like that there doesn't need to be volumes of books wrote about the bowe golota fights ..unless you wanna talk about a guy getting decked in the golden nuggets ... it was text book historical ..one man on the way down one on the way up fight .. we've seen countless of them .. dempsey and sharkey woulda been like that had dempsey not got sharkey in the balls and then leveled him with the sneak shot .. i mean i don't give a rip* i still love dempsey it's just what happened lmao
I think Bowe thought of himself as a puncher. I mean he had power but maybe he should’ve learned to use his reach and move a bit. Might’ve prolonged his career some.
Fighters react differently to punishment and at what pace they decline, and also in terms of brain damage. It’s unpredictable. Bowe always had leaky defense from the outside. Golota really exposed it. Beyond just the poor defense, just look at Bowe’s punches in those fights. They were slow and ponderous. He was just slower and declined all around. Bowe did not look all that sharp after 92/93, even before Golota. It’s a little hard to judge his performances against Dokes & Ferguson since the opposition was so overmatched. He was 11 pounds heavier in the Holyfield rematch and looked like flab. He still threw a lot of punches and looked okay physically in that, he lost a very close fight to a great on Holyfield who fought one of his best fights. But after that? He generally just looked sloppy all around against Mathis, Donald, and Hide. The Gonzalez fight was the best he had looked in awhile.
Because he was fat and sluggish as hell in their first and in addition to that he was already showing signs of brain damage likely due to his trillogy with Holyfield so when he got his ass whooped by Golota he probably received even more brain damage and because of this he looked even worse and just as uncoordinated in the rematch despite trimming down to 235lb. Also note that Bowe was the first person to knock Golota down and he was having immense success in round 4 of their rematch but Golota kept nutshotting him with combinations after Bowe dropped him and this obviously takes it's toll. I have no doubt in my mind that a peak Bowe would have stopped Golota
Absolutely. It's just too bad Bowe's peaked could be measured in months instead of years. To me Bowe barely edged Holy in the second fight and should have been given the Champion's Benefit of a Doubt. I didn't think Holy won that in consummate fashion, he just stayed busier. But Bowe was pretty disgraceful in having let himself go for that fight. I still blame a good portion of Bowe's decline on Newman. Had Newman not talked him into the TERRIBLE idea of trashing the belt, had he instead gotten him a great payday with Lewis, things might have been very very different. I believe Bowe would have gotten way up for Lennox. As it was he knocked out a couple has beens and by the time of Holy 2 lost a lot of motivation. He did look great against Rodriguez, which made the Golota fights even more puzzling.
For the same reason reason James DeGale took a beating from Chris Eubank Jr , a guy he would have soundly beaten 3 years prior.
A combination of styles. Wear and tear. Don’t forget Bowe used to lose huge amounts of weight for a fight. I remember him saying weight doesn’t worry him as he’s a big man and can carry it. He’s also human and finally got to him as did the fights and like I said styles.
I think it’s reasonable to say Riddick was already just a bit worn down by 28..but there is the argument that the Holyfield series had also made Bowe look a bit better than he really was. you take away Holyfield, a guy Riddick had huge physical advantages over (who at that time had yet to beat a good young contender at heavyweight,) and there is not that much on record that shows Bowe had beaten live guys as big as he was. Rodriguez was not proven as a pro. Old man Witherspoon did as good a job on the Cuban as Bowe had. Hide was a little guy with no real form at elite level. Dokes, Ferguson, Tubbs were all has beens. Mathis,Cooper, Seldon and Coetzer were kinda run of the mill wins. maybe Larry Donald was the best guy Bowe beat after Holyfield? If we are really searching for an explanation, Bowe only has one win over a reasonably sized top grade contender who came to fight and it’s only Larry Donald. It’s not like Bowe has credible wins over guys like Razor Ruddock, Tony Tucker, Frank Bruno, Ray Mercer that would make how he fared with Golota seem less shocking.