BoxRec

silkov wrote:

topper123 wrote:

Ian 'Mr' McNeilly wrote: These aren't great points, whatsoever. The guy was desperately underrated - a plain fornicating scandal to say the opposite. It isn't really 'people' who talk about him as if he was a great one - just the odd few like me who always trumpet his cause.

In only his sixteenth fight he gave all-time great Larry Holmes, then 42-0, absolute nightmares and dropped a split.

I love this "it was his fault" shit. You have absolutely no idea what was going on behind the scenes - or if you do, you are incredibly lacking in understanding/sympathy.

However, you do make some good points in the second half of your post - I give him more respect than almost anyone else for having the dignity to tell King to go to hell, which definitely ruined his career.

King may have ripped him off , but who got him the title shot after only 15 fights, King.

Witherspoon didn't have a gun stuck to his head to sign the contracts to King, at some point he has to hold his hands up and say he was enticed by the wad of cash that King held in front of him. Thats what cost him getting propaly paid after the Bruno fight.

And it was completly wrong by King what he did, but Witherspoon should have checked the contract to see what he was signing.

You need to read up on what King used to do. He'd get a boxer to sign something without them reading the contract, its an old trick and he did it to many... his top fighters would be sharing gum sheilds and trunks in training etc and they often never saw money that they were supposed to be fighting for. To not sympathise for a young guy who was swindled by a very very streetwise man many years older than him is rather harsh... I imagine that at one point Witherspoon like many other fighters trusted King and by the time he realised what was going on it was too late...

jamesmcdonnell wrote:King has had a virtual monopoly on the heavyweight title since the late 70's.

mercman wrote:

What was Bruno like with Witherspoon before he ran out of gas?

Bruno was ahead. For the first few rounds he was boxing well with the jab and for a while it looked like he was going to do it. However, the turn around was not as quick as with the Bonecrusher fight when Bruno lead right up until the last round when he was caught almost out of the blue.

In the Witherspoon fight Bruno was ground down over a longer period and for a round or so it was looking like Tim was getting on top. In fact I remember Jim Watt's commentary predicting what was going to happen. I think Watt said that Witherspoon was becoming 'too much of a beast for Bruno' shortly before Frank got tagged with a big shot. With Bruno dazed Witherspoon followed up pretty ruthlessly and clubbed Frank into the ropes. Lawless threw the towel in as the ref stopped it with Bruno in a mess. It was a brutal finish; Bruno was in a state.