Henry Akinwande Wasted potential

You're probably the only one reckoning that.

He was fairly awful.

 

delete

 

I wasted some of my time watching him fight.

 

I tend to think that he was never a complete fighter.

 

He had the size and reach to win so many fights without having to do much more than jab-right-grab. He was like a giant Ruiz.

His knockout of Jeremy Williams was a good one, but sadly quite an isolated incident and Akinwande was generally too negative of a fighter to get any promoters interested...and after the collapse against Lewis it was even easier to feign disinterest in him.

 

There are lots of tall blokes running around but it doesn't any of them could fight. I saw Akinwande twice live and he was pretty awful. Not a lot of skills and no, not that great of hand speed.

 

How he beat Tucker, I'll never know.

 

He looked as if he forgot how to box sometimes. Clinging onto an opponent seemed to be his only form of defense. He looked decent when things were going his way though.

 

Akinwande seems to receive quite a bit of hate on this forum and I must say, it feels like it may be a little unjust. Sure he wasn't the greatest boxer of all time, but people treat him as if he didn't have a clue what he was doing.

He was made to look like a fool by Lewis a top 10 heavyweight arguably top 5 and a top 5 H2H heavyweight at the very least for the majority of people. Think of all the people that where taken out by Lennox in even worse scenarios. Golota, Grant, Morrison, Ruddock and the list goes on of men that didn't last as long as Akinwande did, there's honestly o shame in being beaten and dominated by an ATG.

Look past the Lewis loss and you've got a pretty decent resume to be fair.
Wins over the likes of Williams, Jimmy Thunder, Tony Tucker, Orlin Norris and a draw and decision over Schulz. Add onto that winning a heavyweight title and being up on the scorecards by a fair way before entering the last round with McCall.

All stacked up his career wasn't actually that bad. In fact, you could go as far to say that he had a very good career. Not everyone can be a top 10 heavyweight and I think people on the classic (Seamus:hey) seem to forget that sometimes.

Also could someone tell me why Akinwande never fought for the WBA title after beating Norris in the eliminator? I definitely think Holyfield would have beat him, but I could see him lasting the distance and certainly making it competitive purely because he was so awkward.

 

Boxing Monthly tipped him to win, so up yours.