Riddick Bowe has revealed how he ranks the three other great heavyweights of his era: Mike Tyson, Lennox Lewis and Evander Holyfield.
Bowe puts Holyfield, the man with whom he shared one of the greatest trilogies in heavyweight history, as his number one.
In a recent interview with ID Boxing, Bowe said:
“I would have to say Holyfield’s number one, Lennox Lewis is second, and then Mike Tyson.”
“Holyfield, no matter you do to him or how you do it, he’s still going to be there.”
“Lennox, I put him number two because he’s the biggest of all of them and he proved that he was durable – he went the distance with all of them.”
“Mike, wasn’t as durable as those guys because they knocked him out. But in his prime, he was knocking everybody out, so I put him number three.”
The three fights with Holyfield are widely regarded as the pinnacle of Bowe’s career, holding two wins to one majority decision defeat, as well as the accolade of being the first fighter to stop the all time great.
However, ‘Big Daddy’ never shared a ring with either Tyson or Lewis, famously vacating his WBC title and throwing it into a trash can after the latter was called as his mandatory challenger.
The four were the consensus top dogs at heavyweight throughout the mid 1990s, a period considered a golden age for the division.
Although there has been yet to be a heavyweight era to rival the days of Bowe and co, the finalising of an undisputed fight between Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk would go some ways towards reigniting a spark in the blue ribbon division.