Riddick Bowe :Over Or Underrated?

I’ve seen him on both ends of the spectrum truthfully. At his best he was a good solid fighter but with a very short prime, partially of his own making

 

The night he beat Holyfield he could have beat many of the top 20 ATGs.

I think his biggest problem, besides letting the prize money from that fight make him more and more of a slacker, was having Newman as a manager. Bowe needed to fight Lewis after that first Holy fight and at that point probably would have won (Lewis was still woefully unrefined, though still a really dangerous puncher). Following Newman's advice to offer Lewis ridiculous terms and then ceremoniously dump the title shows Bowe was never a mental giant.

Plus, we would have been treated to probably the best fight of the 90s, with a Bowe that couldn't let himself go the way he did after the Holy fight. Bowe certainly would have got WAY up for Lennox.

The most bizarre thing is how Lewis turned down 13 million to fight Bowe a couple of years later...when the former would probably have knocked the hell out of him. Bowe was deteriorating rapidly at that point.

 

Overrated. Take away Holyfield and his resume is mediocre at best.

 

I guess the answer is overrated & underrated.

To call him a 'solid' HW is underrating him. He was HW champ when it kinda meant something lol. As is so often stated, he was tremendous for a brief period, faded very quickly. I tend to think Holyfield pretty much beat the prime outta Riddick. Bowe's decline during the Holy Trinity was evident, while Evander showed to be the longer-duration type, career-wise.

I agree with those that say Bowe was at an ATG level for a very brief period. He would be all Lennox L. could handle, and I could easily see Bowe's beautiful one-two taking Lewis outta there.

 

H2H he could potentially beat a lot of guys. His legacy leaves a lot to be desired though.

 

I'm sure he'd rather be remembered for the classic Holyfield trilogy than the Golota double header. Maybe a strong h2h guy for his short mid 90s prime.

 

With Futch he had the goods to become a top 10 ATG, no doubt there. He seemed one of those guys who got rich quick then consequently let the money sap their drive.

He never looked quite as good after Holy I, and I place him a winner h2h with quite a lot of great fighters...

that said, he did get hit an AWFUL lot...

 

He's a polarizing figure. He's been both underrated and overrated multiple times. I rarely see a level headed balanced opinion on Bowe. You have some guys who say he's a top 5 h2h, and some guys who don't even have him in their 50. They do the same for his resume and either milk out his limited (but decent) resume, or they act like he didn't accomplish anything special.

As is the case for many things, the truth is somewhere in the middle. No, Bowe doesn't belong on a top 5 anything unless we're talking about top 5 biggest eaters in the division. He's also way higher than top 50, he's top 25-30 at the least. Bowe was a good, strong, durable guy with great inside skills, a great jab, and very good stamina and work rate for such a big guy. However, he did have very leaky defense, lacked discipline, and sometimes lacked quickness and mental maturity to stick with a game plan.

He had a decent resume and beat some good boxers besides just Hoylfield such as Tubbs, Thomas, Seldon, etc. They weren't the most glamorous names and they weren't at their best, but it wasn't like he spent his whole career cherry picking and only fought cans. You can definitely criticize him for the lack of punchers on his record. Outside of Hide and Cooper (who were fairly small) he faced surprisingly few. I believe he was supposed to fight Mercer but something fell through, which wasn't Bowes fault, but he didn't exactly go out of his way to face others. Then there's the whole belt dumping incident and, aside from Hoylfield, not facing the true elites of his era (namingly Lewis). You can definitely criticize him for that. Overall he had a good run and is comparable to guys like Baer, Cooney, or Ruddock who had plenty of natural talent and size but failed to live up to their potential due to various reasons (some that weren't their fault, some that were entirely their fault). I think some people on this forum, and boxing fans in general, have a hard time separating potential from actual accomplishments.

 

Underrated. His whole era was filled with killers. CTE and discipline issues shortened his career but at his best he would be a handful for anyone at any era. Size, Skill and toughness is rare in one package.

 

During his short peak he's a handful in there for basically anyone.

 

He is neither. Had the goods to be the next great heavyweight of his era after Holmes and Tyson, but didn't have the discipline to do it.

 

Yeah, totally agree, an enigma really, funnily enough, the guy that ended him as a fighter ( Golota ) is similar when looking back and trying to judge, for other reasons aswell though.

 

^ A fair assessment. Bowe was good at imposing his size, had a big punch and a lot of heart.

But he was not nearly as skilled technically as he could have been and fell apart when the other guy didn't fold or had a technical edge. Tubbs arguably won their fight and Golota took him behind the woodshed. His management was skilful in avoiding other skilled big guys and / or punchers. Fighting and beating Lewis would have catapulted him right up there imho.