{"id":287342,"date":"2025-11-28T05:17:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-28T05:17:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/287342\/"},"modified":"2025-11-28T05:17:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-28T05:17:09","slug":"francois-botha-names-the-best-he-faced-after-sharing-the-ring-with-mike-tyson-lewis-and-holyfield","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/287342\/","title":{"rendered":"Francois Botha names the best he faced after sharing the ring with Mike Tyson, Lewis and Holyfield"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shannon Briggs once named Frans Botha as the hardest puncher he had ever faced<\/a> \u2014 but who did Botha regard as the best fighter he ever fought?<\/p>\n

Botha, like Briggs, competed in an era stacked with dangerous heavyweights. America in particular was overflowing with talent, boasting far more genuine contenders than we see today.<\/p>\n

The South African threw himself into the American scene from his third professional fight and spent more than half his career boxing Stateside. Across his 63 fights, there was a five-year spell in which he met Axel Schulz, Michael Moorer, Mike Tyson<\/a>, Briggs, Evander Holyfield<\/a> and Lennox Lewis<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Then, in 2002, \u2018The White Buffalo\u2019 stood up to \u2018Dr Steelhammer\u2019 Wladimir Klitschko for eight rounds before being stopped by the WBO heavyweight champion. It was his fourth and final failed world-title attempt.<\/p>\n

But of all the big names, who did Botha consider the best? He revealed his answer in an interview with British Boxing TV.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people ask me who\u2019s the best fighter and I always say Mike because Mike\u2019s got the image, the aggressiveness, everybody knew him.<\/p>\n

At the beginning of my career I fought against Themba Msweli, a guy from South Africa. A fight that is not known and he gave me the hardest fight of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tyson vs Botha took place on January 16, 1999, at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas<\/a>, arriving 19 months after \u2018Iron\u2019 Mike infamously bit a chunk out of Evander Holyfield\u2019s ear in their rematch.<\/p>\n

Past his best, Tyson still carried enough power to flatten a contender of Botha\u2019s level \u2014 and did so with a venomous right hand that ended the fight in round five.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shannon Briggs once named Frans Botha as the hardest puncher he had ever faced \u2014 but who did…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":271073,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-287342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}