Henry Akinwande: re boxing experts

i believe he was disqualified for holding against lennox lewis and was giving boxing a bad name at the time. even roy jones mentioned him after his win against montell griffin. shame as he is 6"7 and couldnt even jab against lewis which shows the difference in class.

 

Nowhere near as bad as some would lead you to believe based on his Lennox performance, which of course is the only fight many have seen him in.

Against Lennox, he was just scared to death and held the entire time.

But I have seen him on a few occassions, and is just a good fighter with a ton of tools that couldn't get over the mental game. He was content on just being a "euro" fighter.

 

well he was the WBO heavyweight champion before taking on lewis, so was at the top level and deserved to be there. he just ****ed up big time when he did get there! tried to make a comeback recently and at his age it wasnt happening.

 

He wasnt a Euro fighter, most of his fights were in the states. He was hardly known in the UK.

 

He beat this Russian guy Zolkin on the Tyson/Holy I undercard. At the time the Russian fighter was a novelty in the pro ranks. Now it's the standard at heavyweight. Funny how things work out.

Akinwande had a decent career and beat a handful of solid fighters. He took a lot of criticism for the Lewis fight yet managed to get a title fight with Holyfield the following year but he had to pull out with Hepatitis if memory serves me correct.

 

Akinwande was a guy no one wanted to fight. A boring, defensive minded fighter with great height, a good jab, and enough power to keep you honest. He had a solid chin too.

Akinwande was robbed into a draw vs Shultz.

 

Awkinwande was a decent fighter, not top notch, but not Julius Long material either. My favorite fight of his, was his match against McCall a few years back, a fight he was winning by a decent margin, but come the 10th round, McCall dropped the hammer on him, he melted like an icecream cone on hot july day.

 

See for yourselves:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuWIKz-SUBc

 

Some would have you believe he dropped Lewis when they fought. Interestingly they're the same people who criticise Lewis for never getting up off the canvas to win :huh

 

Aside from his lack of power, limited skills, poor stamina (the cause of the KO loss against McCall) and worst of all nerves so lost they had their own Indiana Jones film, he was ok. He must have been very awkward to fight with his size and strength, because he made numerous very good boxers look terrible. Even Lewis was looking ragged by the end of their "fight".

From what I've seen of him, if you gave him space to work (like Schulz and Zolkin did) he was an effective if unaesthetically pleasing boxer. However, if you put him under pressure and forced the action into the inside, as Lewis and McCall did, he either had to hold on or take a beating. McCall laid some serious hurt on Akinwande simply by rushing in true to his nickname and getting to work on the inside; Akinwande didn't want to get DQ'd again and thus didn't hold on to quite the grotesque degree he did against Lewis; consequentally, he got KTFO in impressive style.

Basically he was a good boxer with fundamental flaws which it took a very good boxer to capitalise on.

 

I don't believe he would of beat Lewis, but the size of the ring didn't help him. They fought in was one of the smallest rings that I have seen. There was no room for these two huge guys to move around and box!

 

He was to faced Holyfield, but the fight was cancelled few days before the fight 'cuz the diesese but the real reson was probobly the money, nobody wanted to pay for this crap.