Michael Dokes, early 80s or late 80s?

Both. He was a fantastically talented fighter with real heart.

 

I never more impressed by Dokes than when he gave a young, hungry Holyfield, a beautiful fight.

 

Imagine if Dokes, Witherspoon, Tubbs, Tucker, Cooney and Biggs all stayed off the drugs, and Page stayed off the twinkies.

Anyway, very early on, before the coke go him.

 

Early 80's thru to the Weaver rematch.

The truth is Dokes never had a true peak. As he came on and entered the big fights he started hitting coke etc. His fight against Holyfield showed he could have been a damn good heavyweight. Take a look at his legs at that career stage, looked great from the waist up but below it he looked like old man river.

 

what did you think of his power? IMO as talented as he was, even if he had stayed drug free, he would never have easy fights because he lacked a big punch. This would mean every fight would take something out of him since he would need to work really hard to win fights.

 

I thought he went from quite feather fisted early to quite a respectable puncher when he matured a bit physically. By the Weaver fights i thought he was punching pretty well.

 

Early Dokes was hot and cold. He surely put a hiding on my hero Tom Fischer on the Ali-Holmes undercard and he blasted out Lynn Ball and John L. Gardner too in dramatic fashion as well. I thought he had more potential but older Dokes was a smarter fighter to be sure and maybe more disciplined too?

 

The first one - until the drugs and womanizing caught up with him.

That version had great foot movement great handspeed and decent pop.

The late 80s version was still very good but the foot speed was greatly diminished . This made for entertaining fights.

The drugged out version of 1984-1985 right before the layoff was inferior to both versions

KO remarked how grey his skin looked in the second Cobb fight which was a sad performance

 

Probably his two best performances ever was his quickie win over Weaver and their draw, even if the majority shaded it for Weaver. He jumped on the slow starting big hitting Weaver and just blazed away. The stoppage was a bit premmy for those days but it was impressive none the less. He came out blazing in the rematch and it looked like a carbon copy was on the cards before Weaver came roaring back at him.

It was a great effort vs Holyfield too and i'd certainly have it in the top three. He was still well behind tho. He weighed a ridiculous 240 pounds against Ruddock and didn't even see pout the 4th round. Dokes was way past it.

 

Bailey was his 13th pro fight and he was sub 210. He was 201 and 198 in his previous two fights and 205 in the one after. He also hadn't started planting his feet more and sitting down on his punches. He was so green Bailey was actually his first 10 round fight.

Foreman failed to stop Levi Forte in his 12th pro fight. Forte had been stopped twice in his previous three fights, by Chuvalo and Zyglewicz. The latter was a light puncher.

If we judge Foreman via the same microscope he wasn't much of a puncher either. There are dozens of similar examples.

Dokes got more robust and started to sit down on his punches more later on. He went from winning a featherfist of the year award to being quite a respectable puncher. He definitely improved.

 

As usual, your knowledge of the 80's is sublime.

 

apprecia#ed