What Could Riddick Bowe Have Accomplished If He Wasn't Lazy?

Evander Holyfield, Tony Tubbs, Tyrell Biggs.

You could say TWO great wins.
Anyway, some of the "greats" have a reputation built on no great wins, but multiple good ones.
It's a trade-off.

 

:good Agreed. Bowe is in no way a Buster Douglas either, Hasim Rahman is.

 

You think that, and I think that, but it shows how dangerous it is to build a fighter up based on a single big win, or two over th same oponent.

 

Douglas had a clear path of mediocrity leading up to and after his biggest win, Bowe did not.

 

I disagree. I prefer Biggs and Tubbs over Cockell and LaStarza, and that's when Bowe beat them.

There's no need to bring Joe Louis into this.

Yes, okay, but some of the greats had a very modest number to pass as "multiple".

 

Perhaps, but 2 wins over Holyfield would equal a dozen or more over a Georges Carpentier or a Frank Moran, in my book.

Maybe Bowe should have fought more tomato cans when he has the title. He could have given Chris Eubank a shot at the title, and built himself a long run of defences.
In time, people would have seen such cynical choices of challenger as "multiple decent wins" and he'd be home and dry.

 

I'm not interested in where they were ranked by whoever.
Tubbs and Biggs in 1991 both came to fight in last-ditch efforts to revive their careers and were coming off wins and they performed well.
In that form they were better, IN MY OPINION, than Cockell and LaStarza, who they hold several advnatages and assets over.

 

Well, Bowe has more wins than that.

Bowe successfully defended the title twice, against a has-been, and against a journeyman. He obliterated both.

Dempsey won the title from a 37 year-old Jess Willard who was coming out of a three-year retirement. I'm not saying that's on the same level necessarily, but bear in mind that the fight is Dempsey's centrepiece title fight.

 

At the time Holyfield was not regarded as well as he was today, Tyson was in jail and Lewis had destroyed Ruddock, these three men, in most people's minds were superior to Bowe and Holyfield. In retrospect we can see what great fighters they were but at the time it was different I don't believe many people thought he could handle Lewis or Tyson and neither did his management.

 

Yes Holyfield was. He had destroyed the guy who beat King Kong in Tokyo. Lewis was the one not so regarded. THe world was glued to the Holyfield Douglas fight after what happened in Tokyo. Lewis fight with Ruddock wasnt even in the US and went down on Halloween.

 

No one rated Holyfield that high, Douglas didn't put up much of a fight, The destruction of Ruddock announced Lewis was here and neither Bowe or Tyson would fight him. Holyfield lost to Moorer after the second Bowe fight. No these guys were not given enough credit.

 

Holyfield had his critics at times, but it's not as plain as you describe. I mean, some writers were rating him as the man likely to be Tyson's biggest threat as early as early 1987.
And like all fighters, his "rating" among the pundits ebbed and flowed depending on his performance in his last fight. Same as Lewis, whose high water mark after Ruddock was short-lived.

I have a KO magazine from 1991, polling "experts" on the upcoming Holyfield-Tyson fight (which was cancelled when Tyson got an injury) and Holyfield comes out on top.
Holyfield was actually always highly rated by most.