even though it never give us all the fights we wanted at the right time, I really look back with great fondness at the heavyweight scene. It give us three classics in the bowe holyfield trilogy. the tyson ruddock wars were epics. holyfield tyson 1. foreman becoming the oldest champion was a magical moment and the holyfield fight was great to watch boy i do miss riddick bowe and his manager rock newman. they gave us some clasic moments apart from the 70's, i cannot name a heavyweight era with more talent. tyson was not the force he was but he still could of beat everyone with his speed and power. lewis and holyfield were great fighters. bowe had all the tools to be great ike ibeabuchi was emerging but his era would of come in the 00's we had good, colourful and entertaining fighter in razor ruddock, tommy morrison, herbie hide, ray mercer, andrew golota i really miss those days
During most of the 20's, half of the top heavyweights were light-heavyweights. And black fellas were closed out basically. **** poor division, probably the worst of all time.
My answer is both yes and no. To explain, I genuinly believe that from a talent standpoint, the 90's were just as good as any other decade and even better than most. You had a lot of very athletically gifted fighters who could box, deliver big shots and take a pounding too. You also had some genuine all time greats in there as well. From an era perspective however, the biggest problem that I had with the 90's was that you had too many big matches that never happened, ie. Bowe vs Lewis, Bowe vs Tyson, etc... Additionally, one of that generation's best participants ( Mike Tyson ) was abscent for nearly half the decade. What's more you had two 40+ year old ex-champs who were on the comeback trail after many years of inactivity, yet both managed to breach the top 5 and one of them even won the lineal title. Furthermore, there were two men, one of whom began his career at lightheavyweight and the other at cruiserweight. Both won the lineal title and one of them is commonly considered as one of the era's very best heavy's despite a noticable size difference between him and many of his foes along with recurring health problems, etc. In addtion, you had two of the hugest upsets in world title history, both of which were architected by two rather ordinary fighters ( Tyson vs Douglas, 1990 ) and ( Lewis vs McCall, 1994 ). CONCLUSION: The 90's were a very good decade in terms of its talent pool. But when it comes to things like matchups, timing of certain fights, various politics and a myriad of other things, I still have to rate the 70's as the better of the two golden eras.
THe 90's were the beginning of the end. Tyson, Bowe and Holyfield, were basically finished by the early to mid 90's and Lennox Lewis was left alone to fight a bunch of garbage contenders. There was a glimmer of hope with Ike Ibeabuchi who was emerging to be a real force in the divison, but he self destructed. Tua was always one dimensional but his activity level when he was in shape made him a good solid fighter. He became lazy and complacent, and became worthless. THe rest were fringe to mid level contenders at best, who proved they couldnt do anything in the division. The brothers who were getting knocked out and quitting against these mid level contenders, are now dominating the division. That tells you how bad things are now. :dead
What makes the 70s so special in not so much the level of talent but the fact that the big matches were made for the most part. There are other eras that had the potential to be equaly exciting but never realised it and the 90s was one of them IMHO.
The 1990s was a story of great heavyweight boxers and their NOT fighting each other, for various reasons. I don't think there's a decade that could match Lewis, Holyfield, Bowe and Tyson head-to-head, but we never got to see Lewis-Bowe, Bowe-Tyson, or Holyfield-Tyson in 1991. On the other hand, a lot of great second-tier heavyweight fights like Ike-Tua, Grant-Golota and Morrison-Ruddock took place, and there were plenty of good scraps between the first-tier and second-tier boxers. Overall, it was a decade where we didn't appreciate the talent that was around, mainly because of the ducking, the corruption, the fouling/scandals (the Bowe-Golota fiascos, Tyson-Holyfield II, Lewis-Mccall II and Lewis-Akinwande all took place within a very short period) and all the general crap ruined what could have been the greatest decade of heavyweight boxing. It's not just talent which makes a good decade, it's good fights.
didn't happen: Bowe vs Lewis Bowe vs Tyson Bowe vs Moorer Bowe vs Mercer Moorer vs Mercer Moorer vs Lewis Moorer vs Tyson
In addition, will also ad that even some of the bigger pursed fights didn't happen until too far after the fact. Lewis vs Tyson never happened during the 90's either. Holyfield vs Tyson came about 5-6 years too late, as did Holyfield vs Lewis.
Ofcourse, only the 70s can compete with the 90s and frankly the division was more stacked in the 90s with: Lewis, Tyson, Holyfield, Bowe, Tua, Ibeabuchi, Rudduck Golota, Klitschkos, Mercer, McCall, Bruno, Morrison, Mike Moorer, Briggs, Old Foreman, Old Holmes, Hide, Akiwande...oh and according to Mendoza Lewis and Tyson were ducking Sanders in the 90s In terms of depths I'd say deepest ever, however allot of big fights didn't happen in the 90s, Lewis was ducked, Tyson was in jail, Lewis/Holyfield's slip ups let weaker titlists hold the division to hostage, Bowe avoided certain fights and so on
the 90's HW div may not have been great from a boxing perspective but really give us some great moments in and out of the ring something which cannot be said about todays scene
While this is true, we did see: Lewis vs Holyfield 2x Lewis vs Tyson Lewis vs Mercer Holyfield vs Bowe 3x Holyfield vs Morrer 2x Holyfield vs Tyson 2x Holyfield vs Mercer Holyfield vs Foreman Moorer vs Foreman Pretty much every big name won a key fight except for Tyson.
Honestly... I am not impressed Holy was way past his prime and couldnt beat john ruiz months later Tyson was shot Mercer was 36 years old and many believe he got robbed Don't forget one of the reasons tyson never won a key fight was he missed FOUR long years because of prison. If not for prison, fights against lennox holy and possibly bowe get made in the early 1990s. Tyson was long past his prime and rusted when he returned in 95
