In 1993, was there a bigger fight than Lewis vs Bowe?

I never understood why they took all those strange pictures with each other? Posing nude covering their privates, giving each other piggy back rides?? Mind Boggling really for heavyweight boxing champions.:blood

 

you've worked with Bowe? did you know Futch personally?

 

Ever see some of the stag films the Baer brothers did together? Some of those costumes were from that Abbot and Costello movie. :hey ...Weird stuff.

 

It was the biggest heavyweight fight out there. It would have been HUGE.

But I think Bowe and his manager get far too much criticism over this. I mean, I don't think there are many heavyweights in history who would have gone straight from winning the title against a champ of Holyfield's caliber in a fight like that, to taking on a Lewis-type who was coming off a win like that over Ruddock.
I just don't see any historical precedent at heavyweight to suggest team Bowe acted out of order.

And no one here has ever convinced me.

 

No I sat next to Bowe at Tyson Bruno at the MGM.

 

I agree. Everyone milks the title to make money and I think they wanted to eventually fight Lewis and too much has been made of the Olympic fight which was a BS stoppage anyway.

 

Thanks for the quality reply, i concur entirely.
If Tyson had reunited with Rooney, i think he would've been a Great fighter again, despite the deterioration from rotting in prison, like how Ali was still Great after his damaging Exile, but without the longevity of Ali.

Bright sure was a terribly moronic trainer, even compared to Snowell!

 

I'm not convinced, afterall Wlad beat "Mighty" Ruslan Chagaev & Vitali beat Kevin "Super Safety" Johnson.

Two good posts, i agree.

Cool. :admin

 

The contract Bowe signed to fight the winner of the Lewis/Ruddock match should be enough.

And you could flip this on it's head and say after beating a fighter of the quality of Ruddock why would someone what to turn around and fight Bowe?

To me when you enter into legal contracts, be it in the boxing world or in the business world, they are to be honored. Absent that; consequences will follow.

 

Lewis-Ruddock wasn't a gruelling fight like Holyfield-Bowe was. It was a two-round blow-out really.
And it wasn't for the title either. Rightly or wrongly, the champ holds the cards.
Like I say, where's the historical precedent ?

As for legal contracts, if team Bowe broke one they must have paid a price. I don't know the details. If they were LEGALLY obliged to fight Lewis, they must have paid a forfeit.
Boxing is a shitty business - just like any, I guess - and guys get muscled in to contracts and agreements, too.
Lennox Lewis made a huge deal his whole career about staying independent and having to wait for matches because he didn't want to give Don King options, etc. etc., so it's kind of ironic that Bowe has to agree to fight Lewis or Ruddock before he gets a shot at Holyfield.

I'm not saying Bowe and Newman did right, but I can't see any unbiased evidence that they did anything out of the ordinary. If the shoe was on the other foot, I'm not convinced that Lewis would have been put straight in with Bowe, not with the supposedly "safer" big-money Bruno fight looming too.

 

Well the fight between Ruddock and Lewis turned out to be easy, but that's a hindsight observation, not something predictable prior to them actually fighting.

As for the contracts themselves, AFAIK, all four participants agreed to this arrangement before they fought, and indeed there was fall out for Bowe refusing to fight Lewis, namely the forfeiture of his WBC title.

I have a different take on this, namely, even absent the legal obligation to fight Lewis, it would have been both a huge $$ fight and a huge opportunity for Bowe to redeem himself after loosing to Lewis in the olympics.

The marketing opportunities of this fight would have been huge, and as I stated on another thread I started, the legacy to Bowe had he won the fight would have been enormous.

 

You'll never quite bring yourself to calling him "White Tyson" will you?

 

Excellent reading guys, especially Lefthook & kalasinn, i enjoy your input, Lefthook that must have been quite the experience sitting next to Bowe at a Tson fight nonetheless :good