Evander Holyfield vs Ridck Bowe - the second fight

It was a close fight. I have no problem with a draw or either man winning a close decision.

I remember Holyfield landing the more telling shots, combinations that certainly caught the eyes of the judges.

Bowe did the more unspectucal work, mostly with the jab.

 

I couldn't disagree more with some of these posts. In fact, I'm taken aback by how many people thought Bowe won.. I totally, and completely felt the opposite way. I felt Holyfield clearly won, and saw him control the fight in it's entirety.

 

Haven't seen it for a while now, but seen the fight about 5 or 6 times and I had Holy winning. But it was close.

 

This was a great fight... Bowe`s performance is often over looked in this bout. It was very close could`ve gone either way by a point or two. Holyfield fought a great fight looked about as good as he ever did. He boxed a lot more then he did in the first fight but still fought hard at points. Bowe bullied him at parts and won a number of the rounds were very one sided in his favor. Many people have claimed Bowe was out of shape in this fight. I don`t think so.... Yes, Bowe was heavier then he was in the first fight and didn`t look as fit but he was ready. Bowe kept a torrent pace throughout and even came on late winning the last round clearly. The fan man interruption some may think would`ve been good for Bowe because the long break that insued but thats not the case. Its really difficult to continue fighting after a long break like that, it messes up you`re rhythm and some of the adrenal wears off but somehow they both picked up where they left off. It was a very good fight and both guys at that stage in their careers wouldn`t be easy for anyone to beat.

 

I have no idea how you can say Holyfield controlled the fight in its entirety.

Rid**** Bowe threw 756 punches in their rematch, landing 353.

Holyfield threw 514 punches (242 fewer punches thrown than Bowe) and landed 253 (100 fewer punches than Bowe landed).

Both landed slightly below 50% of their shots ... Bowe just threw 242 more and landed 100 more.

AND he was the defending champion.

Find any other fight where the challenger threw 240 fewer shots and landed 100 fewer shots than the champ ... and someone claimed the challenger CLEARLY CONTROLLED the whole fight.

That's nonsense.

Holyfield performed better than he did in the first fight, where Bowe pounded him so hard Holyfield retired afterward.

But Holyfield didn't clearly win anything that night.

 

Mike McCallum outlanded James Toney by more than 100 punches and lost. Fights are scored round to round, remember that. A couple of high output rounds can change the punch stats in a hurry... it doesn't mean that every round was like that though.

 

Currently re watching it as we speak. Bowe looked tired after the 4th, bit obviously a second wind would have kicked I. At some point. Evander had excerted a lot less energy than he would of normally, so I'm failing to see how this benefits him. Holyfield clearly took the 7th despite the fan man incident. I have him 4-3 up and he's looked very comfortable, could argue he may have pipped one more. You know what I find funny in this fight is the only time Evander has had real success is when he hasn't being trying to box as such, he's just done a better job at pacing himself. It's actually Bowe who should have been doing more to keep Evander off him, he has big advantages in certain areas and has failed to utilise them, generally speaking Holyfield's ringmanship has impressed me more than Bowe's

 

And for that compubox numbers being thrown out there. I do not discredit them, but I don't need to look at stats to tell me who is winning rounds.

 

Ok so it was pretty close, I had Evander by 2, maybe 1 due to the 7th. A really good mesh of styles, it's definitley up there as one of the most bizarre fights I've watched. A lot of respect to Bowe fore being gracious in defeat at the end, especially after Holyfield landed a big left after the fight was done. Manny tackling Evander to the floor was just the icing on the cake

 

I'm not sure if he would have been tougher than the best Tyson but I do agree with the rest of your post.