Ron Stander. He could have cracked the top ten had he trained seriously. The guy had decent power and a great jaw. He kayoed Shavers early in their careers. He backed Frazier up in their fight and I believe staggered him in the first round. After that fight, he sunk deeper and deeper into depression and gained more and more weight.
Notice I said "completely" shot lol.. He was still competitive as late as 92 when he gave Ruddock a few issues. When he lost to Wills In '86 he was only 28!! I went wild when he knocked out Terrance Lewis in 2000!!!! Sad what would happen to Greg only a couple of years later.
Props for mentioning Malcolm "Flash" Gordon. I'd love to read a "whatever happened to" on him. Fascinating character. You offhandedly also dropped Ossie Ocasio's name -- he was in over his head against a Holmes who was rising into his prime, but OO deserves discussion in this thread. I think most would regard him as a ham-and-egger, if not a can, but look closer and it's far from the case. He upset Jimmy Young twice, drew with Dokes (was KO'd in one in the rematch). He dropped down to cruiser and won a vacant WBA title, which he defended a few times. After losing it, he beat Dwight Muhammad Qawi and got beaten up by a young Evander Holyfield. OO then made a move back up to heavy almost a decade after losing to Holmes and was viable enough to split a pair of decisions with Pierre Coetzer, take Ray Mercer to a split decision and fell into journey survivorman mode. I'll toss out Lorenzo Zanon as a "can" who is, truly, underrated: he shut out Jerry Quarry until getting caught in the ninth, made Holmes look bad and IIRC was competitive with Norton until he was taken out -- Zanon had no chin, but a couple of good Euro-circuit wins and awkward skills to go with surprising hand speed (but no power).
Ocassio honestly wasn't a bad boxer at all. He was sneaky and crafty and I remember watching him take a very much deserved decision over the bigger and stronger Pierre Coetzer in Cape Town. Ocassio was a cherry pick but it went very wrong for Coetzer, who simply could not deal with Ocassio's guile. I remember that in the rematch Coetzer just outworked Ossie but at no point in the 20 rounds they fought was Ocassio in any danger. Coetzer was not a big puncher, but he could hit and hurt heavyweights without great chins. Anyway...Ocassio certainly was no can. Not by definition at least.
I agree, but I think a lot of people perceive him to be one -- the topic being underrated cans, I figured he'd be worth throwing into the discussion.