The Qawi fight. Qawi was just tearing through everybody in the division at the time, it seemed as if nobody knew how to figure out Dwight. Then Spinks comes along and puts on a master class against Qawi, completely nullifying what made Qawi such a force in the division.
That's my take on his career as well. Qawi was a stylistic nightmare, and it took a virtually perfect performance to outbox him as Michael did. Since it wasn't a spectacular knockout or massive historical upset, it tends to be overlooked by casual boxing fans, but he really put it all together in this one, and this is the best footage of his to study when learning what he was really about.
MS is an all time great an my second pick as fighter of the decade. What the did to Holmes was remarkable even though Holmes had been a shot fighter the last three years. I'd say the Holmes fight and Mustafa Wassaja. I can't go with the Qawi fight because Dwight did virtually nothing to win - he perforemd like a lightheavyweight version of Wilfred Benitez, like a man who had been brought in to lose. Some will say that was Mike's strategy paying off to intimidate him early but I'm not buying. In his last fight, Dwight's flame blew out early. He was on his way to ultimate glory with a first round tko over Eddie Davis but after the first, Dwight inexplicably slowed his assualt and let Eddie back into it for ten more rounds. That first round assault was all-consuming but in the rounds that followed I saw that I was not the only person who noticed the change. Doctor Pacheco who had Mike next to him, asked what could be wrong with Dwight. No one including myself could give a logical reason. Mike said he lost his hunger but I thought "In the middle of the same fight?" For the first three minutes Dwight was a raging bull and then for the rest of the fight he's behaving as though he lost interest in the bout. Definitely not the Braxton from the Saad Muhammud fights. Had Dwight stayed true to form with the head bobbing, snorting, and relentless attack, he would give MS hell in the ring. As it turned out all he did was throw out a few meaningless jabs and did no body work as he typically had done. The only other possible explanation is he threw the fight which I would not throw out.
He really turned Wassaja into a bobblehead doll with those fight ending hooks. Picking that one is a very reasonable conclusion. Yeah, I was also stunned, first by the ferocity of that opening attack, then the way he let Eddie counter him off the ropes with those uppercuts in the following rounds. (Considering the bad blood between Dwight and Eddie's brother John, I thought Qawi might use that as added incentive for beating up another Davis brother.) All I could think of was how Mustafa Muhammad let Marvin Johnson back into their title fight after he decked Pops. Dwight complained that all Michael did was run like a rabbit when they fought, but Qawi had previously established himself as a master at cutting off the ring, so I don't really buy this. I thought Michael boxed brilliantly against Qawi, but I agree that Ike wasn't very good either. (At least he got to beat up on brother Leon afterwards. Too bad there weren't more brother tandems for him to pound on. Maybe he should have tried suckering kid brother Tony into moving up for a shot at big brother's title first.)
I have three favorite Spinks fights. Qawi, Marvin johnson, and Cooney...I like the Qawi fight because of his execution of a game plan, Qawi wasn't overly aggressive because Spinks hit him with a very hard right hand to the body...and that was a hard left jab, he was putting out there. Johnson. Just a shocking one punch KO of someone who took Sadd 'life and death' for two fights. Cooney. I loved Spinks under and over combinations after he had hurt Cooney.
I have seen his fights against marvin johnson, vonzell johnson, sears, both holmes fights, tangstaad and the cooney fight. I would love to see his fights against yaqui lopez, eddie mustafa muhammad, mustafa wassaja, and the davis brothers. From what i heard, wassaja was actually a well respected contender before thier fight and spinks easily whooped him and ruined his career.
wassaja was pretty mediocre.No offense at all. I didn't think Spinks looked that good against him to be honest.He took quite a lot of punches and missed a lot before brutally stopping him.
I like the Cooney fight but he had some very good fights at LTHVY Qwawi was a big one but he matured with each defence