Lewis - Holyfield 2 who really won that fight

I can agree with almost everything in your post above, other than on the root cause for the apparent poor performance of Lewis. However, I also find your point about Lewis having been criticised for being too passive, quite interesting. I too have read that same criticism made of Lewis - Although, it was levelled at him in reference to Holyfield/Lewis II; not their first match.

Anyway - further to the above, I would suggest that 'complacency' and 'aggression' are not mutually exclusive behaviours in a Boxing Ring. Quite oppositely, it is perhaps just as reasonable to say that the former could just as easily lead to the latter (amongst other traits). And, this is what I would propose occurred in Holyfield/Lewis II.

I do not think that the aggressive attitude taken by Lewis was part of any gameplan. I would say that the Lewis gameplan in the rematch had started out as being no different from that of the first fight. This is evidenced by the Lewis approach in the first four rounds of the rematch, echoing that of the first Holyfield encounter.

Only, this time, it did not seem to be as effective. Lewis was landing less jabs and Holyfield was finding himself in range and in Lewis’ face more often. This could be, in part, due to Lewis not having been as poised and alert as he had been in the first bout. But, it was probably also as much to do with Holyfield’s more gungho, bull-headed-charging-forward approach, the second time around. The conditions combined allowed for a frequent breach of the Lewis defence.

Despite winning most of the first four rounds and for whatever reason, Lewis began to lose his form in the fifth; took round six off and, by the seventh, any gameplan had gone out of the window, with Lewis showing continued disdain for Holyfield by then. Suddenly he found himself in a close bout; demoted his now rarely seen jab to a mere range-finder and weighed in with powershots with all the smug contempt he could muster.

Definitely not an optimum strategy against Holyfield, who revelled in that type of combat but, rather than it being a preconceived idea, I am very much of the view that it was rooted in Lewis’ complacent attitude towards Holyfield and having to rematch him.

Other than my own view of the match, I was also interested to read Manny Steward’s assessment of the fight, in which he more or less states that Lewis was not psychologically geared up for the rematch against an opponent that he felt he’d already owned. It’s a fair point. And, Steward goes on to estimate that Lewis was [mentally] at 50% in the Holyfield rematch. Lewis himself concurs with this.

All-in-all, I am more inclined to believe that Lewis, who tended to be reactive in his fights, didn’t really take the rematched Holyfield anywhere near as seriously as he’d taken him in their first contest. This led to a far tighter competition than it needed to have been and, to the casual observer, made Lewis look much less than he was. However and, as we appear to agree on, even the Lewis who chose the path of maximum resistance was too much for the last good fight in Holyfield.