No. Heavy underdog. Bowe was still considered by some to be the best heavyweight in the world despite the loss to Holyfield. Hide was unproven aside from the win over Bentt who was not highly regarded. There was a huge size difference which was apparent from pressers, weigh in etc. It was a big surprise that Hide did well in the first couple of rounds, although it quickly fell apart after that.
Herbie could bang, there's no doubt about that. It's always interesting when fighters talk about the hardest punchers they faced, as it rarely seems to be people who knocked them down or out. Holyfield dropped Bowe heavily in the third fight, and Golota obviously dropped him twice and battered him from pillar to post. In comparison to Lewis and Holyfield, Bowe didn't actually fight that many noted punchers. Fair enough, Holyfield could hit, Golota wasn't a big one-punch guy, and Gonzalez, Cooper etc didn't really land much on Bowe. I think Bowe had a pretty good chin, but if he had fought Lewis' competition he may well have had some similar upset losses.
There are a vocal minority (me included) that felt Bowe won that second Holy fight (albeit only by a couple of point). Hide was the underdog. I think in the end Herbie had nothing to hang his head over, he actually did a great job of it until tiring and feeling the weight difference. He gave away waaaayyy too much weight to Bowe. He probably would have been a good candidate for steroids lol.
