Prime Riddick Bowe there. Pukkall gave him all he could handle and staggered him with a jab in the last round. Omg. Omg.
He won that by split decision I belive. So, officially he's only lost ever to Holyfield. Unofficial of course, he got beat around the ring by Golota.
Twice, and we all know it. More and more it seems to me Bowe really didn't care too much after the first Holy war. He was still a pretty young boxer when Golota kicked the crap out of him. Most of us also know that he wasn't the same fighter even around the time of the Hide fight. So, I don't think he lost it early, I think he became a bit of a sloth early on.
I agree, straight after beating EH he messed around, didn't seem to take anything serious, had two easy defense s then blew it. Was never the same imo. And if he'd faced Lennox sometime after losing to Holyfield.. Then god help him!
Yeah but didn’t he knock out Holyfield in their next fight? The first guy to ever do that. and Lewis didn’t have a better chin than Holyfield.
I think it's mostly how he looked when he stopped Holyfield. The moves he had when he first fought him were mostly missing. Though Bowe got hit a bit too much in Holy-Bowe I, there must be allowances made for the fact that Holyfield at the time was a punches-in-bunches, hyperactive type of fighter. It kind of overshadowed Bowe's real boxing skills during that match...the latter was quite impressive in that regard, for a significant portion of the bout itself. So, I think it's more a matter of how he could have been hit much more, considering this was prime Holy (for sure), except Riddick was boxing exceptionally well. Those heightened boxing skills were most often nowhere in sight in the 3rd fight (in fact, sometime when you have a chance check out the strange deterioration even when the 2nd and 3rd fights are watched one after the other). Bowe just seemed to be getting worse, most of the time he just let his brute strength will out after the first Holy fight, though I see it as more of a progressive (albeit striking) decline.
If Holyfield doesn't gas then he probably stops Bowe in the 3rd fight. Cortez even admitted he was getting ready to jump in and stop it for Holyfield.
