Bowe is the favorite. BUT Depends what you define as prime Bowe. Defining a guy's prime as a single fight isn't quite right. Holyfield at the time was an undersized champion who fought an extremely stupid fight(which he tended to do a lot and was bound to catch him a loss eventually after almost coming unstuck against Stewart Dokes Bowe struggling with Holmes etc.) the only guy holyfield really fought smart against before his first loss was Foreman because he was just too strong to just try to brawl with. Holyfield was in my opinion ALWAYS going to catch a loss fighting like that if he kept on taking on capable heavyweights, he was getting hurt, wobbled and struggling in almost every fight. Dokes, Stewart, Cooper, Holmes, Foreman... Against Bowe(the first serious prime challenger) he finally came unstuck but that doesn't make Bowe the messiah in my opinion. Imo Bowes performances against Tubbs and Biggs are falsely overlooked. He was out boxed by Tubbs for large portions of the fight and wobbled badly by Biggs who simply wasn't a big puncher. This leaves me to conclude that the vulnerabilities shown in the holyfield 2nd and 3rd fight and the golota fights(atleast the first one) can't be completely written off either. Now Witherspoon on the other hand was wildly inconsistent but at his best very capable which unlike Bowe he proved with performances even past his prime, where you could tell that his performance Vs Holmes wasn't just a one-off.
LOL; I do not see how they click. I suspect when Witherspoon realises he cannot win, he just goes into survival mode, and Bowe would be content to easily outpoint him. How do you see it different?
Both were good inside fighters. What u say about Spoon turning defensive may be true, but Spoon is pretty determined. I think it would take several rounds of good back-and-forth inside work before Spoon would turn defensive as u say.
Riddick Bowe may be the taller fighter but sometimes it is the fight in the individual. Tim Witherspoon has fought taller fighters, remember Frank Bruno on July 19 1986 in London, England, TKO 11. Witherspoon could get lazy, but he was a more proven contender. As one talented poster did say, Bowe gained instant fame from his bouts with Evander Holyfield. Tim has tougher fights, came close to beating Larry Holmes in 1983. Witherspoon by decision.
