Anyone here seen Eddie Mustafa vs Renaldo Snipes?

I gave it to Snipes, don`t remeber exactly how I scored it. Close fight, but Snipes. Mustafa came in too heavy,really thick in the mid-section and the weight really slowed him down and his punch output. At one point, Snipes gets up off his stoll between rds and yells acroos to Mustafa` you ain`t gonna win a round` ! Mustafe would have benn better served if he came in later, then he probably would have outhusteld Snipes. It was not the most exciting fight either...

 

This fight was the hinge on Eddie's career .. he was on his way to becoming a dominant light heavyweight champ with the potential to be one of the greats but his arrogance took over ... he wanted to go heavyweight, thinking the light heavyweights were too paltry for him .. however, instead of training up like Michael Spinks later did he came in fat, unprepared and over confident ... he fought a very young Snipes who spent most of the fight jabbing and running like he was in the ring against Joe Louis or something ... Mustafa did absolutely nothing but follow him around the ring, barely throwing any punches, acting as if he should be awarded rounds simply for showing up ... a very bad fight that Eddie lost ... he then had to drop weight too quickly and lost the title to Spinks in an effort that at least showed some balls ... however he was never the same ... he lost his focus and drive and wasted his enormous talent ...

 

Good point. And he looked weight drained for the fight with Spinks. Not to take anything from Spinks. Mustafa had a roll aro
ound his midsection, which leads me to believe that Mackie Shilestone was nowhere to be found ! Heavyweight was a bad idea for Mustafa...

 

I don't recall Eddie taking a backwards step in this one, but a score of 9-1 in rounds for Snipes is similar to my subjective impression at the time. Paul Cavaliere intended to score it for Snipes, but somehow mixed up the boxers while scoring his card, and Deputy Commissioner Bob Lee refused to change it to allow Cavaliere's intent, hence the bogus SD.

At one point, Snipes, continually moving and boxing around the ring perimeter, stepped on a negligent ringside photographer's stray camera, twisting his ankle and resulting in a momentary limp. Fortunately, this episode had no bearing on the outcome, although it did elicit a broadcaster comment about how strange things seemed to happen in Renaldo's bouts.

The few times Eddie caught Snipes on the ropes, he unloaded heavy artillery to the body, generating tremendous power from his center point, but these instances were too few and far between to be of much value to him. Still, it provided some good demonstrations of how he could get so much leverage in his shots.

Eddie was simply too short, too slow on the front foot, too lacking in reach, and too fat to overcome Renaldo's height, reach, conditioning and constant movement.

What proved to be the most entertaining aspect of the match was the pre-fight coverage and stare down, courtesy of Eddie's chief second, Archie Moore. The Mongoose applied his considerable powers of elocution to trash talk in a taped interview, building up Eddie's prospects of shaking up the heavyweight ranks. Then, during referee Vinnie Rainone's mid ring instructions before the opening bell, Mr. Snipes found himself staring into not one, but two pairs of eyes! For a moment, it looked as if Archie himself was the one about to square off. Then, it became quickly apparent that Eddie had gotten himself dreadfully overweight, and his sausage physique looked especially dismal in contrast to the relatively chiseled Snipes.

Renaldo never attempted to unload any venom. His stated goal was dominance and humiliation, in a bid to pitch a shutout, and he nearly succeeded. He'd been seen a couple months earlier against Cummings (where Jumbo had bitten him in a clinch), and that performance combined with this one made it seem as if he couldn't squash a mosquito. (In fact, the way he was always squinting and swiping his hands defensively over his face made it look as though he was warding off a swarm of black flies.) There was NO warning in these two bouts, or his subsequent controversial SD over Coetzee to suggest he was capable of anything like the shot which felled Holmes less than six months later.

 

Yeaaaahhh..(spit)...what a bad career move...he was sooo damned great vs Marvin johnson and Jerry Martin..then he got cocky and had delusions of grandeur with wanting to jump up to heavyweight...what an overrated thing this jump from division to division is...he just weakened and squandered himself. Eddie Mustafa could have been a much, much morew successful lightheavy champ...he gave a brief glimpse of how great he was. As for the actual Snipes fight...he had Snipes so nervous and jittery..running away from the smaller but better man..the fight truly stunk, and though Snipes actually deserved the win, it proved absolutely nothing except how a truly gifted fighter like Eddie could squnder his vast potential...what a damned mistake in judgement the whole thing was. Better he just stayed at 175 and cleaned house.