Riddick Bowe vs. Michael Dokes

Bowe came out firing early, constantly hammering Dokes with powerful combinations. Midway through the first round, Bowe scored a knockdown after a three-punch combination knocked Dokes into the ropes, which prevented him from hitting the canvas. After taking the referee's standing eight count, Dokes was allowed to continue the fight but was met with a relentless assault from Bowe, who was able to get Dokes up against the ropes and continuously batter the challenger with multiple-punch combinations which Dokes did not counter. Referee Joe Santarpia stepped in and stopped the fight at 2:19 of the first round, awarding Bowe a technical knockout victory. The decision did not sit well with Dokes or his trainers, who argued with Santarpia to no avail, and Dokes continued to protest the stoppage in the ring afterward. The crowd inside Madison Square Garden met the decision with chants of “bullshit” and gave a mixed reaction toward Bowe for his victory, with the HBO crew questioning whether or not Dokes really deserved a chance to fight Bowe.[7]

After the fight, Dokes called the decision “the worst officiating” he had ever seen and remarked that Santarpia had not even stopped to ask him if he was hurt, calling for an investigation into the decision. Santarpia, meanwhile, countered by saying that Dokes’ eyes were “glassy” when he counted the original knockdown and he had not put up much of a fight, citing the multiple combinations Bowe landed; Santarpia counted twenty consecutive shots landed by the champion that went without Dokes trying to defend himself.

Bowe, perhaps unsurprisingly, agreed with Santarpia’s call; in fact, he actually believed that Santarpia had let the overmatched former champion fight too long and that he might have killed him in the ring if the fight had not been stopped when it had been.[8] On the HBO broadcast, George Foreman seemed to echo this, saying that he was surprised the fight went as long as it did and that Santarpia had given Dokes more than enough of a chance to prove he could defend himself from Bowe. Furthermore, the punch statistics from the fight bore this out; Dokes only managed to land twelve of the twenty-five punches he threw, nine of which were jabs. Bowe, meanwhile, landed a total of fifty-five punches, thirty-seven of which were scored as power shots.[9]

In the match before the main event, former WBO champion Ray Mercer took on former contender turned journeyman fighter Jesse Ferguson in a fight that was supposed to be a tuneup fight for Mercer, who was at the time a highly ranked contender and in line for a title shot against his former Olympic teammate Bowe. Mercer had only suffered one defeat to that point in his career, an upset loss to former champion Larry Holmes, while Ferguson had recorded a 5-9 record after winning his first thirteen fights. Despite Mercer being the favorite, Ferguson outfought him over ten rounds and won a unanimous decision. Bowe's camp decided to offer a shot to Ferguson instead of Mercer, and that fight would be Bowe's next title defense.[10]

Among the other fighters featured on the card were future light middleweight champion Raul Marquez, heavyweight Alex Stewart, and eventual title contender David Tua.