Step back in Time...........Lennox Lewis versus Frank Bruno

I thought Bruno made Lewis look like an amateur for most of this fight.

For his part, Bruno fought one of the technically best fights of his career. He kept his defense tight and his jab in Lewis' face. Lewis looked like he didn't know what to do to get past Bruno's jab and Bruno actually backed him up at times. I also thought Bruno shook him a couple of times.

But true to form, Bruno couldn't keep up his gameplan all the way through, and while playing around with rabbit punches along the ropes, he left himself wide open to the sweeping left hook that Lewis bombed him with. He blew the whole fight right then and there with that stupid amateurish move.

This fight to me shows how Lewis let his boxing skills diminish after beating Ruddock. Now he was just looking to load up every punch and get the KO. After this fight, he reintroduced his jab and boxing skills again against Phil Jackson (in a very underrated performance IMO), but then fell back into "get the KO mode" against McCall, and that time he finally paid for it.

People will always blame Pepe Correa(sp?) for this stage in Lewis' career, but I think Lewis shares as much of the blame as anyone. He always had all the tools, but only made as much use of them as he wanted to and often ignored whoever was in his corner (even Steward). Only occasionally I felt did he put all of his tools together, such as against Ruddock, Morrison, Golota, Rahman rematch and of course Tyson.

 

Yeah, in his earlier days Lewis did fall back into "right hand banger" mode very easily.

You can see in this fight the talent is there if he wants to use it - hands at his waist, avoiding punches with head and body movement - as well as being prepared to take a punch - his chin is a bit under rated IMO.

However, he does resort to simply throwing wild right hands after a while, seeminly convinced he'll catch Bruno eventually.

Thing is he does except with a left hook.

I agree about the stupid Bruno punches in the corner. That's what seperates the two, both in this fight and their whole career. Reverse the situation and Lewis would be trying to put Bruno's head into the third row (at any stage of Lewis's career). Bruno seems to content to do nothing more than pitty pat.

 

Am surprised to see people defending Bruno's chin here. It was absolute **** and is the main reason why he lost this fight.

He was absolutely finished by that left hook to the face like a girl. Having a good chin is all about taking a really big shot to the face and still being able to carry on the job in hand.

The moment Lewis got that lucky punch, the fight was over.

I am not a massive fan of lenni. I too feel he had an average chin but he was much smarter, a much better boxer than Bruno and knew how to defend and get out of bad situations.

 

We'd never have guessed

 

There is a school of thought that Bruno training like a body builder and having very little fat on his frame caused him stamina problems and caused him to use a lot of energy.

Regardless of the lenni lucky punch, Bruno was running out of gas and steam.

 

There really is no such thing as a lucky punch. Punches which are thrown and intending to do damage aren't lucky.

 

Bruno started well, and Lewis was definitely affected by the occasion and the 26 odd thousand that were 95% against him, but once the Bruno gas started emptying the chin issue was always going to come into play.

 

There is a lucky punch in boxing.