Is Ike Ibeabuchi the biggest genetic freak in HW boxing history?

The dude was in his early 20s and was buillt like a Hulk. 6'2'' and 240 lbs. Was it all due to his incredible genetics or did he take PEDS? Who is the biggest genetic freak in HW boxing history?

 

i dont think it is unreasonable to have suspicions about how Ike came to look that way. he certainly was not the most, shall we say,"mentally stable" character was he?

Would be very intresting to see how the rest of the Ibeabuchi family looked like.

 

the build probably held him back, a bit trimmer and he'd have cleared world level.

 

We will never know. Two fights is very little to go on.

 

this is true.

 

You had a lot of similar fighters to Ike , Jimmy THunder , Razor Ruddock, Lewis , W Klitchko,Bruno , Joshua , Morrison , Grant ,Briggs etc ....size in height /weight yes hes maybe the biggest but he was slow in Ike .

For me i would pick Mike Tyson at 5'10 220 bc he was put together more proportional and was fast and athletic as ive seen for such a short guy carrying all that weight .

 

I don't see any similarities between Wlad,Joshua,Grant, Biggs, Lewis , and Ike they are tall, rangy guys, he was a comparatively squat powerhouse

 

Yes, he was obviously a genetic freak, but not the biggest genetic freak in HW history.

Yes, obviously on a lot of steroids.

 

Ike for a while had a good jab. Remember he only had 20 pro fights. The stamina, durability, and power he demonstrated in a short career was impressive. He was tough enough to go toe to toe with the best version of Tua, and fast enough to track down and take out a prime Chris Byrd.

Oh, what potential!

 

The Tua fight was competative. A good level. But for all the punches being thrown, the two if them had to constantly reposition and return fire which really prevents the kind of serious bombs being set up and followed through. It did not surprise me neither of them got hurt.

It goes down as some major slugfest proving both guys had jaws of iron -but as often is the case with evenly matched pairings it is difficult to produce the kind of firepower demonstrated in less evenly matched fights.

It was just two guys on the brink of world class. Tyson v Green or Marciano v Lastarza.

 

With all due respect, Ike crushes both Green and LaStarza.

I can argue Ike beat better opponents than the young champion Mike Tyson did and be correct. Just because he was a crazy criminal and lost his career early doesn't mean he wasn't great in the ring.

I'd pick Ike over Moorer, Bowe, Rhaman, and McCall in the 1990's. He'd badly beat an older Foreman. Lewis is 50/50, but I bet he would not take that fight. Holyfield vs Ike would be a good one, but I'd side with Ike.

Too big, too durable, too strong, and with rare stamina. The requiem for a heavyweight, with developing skills. Likely the division's all-time could have been if not for his crimes outside of the ring.

Ike's a cross between Sonny Liston and Oliver Mcall ( many of their best attribute, maybe not quite as skilled as Liston ) , without their dog side. It would take a Larry Holmes type...a boxer with speed range a great jab and chin I think to beat him, or a super heavy with excellent offensive skills who knows how to play defense and clinch when needed.

 

Definitely with Choklab where Ike's concerned. Never seen anyone's reputation be so out of proportion to their achievements. To me he's a level below Oliver McCall. There's a genetic freak of strength and endurance. Not his greatest moment but standing there and just taking big punches off Lennox Lewis without buckling is the stuff legends are made of, not going 12 rounds with David Tua, a feat that was being routinely achieved by fighters like David Izon, Hasim Rahman and Oleg Maskaev (who McCall kayoed in 1 round, of course).

But the biggest genetic freak for me would be Sonny Liston. It wasn't so much his size which was relatively unremarkable and certainly there have been much bigger fighters before and since. Those hands and long arms belonged on a man much bigger than just over 6'0" and 210lbs or so. And to be that strong coming from such abject poverty; I assume he wasn't well fed as a kid. There's a story that someone bought him a chicken dinner when he left prison and he just stared at it because he didn't know what to do. In the same book, 'King of the Hill' by David Remnick, Sonny is quoted as saying he liked the food in prison which, again, speaks volumes for how he had been fed as one of 25 kids in a poor family.

What made Sonny even more of a genetic freak is his parents were small people, apparently. Mum Helen was under 5'0, Dad Tobe was about 5'6" and wiry. Those genes and those circumstances were not meant to create such a physical wrecking machine.

 

Mike Tyson. So explosive, so compact, had monstrous power and only 5'10 whilst not being as huge as someone like Tua.

 

Sorry Mendoza. Just saw this after I had posted. I am genuinely curious to know what I am missing. To make Ike 50/50 with Lewis, favour him over Holyfield, Bowe and Foreman and say he is like Sonny Liston and Oliver McCall's spawn without the bad bits sounds like a top 5 ATG to me but looking at his record, I don't see anything that suggests he was anything more than a promising contender who, for whatever reason, never made it.

 

Maskaev and Izon did not hear the final bell.