The first obvious signs of decline I remember seeing took place in the Holyfield III bout. Golota was next, and it was totally obvious by that point. He was just a shell for the Golota rematch. Seemed his career just went off a cliff during that span. The beginning of his prime is a little more difficult to pinpoint. Somewhere between Rodolfo Marin and Pierre Coetzer I suppose.
1992 was the year it all came together for Bowe. On that night he was a great fighter but,unfortunately,because of laziness started the descent from '93 onwards.
Peak Bowe was brief like 2 fights but he still looked good for the Gonzalez fight only a year before Golota beat the stuffing out of him. He was too fat for the first Golota fight, and then lost too much weight for the rematch. He looked awful in the rematch. Coincidentally when he fought Gonzalez a year earlier Big George was ringside calling for the fight to be stopped around the 6th claiming that the sustained beating Gonzalez was taking could have long term effects. Only a year later I believe the ref should have stopped the beating Bowe was taking against Golota either in the 7th round or in between the rounds before round 8. Of course Larry Merchant and Jim Lampely refuted Foreman talking about how heavyweights rarely ever get hurt from a single fight.
I think Bowe already on the slide when he met hide. I thought he would steamroll hide in a couple of rounds but he was getting beaten to the punch by hide an even though hide was one of the quickest heavyweights around both hand an feet it was still a big surprise seeing the effects that hides punches were having on bowe. Not even holyfield punches seen to shake Bowe in their first 2 fights like Hide did. Luckily for Bowe Hide had a glass jaw an after the first knock down the fight was as good as ever but I think the result masked bowes deterioration gonzales was trash an the fights only selling point was how well he had done against Bowe when they were amateurs. It made Bowe look good but he didn’t even have to put much effort to win.
