The festive season is just around the corner but in truth, all boxing fans are hoping for in terms of a Christmas wish list in 2025 is more of the same.
Thanks to Riyadh Season and the game-changing Saudi Arabia General Entertainment Authority, there has been a seismic shift at the heart of boxing whereby the biggest fights are now being made on a consistent basis.
We are just a few weeks out from Oleksandr Usyk vs. Tyson Fury 2, having already been treated to their engrossing first fight earlier this year as well as other mega events in 2024 such as Artur Beterbiev vs. Dmitry Bivol, Daniel Dubois vs. Anthony Joshua and Devin Haney vs. Ryan Garcia.
Make no bones. This is a golden era for the sport, but it was not always like this.
Boxing is littered with stories of great fights that were planned – and some even officially signed - before vanishing into the ether due to promotional chicanery or combatant greed/lunacy.
Here DAZN News looks at some of the biggest fights that you never saw.
Lennox Lewis vs. Riddick Bowe
Two days later the WBC proclaimed Lewis as their champ due to his thrilling October 1992 stoppage win over Donovan 'Razor' Ruddock in a WBC eliminator.
Lewis vs. Bowe – if made in 1992 or early 1993 – would have been an epic heavyweight contest. No ifs, no buts. It was a can’t miss classic.
Focus on Sport/Getty Images
Lewis beat Bowe in the 1988 Olympic final to win gold at super-heavyweight, but ‘Big Daddy’ moved quicker in the pros and was the first to win a world title in the paid ranks.
Bowe had so many natural gifts. He was a big man who had a thundering jab. He was athletic with a granite chin, and he was also well schooled under Hall of Fame trainer Eddie Futch.
History remembers Lewis as a scientific boxer-puncher, the 'Pugilist Specialist', but truth be known alongside his temperament his best attributes were always his raw strength, terrific size and venomous punching power.
The blame for these two great heavyweight behemoths never standing toe-to-toe must lie with ‘Big Daddy’ Bowe.
His supporters will say he simply made a business decision that involved him not fighting Lewis and instead taking on low risk, high (financial) reward fights around that time against men such as Michael Dokes and Jesse Ferguson.
His detractors will go to their graves insisting that the American flat out ducked Lewis.
There have been many heavyweight rivalries in the annals of boxing, yet if there was one that never saw its culmination, it would be that between Lennox Lewis and Riddick Bowe.
If only Turki Alalshikh was around in the early 1990s.
Roberto Duran vs. Tony Ayala Jr
Everyone who follows boxing knows about the 1980s and Marvin Hagler, Roberto Duran, Sugar Ray Leonard and Tommy Hearns. What if I told you there should have been a fifth king? And that his name was Tony Ayala Jr.
The San Antonio, Texas fighter turned pro in 1980 and was a boxing phenom who ultimately ended up spending nearly three decades in prison.
Legend has it that when Ayala Jr was 14, he sparred with the great Mexican world welterweight champion Pipino Cuevas, and that Cuevas jumped out after a couple of rounds as he could not believe how easily this young Texas teenager was handling him.
The Ring Magazine via Getty Images
The smouldering Ayala truly represented the dark side of boxing, manhandling world champions in sparring while just a kid while always threatening to go off the rails when not in the gym.
The ring was his sanctuary, but due to his horrendous deeds outside of the squared circle people choose not to remember that he was a generational talent.
Ruthless in the ring, he earned the nickname ‘El Torito’ (The Little Bull) due to his savage style built on front foot aggression. Yet for all his snarling and truculence, he was also an educated pressure fighter who was violent poetry in motion when in the mood.
Top Rank were building his profile in the 1980s, and he appeared on the front cover of Ring Magazine. Alas by that point things were already out of control in his personal life.
The eyes Chico, they never lie. Poor Tony had already seen too much. He had already done too much despite his tender years.
In December 1982 Davey Moore signed to defend his WBA light-middleweight title against Ayala Jr, and the latter had been promised $700,000 for the fight, a fortune back then.
Most people in the Ayala Jr business felt he would have run right through Moore, and consequently The Baby Bull against Hands of Stone would have been pure box-office.
As 1982 came to an end Ayala Jr was 22-0 (with 19 stoppages) but on December 1, 1983, he was arrested after leaving his common-law wife asleep at home, breaking into a neighbour’s apartment and sexually assaulted her in a truly horrific attack.
While Ayala Jr languished in jail, it was Duran who challenged young and unbeaten WBA 154-pound champ Moore and rolled back the years as a betting underdog – on his birthday no less - to produce one of the most chillingly ruthless performances of a Hall of Fame career.
Prince Naseem Hamed vs. Juan Manuel Marquez
Fury vs. finesse.
The flamboyant showman with dynamite in both hands against the Hispanic ring mechanic, one of the most technically sound fighters who ever laced up a glove. This would have been a fight for the ages and should really have happened.
Juan Manuel Marquez was a mandatory challenger to Prince Naseem Hamed right around the turn of the millennium. While in the second half of the 1990s Hamed was the featherweight don who had changed the game financially in terms of earning power for fighters boxing below the middleweight limit.
Hamed was a boxer with super sharp reflexes and fearsome one-punch knockout power, finishing his career with a KO percentage of 84% (and he fought most of it in very good company).
He was also known for his showy nature, the front somersault over the top rope into the ring, and the fact that he was brash and full of braggadocio meant you either loved him or hated him.
Al Bello /Allsport
Hamed's only pro loss, on points to Marco Antonio Barrera in his penultimate fight in 2001, clouds the opinion many have of the little Prince from Sheffield in terms of his overall standing as a featherweight.
However, his camp was in chaos by that point – perspicacious Irish trainer Brendan Ingle had been dismissed and he was instead surrounded by ‘yes man’ and in love with his own power. Had Barrera fought Hamed in 1995 or 1996, it might have been a different outcome entirely.
Marquez was the anti-Hamed, quiet and reserved and a fighter who – cliches aside - let his fists do the talking. Schooled under the attentive eye of brilliant trainer Ignacio ‘Nacho’ Beristain, JMM in full flight was a joy to watch.
As the 1990s came to a close, there was serious talk about these two fighting and it would have been a truly special fight at 9st.
Marquez was a brilliant counterpuncher who had a high ring IQ, but Hamed held the advantages when it came to power and speed.
You could make a strong case for both men, and it is such as shame for the sport that they never got what would have been a sensational scrap over the line.
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