Bowe would have crushed Lews in the early 90's

I haven't heard any analysts or boxing experts to make that claim. Everyone knows Bowe ducked Lewis so I don't see how he would have beat him let alone get in the ring with him.

 

Because he wanted lucrative fights against such fighters as that Cuban with the mohawk :yep :rofl What a challenge! Rock Newman ruined any chance for Bowe to be anything more than a footnote in the HW history books right there. The only reason his name is still brought up at all is his 3 fights with Holyfield & 2 against Golota, and those Golota fights don't exactly flatter him either.

 

I've been saying this for YEARS. The Lewis boosters like to portray Bowe as being "afraid" of Lewis - which is essentially just a direct regurgitation of Lewis-camp propaganda of the period, and has no objective support whatsoever.

The truth is that Lewis was by no means ready for Bowe in the early 90s. Some of the more reasonable Lewis fans will admit this, but most seem to buy into the propaganda. I suspect these are people who likely to have been too young to actually experience these events WHILE they were going on.

Bowe peaked earlier than Lewis and, as we all know, did stay at that peak for long. Lewis was still green in 92-93, despite his impressive win over Ruddock - who was WAY overrated at the time. Bowe had simply beaten a better class of fighter, was more developed and complete.

Unfortunately, Bowe and Newman went for the easy money against Dokes and then were gonna take on Mercer, who blew his shot by losing to Fergusson. Then they wanted the Holyfield rematch. A mega-match with Lewis would have been next - the plan seems to have been to take these other fights and make as much money as possible and then take on Lewis in a big bucks unification. Unfortunately, Evander upset their applecart.

I wish it had happened though. An early 90s Bowe would have beaten Lewis up and knocked him OUT. Wish it had happened.

 

Lewis would have won by late stoppage or UD........he was too smart for Bowe, he would have had to weather the storm, but in the end he would have prevailed

 

I agree Bowe would have had a better chance against Lewis back in 92-93 than he would have had a few years later....bottom line is that thanks to Riddick Bowe the fight never happened, and Lewis has a legacy that out-shines the likes of Bowe, Holy and Tyson by miles :yep

 

I think it depends when they fought. Early '90s, Lennox was a bit sloppy and green. But by the time he fought Briggs in '98, u could tell he had really put it together.

Problem w/Bowe is he really didn't have a prime and didn't have a long career. For the sake of arguement, let say we're talking about the Bowe-Holyfield I fighter.

Prime Bowe vs. Pre-'98 Lennox -- Bowe UD; Bowe's jab wins it for him
Prime Bowe vs. '98 Lennox -- Lennox by brutal stoppage 5/6

 

Lewis had horrendous balance back then, that is unarguable, imo. However, the Bruno fight was an awful, awful performance for him. It was an off-night - it really, really was.

Did Bowe duck him? we'll never know for sure, but Bowe never really fought anyone 'live' apart from Holy - even if, like Golota, they turned out to be good, they were considered easy wins beforehand (another example is Hide - who Bowe called out years before they fought, just as he was being questioned as to whether he would fight Lewis).

the fight to remember is the Ruddock one. To this day, I think it is the best he ever looked. This was the controlled aggression that we would have seen more of but for the Mccall loss and Steward training. Not a better fighter overall to the one that Steward developed him into, as he became a more consistent one - Wlad is very similar in this respect.

But the Lewis that beat Ruddock would have handled Bowe comfortably, imo. remember, bowe really imposed his size on holy, which he couldn't do vs Lewis, and I don't believe for a second that Bowe had LL's firepower.

Lewis would have stopped Bowe in a decent, but anticlimactic bout.

the thing I also liked about the LL around the time of the Ruddock fight was his humility - he claimed for about a year or two he simply wasn't on these guys' levels, and stepped up at just the point he said he would (that said, he always fought decent competition as he stepped it up). he certainly respected Holy more than Bowe, though - he predicted Holy would win the first bout and was pretty excited that Bowe won - because he genuinely thought he could beat him.

One thing we know for certain: LL's camp never exuded any doubts about the winner in a Lewis-Bowe fight, we cannot say that decisively about Bowe's camp.

 

Nah, watch the Ruddock fight, and much of the Tucker fight, thats how good Lewis could box back then.
Yeah Bruno had a great jab that night, he had a very long reach. He hated Lewis with a passion at the time, so for him it was a grudge fight and he really put everything into it but no, Lewis wasnt lucky to catch him, it was actually about evenly scored by the 7th round and Bruno had sweeling on his eye too and Lewis did what he always did, sucker a guy into coming close and throwing then come out his crouch with a left hook, watch the Briggs fight he did the exact same thing, it just happened to land right on the buttn against Bruno. Rathe rthan cringe you should notice 2 fighters giving it their all and battling through eye damage and showing great heart.
Other than Holyfield, Bowe hadnt fought anyone worthy of your vie wof him. Bowe always had flaws and a sLewis said on the commmentary of Bowe Holyfield, Evander made a mistake by coming inside where Bowe was good, he should have jabbed and moved and thats exactly what Lewis would have done, plus Bowe never had any footwork, he couldnt throw an accurate right, he is overated, who else did he ever beat? Herbie Hide!

 

The problem for Bowe is that psychologically he was unerved by Lewis, you only need to watch the ringside fracas after the Bowe Holyfield fight to see Bowe get in his face then sink away when he discovered Lewis was unmoved and told Bowe eyeball to eyeball, "You aint nothing to me Bowe, you should watch your mouth, Im gonna knock you out".

 

People like to make out that Steward made a huge difference to Lewis. He didn't. Sure he made some nice technical improvements to Lewis's style but 90% of the fighter remained the same. Lewis was a better fighter for sure but he wasn't that much better.

Bowe with hindsight did not turn out to be a mentally strong person. A good example of this is him dropping out of the US Marines after a week I think it was. Therefore, I still think there was some residual doubt in Bowe's mind from the Olympics. Rock Newman urged Bowe to dump the WBC title rather than face Lewis for a good reason. Some will have you believe that this was to generate interest in a bigger match down the road but this really doesn't make sense. It's well known how fickle boxing can be. No promotor/manager is ever going to pull out of a signed and sealed multi-million dollar fight just to generate bigger interest down the road. It's all too apparent how such plans can be derailed easily by a fighter losing a tune-up match.

IMO Newman/Bowe pulled out of the Lewis fight because of the manner of Lewis's victory over Ruddock. Had Lewis struggled then Bowe would have made the fight. People who then say that Bowe would have KO'd Lewis are ignoring the reasons for Lewis's 2 KO losses. Basically Lewis was overconfident and sloppy in one and out of shape in another. Those 2 conditions would not apply to a Bowe fight because Lewis would be focused and well trained. The OP mentioned the Bruno fight. Lewis did not regard Bruno as a great threat and consequently Lewis struggled in the fight. Lewis would be unlikely to treat Bowe the same way.

Could Bowe KO Lewis? Sure he could. Do I think it would have happened? Not a chance. It's my opinion that Lewis busts up Bowe and stops him by round 8.

 

I go back-and-forth with this matchup. Lewis improved after his loss to McCall in 1994 when he hired Manny Steward, who helped Oliver exploit LL's bad balance.

Maybe Lennox had a mental edge on Bowe because of the Olympics and Bowe ducked him b/c of it, but I think it was mainly Newman going for the easy HBO dollars.

On the other hand, Bowe rarely fought any big punchers, and his defense was poor. The biggest punchers he faced were probably Hide and Golota. Hide hurt Bowe everytime he landed somewhat clean. Golota rocked and dropped Bowe numerous times. Gonzalez had a nice KO record. Hardly landed anything of note though.

 

nice assessment, but I do think Steward worked on LL's jab and balance. he became a more complete fighter - much more adapatable - but rarely had to use that skill because he could control the fight with his jab so well. In another thread someone asked who has/had the best jab of recent years - i've never seen a fighter control so many fights with the jab alone.

I totally agree with your Bruno assessment - and Bruno is much better than whoever you would call Bowe's second best victim.