One of the very best fights of the decade is on ESPN 2 right now. Don't miss it, it was amazing.......
My favorite part of the fight is when Holyfield unleashes about 10 punches on Qawi and Dwight slips all of them, then smiles him at him and gives him a "go figure" look. That was a lot nicer than what he did to his opponents before who missed shots at him (Saad, Leon, etc..)
Excellent fight, but I actually preferred some of Holyfield's HW fights over this one (Bowe, Dokes). Holyfield sure does have some good fights with ex or future convicts.
..........:rofl I have to say, as long as I've been following this sport, I never thought of that angle.
I'm always amazed by people who name Holy's prime fights as those at heavy. They simply weren't. At cruiser, he was a machine. He had to tailor his style at heavy to become more opportunistic and workmanlike, thereby undermining his true physical gifts. As goes the song, however, people are so caught up in heavyweights they can't see the forest for the trees, and see nothing else. Makes you wonder if those claiming Tyson I or Bowe II as prime performances have ever even seen his work at cruiser.
I'm one of those who's followed Holyfield's career right from the beginning, and while certainly his prime extended back into his CW career, it also continued at HW, at least until the first Bowe fight. Sure, he was probably on the decline against Tyson, but he still had quite a bit left. I don't think he really started to slide bad until after the second Moorer fight.
...........Okay, but if someone put a gun to your head and said "Zakman, I demand you choose; which was the better Holyfield!"...........don't laugh, this happened on my block just this week........what would you say?
Y'know that's not easy - because in his early fights at CW, like the one they showed tonight, I don't think Holyfield had quite reached his peak, and also his peak performance clearly extended into his early HW fights, imo, at least until Bowe I. Look at the Dokes fight, for example. I know this is gonna sound like a cop-out, but I think Holyfield's absolute peak was really the late 80s to the early 90s, basically his later fights at CW and his early fights at HW.
.........That's fair. I've always maintained that Holy's rise to fame in the heavyweight division came at the point where he was at his absolute physical peak. That's all well and good, but it also meant that because he was still a naturally smaller man, he had to modify his game to an extent, and rely more on guile and guts as opposed to sheer skills. That's why I can't consider his heavyweight outings representative of his best. He was physically compromised. Muscles or not, he was never really a heavyweight. That kind of weight must be natural, and it never was for him. He did what he did at heavyweight because of heart and intelligence and a lot of skill, but the bottom line is the overall effect it had on his opponents was FAR more pronounced on the cruiserweights. He was a plucky, gutty, heady fighter at heavyweight. He was a monster at cruiser. There really is no comparison.
