Frank Bruno vs Evander Holyfield

Come on choklab, you should know better than read too much into this. This fight told us nothing about Bruno except he can knockout a guy with a good name who wasn't there to put up resistance.

[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60vHxJ0QMfU[/url]

The modern day equivalent?

[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLyk5O2UnAQ[/url]

 

come on mongoose, liakhovich was seven years away from being relevent to the heavyweight title landscape and could not win a fight.

gerrie Cotzee was coming off a decent win on paper (by your own admission) since being a world champion one fight earlier.

there is no comparison.

 

I was ringside for the Coetzee fight, he didnt look like he had done much training , and had put on nearly 18 pounds since beating Dokes.
Bruno got him at the right time ,which is good management.

 

choklab, I agree that Bruno was dangerous fighter and had power and decent skills, but he lacked something to be on the level of Tyson, Lewis or Holyfield.

I think it's his stamina problem which was shown against Smith and Witherspoon, and his bad recuperative abilities as I can remember only 1 fight where he was badly hurt but went on to win the fight -- against Cummings when Bruno was nearly knocked out but the bell rang to end the round. In other fights, if you hurt Bruno, you'll win.

 

Coming off a decent win on paper doesn't mean much, if you got the snot beat out of you and showed up for your next fight looking for nothing but a retirement check. Everyone is telling you how it went down, and if you don't believe the posters here, just read the observations from the time.

But regardless of Coetzee's relevance, the point is he was not the man who beat Dokes as you tried to argue. The man who beat Dokes was motivated, in shape, and had the use of his signature right hand. The guy Bruno beat was Coetzee in name only.

Claiming Bruno destroyed the guy who knocked out the guy who would give Holyfield a tough fight, is flawed to begin with, even more so when you consider how much Coetzee declined between the Dokes and Bruno fight.

 

Yeah, by that twisted "logic", you could say Bruno knocked Coetzee out in 1, Coetzee was equal with Pinklon Thomas, who beat Tim Witherspoon .... so Bruno's a clear level above Witherspoon !

Of course in 1986 there were a few lunatics this side of the Atlantic who believed Bruno was going to knock 'spoon out in 1 round too !

 

Look, I accept it was Coetzees last fight. Maybe it was the night where it all caught up with him? Maybe he expected Bruno to be a hyped upstart and did not train for a long fight? how will we ever know coetzee thought it was going to be his last fight? He was only 30. He could not have been his best, granted, but with the kind of fast start Bruno launched at him we will never know what he had left. I suspect he would have been at least as good as he was versus Tillis and on that form that is a good win for Bruno.

Gerrie did not get Kayoed because he was so bad. We never got a chance to see what he had. It's like saying max Schmeling against joe Louis let himself down, he never got going! How about Tubbs vs Tyson? Williams vs Tyson? Walcott vs Marciano? Patterson vs Liston? It is hard to prove the ambition of a one round kayo victim, but you can read into a fighters form. And most of them were not that bad. They got caught early.

 

Walcott/Maricano II is the only analogy on there even remotely on point.

 

Being three years removed from your best win with only having recorded one victory during that time frame doesn't bode well for being at one's best. Especially when your only recent victory was against a gate keeper who everybody and their brother was beating.

 

Well I was not one of them. I feel Bruno was that level though. He just lacked seasoning because he was too good for one level of fighter and too good for the next level to want to fight him ...and that left a gap between what he got to fight and the champions. That was what let him down against Witherspoon not Witherspoon being that great. Same with Cooney, a competative distance fight would have served him better before Holmes than the one round blow outs that got him and bruno title fights.

Bruno was better after witherspon but was never going to beat Tyson. Lewis was 50-50 but I bet on Lewis to win and won money.

 

I know what you mean lol. Seriously, Frank always found a way to lose his big fights but he was capable of hurting Evander because he had the big right and a good uppercut.

I can see him having early success, even flooring Holyfield; trouble is Holyfield would've recovered and pummelled Bruno to a standstill between 8 and10 in my opinion.

 

Exactly. And there's other factors like having multiple breakages and operations on the right hand that got him to the dance, leaving it useless in his next two fights.

Or that said gate keeper was said to have dished out a bad beating on him in that losing effort in his own backyard.

 

Tubbs showed ambition against Tyson? The slob put weight on in order to get fined so that he had an alibi for losing. How many years past being relevent were Holmes, Thomas and Tubbs against Tyson? These are seen as good wins for Tyson, in fact that are good wins, but I think neither one of them had fought a rated contender or even a gate keeper since before Tyson even turned pro.

 

Yeah Coetzee was finished.

 

Thomas and Tubbs were nowhere near as inactive going into the Tyson fight as Coetzee was going into the Bruno match. Neither of them had undergone major surgeries which effected their natural abilities and neither had suffered a bad beating from a man of Greg Page's caliber. Tubbs came in over weight, but I can't think of too many fights where he didn't, so the observation is kind of moot.