Could Bowe have beaten Lewis

So the '93 fight didn't happen because Newman & Maloney couldn't reach an agreement regarding purses. The '94 fight didn't happen because Lewis lost in a shocking early upset to McCall. So both times, Bowe was not personally to blame for the Superfight coming off. I'm sick of all this "Bowe was scared" bull****.

You appear to be a Bowe-Hater with this ridiculous nonsense statement. Tubbs was a wily veteran with fast hands, boxing skills & brains. Bowe clearly beat him 8-2 or 7-3. To say Tubbs won shows insanity or blindness. If Tubbs had came to fight on the inside like he did against Tyson, he wouldn't have lasted more than 3 rounds, but instead he boxed in a negative survival fashion.

Against Golota, if not shot, Bowe was at least Physically Past-Prime & Damaged Goods. In the first fight he was way too heavy at a fat 252lbs, & in the rematch he was badly weight drained, because he'd used Crash Dieting to reach 235lbs. Both times, he had ballooned up hugely before training camp, & had to spend the entire camp desperately trying to lose weight, like he was at Fat Camp. Years of abusing his body by over-eating between fights & taking big punishment in 3 brutal wars with Holyfield can't have done him any good. Besides, i recall Bowe kept coming forward while absorbing hellacious punishment like a true warrior & made the Foul Pole quit both times, with his pressure & determination. Golota even said Riddick was the toughest man he ever fought.

 

Totally bull**** premature stoppage.

 

If bowe fought lik ethe 1st holyfield fight / riddick bowe woulda kicked lennoc lewiss ass

 

Seriously man its hard to debate with you. Do you know the actual time line of these fights? Your posts are so far off base. :blood

 

The '93 fight didn't happen because Newman/Bowe weren't willing to negotiate beyond the ridiculous offer of 15% and wouldn't accept it going to purse bids. They ducked the fight to make less money elsewhere

I'm not a Bowe hater, I just think the talk of him being a more finished product than Lewis is ridiculous, when you consider he ate punches to land punches and he was so easy to outjab and/or beat to the punch

Actually you have to be clearly biased having Bowe beating Tubbs by such a wide margin, at best Bowe won 6-4, I had it 6-4 to Tubbs as did plenty of others.

As for Bowe being shot against Golota - no evidence and he was actually coming off arguably his career best win in the Holyfield rubber match. He was out of shape and not 100% but he wasn't shot. As for Bowe starving himself down to 235 - no evidence of it, he looked in shape and reporters reported seeing him looking quicker with his roadwork. Bowe knew he had to be better in the Golota rematch and trained accordingly. Golota was just the much more skilled outboxer and Bowe didn't have the jab or defense to compete at that range. Bowe showed a hell of a fight but he was beat into retirement by Golota and was never the same after

Perhaps, his legs were a little bit wobbled though. The bout shows the difference in speed, power, strength, and you can see Lewis easily lands his best powerpunches on Bowe and can hurt him. Without the head guard those punches would make him even more wobbly. I think Newman knew there would be a repeat of the Olympics

 

Lewis was knocked around the ring by Bruno and then knocked out by Mcall. What other proof do you need that he wasnt ready?? Because he knocked out Razor Ruddock, he was the finished article? Wake up. Bowe didnt lose to fighters of that caliber his entire career even when he was as green as Lewis was. His toughest challenge in your eyes was a one sided win against a former champion who he beat the crap out of in sparring regularly (Tubbs).

 

Bowe wasn't even getting in with fighters that calibre bar Holyfield who fought Bowe's fight, whenever Holyfield chose to box he outboxed Bowe. Bowe was outboxed by Tubbs/Holyfield/Golota, Hide landed everything on him at will

Biggs gave Bowe a close fight, similar to Lewis-Bruno, Lewis dominated Briggs from the start. So how is Bowe better developed than Lewis when Lewis performs far better against the same man?

Lennox's performance against Bruno wasn't a bad 1 it was an even fight before Lennox adjusted and found his range, Bruno outjabbed pretty much every opponent including Spoon/Smith/McCall. You critisize Bruno for having an even fight with Bruno before ad******g and destroying his man and don't criticise Bowe for having even fights with Tubbs/Briggs

Who says Bowe does better against Bruno? Bowe had nightmares against good jabbers and Bruno would be 1 of the best he faced. Bruno would be the hardest hitter Bowe faced too

As for Lewis losses, yes but they were fluke moments when he had no respect for his opponents, 1 was premature, 1 was at altitude when he wasn't at his best. As far as I'm concerned Bowe has 4 losses of his own - Tubbs, Golota x2, Zumbrum

 

Just a horrible post not even worth responding too. :hi:

 

Could he? Yes he could. Would he? I do think so

 

Yes Bowe could beat Lewis

 

I wasnt using a timeline - just illustrating that because fighter A beats fighter B beat Fighter C doesnt mean A beat s C

The bottom line is, I think Lewis would have beat Bowe when they were supposed to meet - you dont , No biggie.

One thing - you are an excellent. knowledgable poster with many insights that are a credit to this forum - but you have never changed my opinion of Bowe & Lewis and although erudite, you have not come close to believing what you believe about Bowe unless I took a massive leap of Faith

 

1. Allot of people had Tubbs winning the fight, not just me, you're clearly a Bowe fan, look up threads on the fight where other fans have posted their cards, it was close either way

2. Maybe it was his best performance, the rubber wasn't far off though if we're honest. I'm not sure what I make of Holy's excuses in Bowe3/Moorer tbh, he usually has an excuse, so that raises question marks

3. I think the first and second fights reduced his punch resistance against Golota, combined with the fact he was taking none stop punches against a SHW. And he still didn't get ko'd so really his punch resistance wasn't too bad was it?

4. Disagree, Hide was the biggest puncher he faced and he never went down, Holy hurt him but that was a slugfest against an ATG growing in strength from their earlier bouts - where he was hurt

5. So in answer to Bowe being owned by Lewis when they fought and him clearly ducking the fight in the Pros you make up an imaginery duck from Lewis to Bowe? Didn't happen, Lewis would have litrally jumped at the fight for fair money, Bowe ran from it because he wasn't in Lennox's class and knew he'd get ko'd and feasted on bums for the main part before getting owned by Golota who Lewis destroyed in a round

 

I see Bowe giving Lewis a methodical beatdown, with a few anxious moments, before stopping him in the 6th.

 

1. How did you score Golota-Byrd? Please tell me you scored it for Byrd, it would help me understand why you oddly think Tubbs beat Bowe. If, like me you scored it for Golota, then i'm very confused by your strange scoring indeed!

2. Call them "excuses" if you like. How else do you explain Holy suddenly going from being fresh & giving out a beating, to being completely exhausted like a corpse? Against Moorer, it was obvious Holy really did have an injured left shoulder & a collapsed left ventricle of the heart. He was listless, lethargic & appeared both ill & injured like he stated.

3. No doubt Bowe's first 24 brutal round of war with Holy chipped away at his punch resistance. Also, his conditioning was clearly poor from his physique/toning for fights after the Gonzalez bout. This effected his punch resistance, stamina, reflexes & timing i believe. I would guess his ballooning up in weight between fights reached new levels, hence his worse conditioning from that point on. Obviously the first brutal war with Golota, in which he absorbed combinations of bombs from a roided-superheavy while he was in visibly awful overweight shape, did bad permanent damage to his body too (maybe more serious damage than ever). Which is another reason, along with the weight-draining, that his punch resistance had plummeted for the rematch. Perhaps that first Golota fight pushed him past a point of no return, because his conditioning was very poor while he took a hellacious beating from a puncher, so no matter how hard he trained after that, his body of too damaged to be anything remotely close to Physically Prime. Yet he was still vastly tougher than the average tough fighter in late '96, i acknowledge this.

4. Arguable. Then again, Hide hurt him no worse than Holy did in '95. You say Holy was growing in strength from previous bouts, well i would say since the first bout. The Holy of Bowe II was fully bulked & the last Physically Prime version of Evander (before heart problems removed him from his Prime), & Bowe absorbed his best combination punching very well.

5. I didn't say that. You're twisting my words because you're obssessed with the concept of "ducking". To me, it didn't happen in '93 due to greedy managerial financial politics, nothing to do with a fighter being "scared" & "ducking" another. Bowe is not a smart businessman like Lennox, he was just a puppet of Rock Newman. It's a huge shame Lewis got bowled-over by Oliver McCall in September '94 as a tune-up for the Bowe fight which was HBO signed for 2 months later. If Lewis had fought anyone else instead before Bowe in '94, including Foreman & Moorer, he would've won easily & got his Superfight with Bowe in December.