Riddick Bowe underrated ?

Holyfield-Bowe 3 was billed as "the people's championship" because the public generally viewed both of them as better fighters than any of the men holding the WBA, WBC or IBF championships at the time.
The "championships" were held by Seldon, Bruno and Botha at the time.
Foreman was "linear".

I think Holyfield was viewed in a better light after the Mercer fight than what had been feared of him after the Moorer fight.
Actually, the way he looked DURING the Bowe fight, and the way he looked against Czyz next up, was what convinced most people he was absolutely done.

In 1995, who was considered better ? There was no one. Lennox Lewis had his supporters but people were just as skeptical about Lewis's abilities as they were over Holyfield's, Lewis had only beaten Lionel Butler, Justin Fortune and Tommy Morrison since getting blasted out in 2 rounds by McCall. Frank Bruno had just beat McCall, so Lewis's recent credentials were hardly amazing.

Hopes were being pinned on Mike Tyson's comeback, and everybody was gunning for a match with him, Bowe being the favourite to take the place of his "main rival".

Going in to Holyfield-Bowe, the division was chaotic, and Holyfield and Bowe were viewed as good as any as the candidates for #2 and #1 honours, Tyson's pending re-establishment not withstanding.
They may have known Holyfield was over-the-hill - and some may have thought that Bowe was fat, lazy and fading fast too - but there was not much competition out there.

 

I wouldn't say "brainless puppet" but probably an uneducated guy, 25 years old, totally clueless about how to operate the business side of boxing. That's what managers are for. Some young guys from the ghetto aren't always confident about that side of things. Far more so nowadays, but controlling your own destiny and building your own concerns is a "new school" thing. I think the Newman-Bowe relationship was more "old school", and, yes, Newman had a domineering personality.
No one's ever claimed Bowe's an intelligent guy, (but he might be), and he certainly never came across as the sleek, business-like, articulate type that Lennox Lewis or Roy Jones or Oscar DeLa Hoya were, or how Larry Holmes became.

The same rules apply in boxing as in the rest of life, work and business. Often one guy takes the lead and the other follows, with no confidence in his ability to think for himself. Especially when he's getting paid more than he ever dreamed of.

I blame Rock Newman, because it was quite unanimous among journalists and boxing associates that he was an intense and obnoxious personality.
Bowe obliged, that's true, and he should be condemned too, just like Dempsey for not fighting Wills. I'm just saying that I dont think a "fear" on Bowe's part was the deciding factor in why Lewis was ducked.

I dont think the Olympics is relevant. Bowe had matured a lot since then. I heard he was knocked out by Gonzales in the amateurs too.

Ok, maybe combined with Lewis's KO of Ruddock.
Yeah, that would scare the **** out of ME, but I'm not Riddick Bowe.
If I'd just won 30-something professional fights, beaten Holyfield up, and 50% of the world was saying I can beat Lewis, and I have the "greatest trainer of all-time" in my corner, maybe I'd be straining at the leash to get at him.
You cant read his thoughts and feelings. You cant make assumptions.

That's true. But what matters is, he fought him, and beat him.

Yeah, the media were always putting Holyfield down. They didn't fancy his chances when he moved up to heavyweight, and with every success he had they found ways of putting him down. "He needs to beat Tyson. Ah, Tyson will kill him" was the media's last resort. "Not a real heavyweight" and all that crap. Pathetic really.

But other fighters and the true fans respected him.

I think the media were wrong, and I thought so at the time. I thought he stood a good chance of beating Tyson (until '96 when I figured he was done ).

To a reasonable eye, Holyfield's run at heavyweight from '88 to '92 was impressive.

I think Bowe beat a great champion. It was a great fight.

It was a bunch of crap. And Holyfield actually got a lot of credit in losing to Bowe, even most of his critics could see he'd fought like a true heavyweight champion.

Seriously, Holyfield suffered for coming after Tyson, without actually beating him.

Of course, all the guys who had said in 1986 that Tyson would rule for the next 10-15 years and were besotted with his KO-style, of course they resented Holyfield, the guy they'd only backed to go half-way.

Holyfield was still a top fighter, a member of the elite, as I said in my response to magoo.
I think Holyfield was over-the-hill too. I dont actually regard the Tyson fights as proof otherwise.
But even an over-the-hill Holyfield was among the best available competition.

And since Holyfield had been viewed as "easy" for the 1993 rematch, by Newman, and had upset Bowe there, then surely that underlines the risk he presented in 1995.
Bowe was rated #1 by magazines in 1995, and voted "best heavyweight in the world", so he could have sat on far easier propositions than any version of Holyfield, who they KNEW would come to fight.

Which is why I objected to your claim that he was protected from dangerous fights his entire career. I think you over-stated it. There weren't actually THAT many options out there.

 

I never agreed with that assessment.
I never believed Holyfield would attempt to fight Tyson is the contemptous way he approached Bert Cooper (straight forward, little movement at all, looking for the early KO). I'm not sure the critics even believed it, they just had a habit of criticizing Holyfield, something they started and couldn't quit.

And the main point was, Tyson had been knocked out already, beaten quite severely by Douglas. His slip up versus Douglas was infinitely more significant than Holyfield's performance against Cooper. So, I never understood why he'd be favoured so heavily over Holyfield.

Sure, Holyfield's opponents '88 to '92 were easy to criticize, (it's easy to criticize and be negative with most heavyweights most of the time), but the same writers doing the criticizing had been glorifying Mike Tyson as a deity in the aftermath of the Michael Spinks fight, even while acknowledging Spinks' appearance as a complete non-effort. And there were a few Tyson performances that could have been criticized but never were. They looked at young Mike's wins through a far kinder lens than they applied to Holyfield. A double-standard.

And the only reason being - they'd picked Tyson to rule for 15 years, and they'd predicted Holyfield would fail at heavyweight.
Sportswriters rarely admit they're wrong, because they enjoy a facade of "expertise". As Jimmy Cannon said " a great sportswriter is someone who writes great alibis."