Corrie Sanders vs Roy Jones, The Fight That Almost Happened

[Cojimar 1946]

The Golota fights also hurt Bowe's case badly. The second fight especially was a beating that should have been stopped to spare Bowe brain damage.

[keithmoonhangover]

I can't see any case for Hide or Gonzalez being top 10 heavyweights,

What? Apart from them being in the top ten when Bowe fought them?

[keithmoonhangover]

Yes, but Sanders won the first round against Tubbs, so can we really count this as a loss?

We have to the point where we are comparing Sanders to Riddick Bowe?

If we are going to go by the ranked contenders logic, then we have to count Bowe's wins over Jorge Gonzalez (as bad as he was) and Herbie Hide who were ranked in the top 10 when Bowe beat them. add that to Tubbs and Holyfield and you have four wins. And guess what, a DQ win is a win. That makes 5. Add Bowe's second win over Holyfield and you have 6.

So Bowe had 6 over top 10 opponents and Sanders had 1.
Bowe beat a prime Holyfield for his best win. For the love of God, are we really going to start comparing a win over Klitschko to a win over a prime Holyfield? So again another big edge for Bowe.

As mentioned Sanders also lost to Nate Tubbs. And got stopped by Rahman. Bowe's only loss was to Holyfield in a great fight where you could make a good case that he should have got the decision or at least a draw.
So yet another big edge to Bowe.

Bowe was light years better than Sanders.

This is one of my favorite posts this year.

[Cojimar 1946]

The top 10 according to who? Certainly doubt knowledgeable people who were following the sport would put either in the top 10? Who did they beat to get such a ranking? Ross Purrity actually beat Gonzalez if were going to make Gonzalez out to be a big win for Bowe than why isn't beating a Purrity a big win for Sanders?

[Cojimar 1946]

In 1995 for example the division had Lennox Lewis, Evander Holyfield, Riddick Bowe, Oliver McCall, Frank Bruno, Tim Witherspoon, Michael Moorer, Ray Mercer, Henry Akinwande, Alexander Zolkin, Corrie Sanders. I see all these guys as better than Gonzalez.

I also don't think he was better than Bruce Seldon and even Axel Schultz is probably better.

[HomicideHenry]

But Hide and Gonzalez were WBO ranked guys.. back then the WBO title didn't mean absolutely anything.. therefore the contenders were also NOTHING when the champions of that league were "second fiddle" at best to the WBA, WBC, and IBF champions.

It'd be like today claiming someway somehow the IBC, IBO, UBO, UBF, etc are just as worthy of world-class recognition.

Freak things happen in boxing, like the Tubbs loss. Max Schmeling got kayoed by a light heavyweight in one round while in his prime years (Gipsy Daniels). Tex Cobb got kayoed by Dee Collier in a single round. Faruq Saleem got kayoed by a 4-3-0 dude. Etc, etc, etc.

A blind squirrel will find a nut sometimes. It's the nature of the business. Hell, even Bruce The Mouse Strauss won a few times. I mean eff, Andrew Hartley has 2 wins on his record, and can you ever really imagine that kind of guy winning anything?

Sanders had the POTENTIALITY to have been in the same breath as Holyfield, Bowe, Lewis, Tyson, etc... He certainly was a better threat to those guys than Tommy Morrison, Bruce Seldon, Joe Hipp, etc... And personally I think he was better than Oleg Maskaev who beat Rahman, because Maskaev was the epitome of inconsistency.

Honestly, think about it. Outside of Vitali Klitschko, who could have beaten Sanders at that point and time? He brought his A game, he was focused, no excuses what so ever. I can't see Kirk Johnson, John Ruiz, Nicolai Valuev, Roy Jones, Evander Holyfield, or James Toney doing it. I can't see alot of guys doing it. Short of Lewis making a comeback, those two (VK & LL) are the only ones who could have beaten Sanders.

[Ambling Alp II]

The top 10 according to who? Certainly doubt knowledgeable people who were following the sport would put either in the top 10? Who did they beat to get such a ranking? Ross Purrity actually beat Gonzalez if were going to make Gonzalez out to be a big win for Bowe than why isn't beating a Purrity a big win for Sanders?

The Top 10 Ring Magazine.
I don't think Gonzalez was any good either, but you were using the Top 10 rationale so I did as well. Hide was OK.

[Ambling Alp II]

Yes, but Sanders won the first round against Tubbs, so can we really count this as a loss?

We have to the point where we are comparing Sanders to Riddick Bowe?

If we are going to go by the ranked contenders logic, then we have to count Bowe's wins over Jorge Gonzalez (as bad as he was) and Herbie Hide who were ranked in the top 10 when Bowe beat them. add that to Tubbs and Holyfield and you have four wins. And guess what, a DQ win is a win. That makes 5. Add Bowe's second win over Holyfield and you have 6.

So Bowe had 6 over top 10 opponents and Sanders had 1.
Bowe beat a prime Holyfield for his best win. For the love of God, are we really going to start comparing a win over Klitschko to a win over a prime Holyfield? So again another big edge for Bowe.

As mentioned Sanders also lost to Nate Tubbs. And got stopped by Rahman. Bowe's only loss was to Holyfield in a great fight where you could make a good case that he should have got the decision or at least a draw.
So yet another big edge to Bowe.

Bowe was light years better than Sanders.

This is one of my favorite posts this year.

Thank you sir!

[Cojimar 1946]

When looking at ratings I try to combine rankings by various groups with a bit of common sense

If we take away Bowe's wins over Holyfield his best wins are a close decision over Tony Tubbs and the DQ wins over Golota in which he took terrible beatings especially in the rematch. Surely, you would agree that without the Holyfield wins Bowe's resume is pretty thin.

Michael Moorer also has a pretty thin resume with only one win over a top guy (Holyfield).

[Ambling Alp II]

A. His resume is thin compared to some fighter's, not to most.
B. You can't just take away the Holyfield fight. It happened. And it was not like the Moorer fight where Holyfield was obviously off. Bowe fought a great fight. Only a handful of fighters who ever fought would have beaten Holyfield that night.

[Tuan_Jim]

Not to mention that Bowe lost only narrowly to a superb Manny Steward trained Holyfield in the rematch--and that despite a man in a fan landing on his pregnant wife's head during proceedings--and in the third fight actually knocked the Real Deal out. That is an amazing trilogy and as Reg Gutteridge said, was as great a series of fights as any in history. That's why Bowe matters.

Lennox, Tyson, Moorer, Mercer, Foreman et al--they would have loved to have knocked Holyfield out, but they couldn't, only Bowe did it.

(Also, I don't know why anyone would make such a silly argument as 'what if we take the Holyfield fights from Bowe'. You can't. He was simply too central a figure to the 90s championship scene. One things for sure--had Wlad not picked Sanders in 2003 for an easy WBO defence literally no one would be talking about him today. To call him peripheral would be over generous.)

[Cojimar 1946]

He was also absolutely thrashed by Andrew Golota twice in fights he was losing badly prior to any fouls. Many people including some of the commentators felt the second fight she have been stopped to spare Bowe punishment. These fights indicate to me that the Holyfield fights may give a misleading idea of his actual abilities.

[Tuan_Jim]

Bowe was out of shape for the first fight and, Eddie Futch having ditched him, overtrained and poorly prepared for the rematch. Doesn't detract from his great nights anymore than Benitez getting walloped by Hilton does from The Radar's big performances.

[Cojimar 1946]

The difference is Bowe wasn't past his prime going into the Golota fights. He had just knocked out Holyfield and was seen by many as the best heavyweight in the world. Nobody said he was past it going into those fights.

[DrDuke]

Bowe had actually begun the declining process after the 1st Holyfield fight. He had very short prime. After he became champion, he began to gain extra weight, he allegedly instantly lost huge amount of motivation. The 3rd Holyfield fight had also been grueling. Golota was a very bad matchup after such a war and solid time-off after that. Nobody knew then, that Golota was good. Actually he is being underrated even now because of his lowlights.

[Tuan_Jim]

He went into the 1st Golota fight at his fattest ever weight. BM or BI estimated him at an obscene 260 by the time he waddled into MSG. Lewis came in at his heaviest ever vs Rahman and got flattened. They were fat and arrogant and found themselves in the path of punches they wouldn't normally take. It happens, sadly.

[badkatt]

roy jones would have gotten knocked out

[pound per pound]

Among the victims of Sanders:

Ross Purrity, Arthur Weathers, Al Cole, Carlos DeLeon, Levi Billups, Bert Cooper, Otis Tisdale, Michael Sprott, Bobby Czyz, Johnny Nelson, Johnny Du Plooy...

He had 200 amatuer fights, losing only four... He went 23-0-0 before his first loss... Won his next 13, picking up the WBU title along the way, before losing again... 3 fights later he bombs out #1 ranked Wladimir Klitschko, and then gave Vitali Klitschko the hardest fight of his career.

At 6'4" and 240 pounds, and as a southpaw with damn good hand speed and power, he was someone to avoid. People want to bring up his losses to Tubbs and Rahman, however, they never want to dig deeper into the fights themselves.



Sanders only had 2 fights, in 2 years when he fought Rahman. He was rather inactive. Especially when you consider Rahman had a total of 6 fights in 2 years. Still, Rahman would say (and still does) that Sanders hit him the hardest... And this is coming from a man who fought Tua, Lewis, Klitschko, Maskaev, etc.

The loss, obviously, was a matter of conditioning than anything else, when one watches the replay. The HBO cast would eat crow a few years down the line, writing Sanders off after the fight.

As for Tubbs... Either it's a dive or it's a fluke... Because immediately afterwards Sanders knocked out Carlos DeLeon in a single round, and everybody knows that he was a helluva lot better than Tubbs. DeLeon was coming off of an 8 fight win streak before losing to Sanders.

The BULLSHIT assertion that Sanders didn't have a good chin from an earlier post, shows complete ignorance of the sport because Sanders took tremendous BOMBS from Rahman early on and still was giving bombs of his own for eight rounds.

Wow. Did you know that Sanders hurt his leg before the Rahman fight and the injury meant no running or road work? A reason why his conditiong was poor for that fight.

Sanders would have beaten Jones. Roy declined the fight.

[ron4972]

Believe it or not, I think Sanders could have turned Jones into another early round knockout victim. When Sanders landed with that lightning fast left-swipe/hook, everyone went down. I don't think Roy could have withstood a single one of those fast power punches.

But then again, maybe Jones could have survived, and carried the fight past five rounds. After that, Sanders would be an exhausted, lost, and standing straight up.

Tough call, but I lean towards Sanders by KO or TKO within three rounds.

[Bodyshot3]

Believe it or not, I think Sanders could have turned Jones into another early round knockout victim. When Sanders landed with that lightning fast left-swipe/hook, everyone went down. I don't think Roy could have withstood a single one of those fast power punches.

But then again, maybe Jones could have survived, and carried the fight past five rounds. After that, Sanders would be an exhausted, lost, and standing straight up.

Tough call, but I lean towards Sanders by KO or TKO within three rounds.

Sanders liked to start fast and let his hands go - whoever was in front of him - and he did not throw slappy punches, found his range quickly and went for the finish. Roy would have had to seriously watch himself from rounds 1-4.

But Corrie's problem was always pacing and also his general approach to boxing......

.......he threw lots too early and then sometimes gassed himself and was not one of those hard, super fit fighters from the Transvaal like Mitchell or the Toweels.