Most shameless title defences of all time

How come?

 

I feel you would see Mitchell as a very acceptable title defense. You tend to be more accpeting of the earlier fighters resume shortcomings. I thought you would like Munroe too. I like Munroe at least within the context of his era.

Ketchel was an incredible fighter whose only a MW great instead of a LHW great because LHW didn't exist.

 

Mitchell on paper would be a good title defense, until you look a little bit deeper; Mitchell hadn’t really fought a legitimate fight since the Sullivan rematch in 1888. He was arguably the best contender during the early 1880s, but at this stage it was Corbett cherry-picking and using Mitchell’s name and status as a reason to bank out on an easy fight. Munroe was a solid amateur but, like Corbett against Mitchell; Jeffries was banking out on an easy opponent rather than the obvious contenders present at the time. Johnson-Ketchel is the same, as Ketchel never proved he could compete against any decent heavy let alone Johnson, and on top of that there were still more deserving contenders. I put weight into the fact that these fights were made while so many bigger fights could’ve been.

What makes it worse is that this all happened when Jeff, Johnson and Corbett were at their absolute peaks

 

All reasonable and correct comments but there were several worse defences.

 

Fury is probably on the way out by then

 

It sounds bad until you find out that from 1936 - 1940 Mccoy had wins over:
Loughran
Natie Brown
Don Barry
Buddy Knox
Buddy Scott
Nathan Mann
Melio Bettina

and wins over LHW contenders (ex champ) Bob Olin and Tony Shucco.

Hardly a worthy mention for the worst title defense, less so when it's put into the context of the "bum of the month club" as Louis went on to fight 7 other guys back to back starting with Mccoy.

 

Frazier-Daniels. Terry really made his name by lasting ten rounds with Patterson, and knocking out Amos Lincoln and Ted Gullick, but this only got Daniels to a questionable ninth on the contender ratings.

Ali-Evangelista. This one was extremely controversial at the time. Alfredo was strictly an eight round fighter at this stage, only 14-1-1, and had just been owned over eight for the first time by Zanon. (Lorenzo would only lose one career decision, to Lucien Rodriguez, which he immediately avenged. Incidentally, I saw Lorenzo win every minute but one over 12 rounds with Evangelista, where Alfredo had brief success hooking to the Italian's body, but the Uruguayan quickly got away with his only hope for scoring a decision win.)

Later, Evangelista did gain some measure of credibility, in part by going seven rounds longer with Ali than he'd ever previously gone with anybody, but he didn't deserve a shot at the GOAT at this point in time. (Later, there was no such controversy when he challenged Holmes, but by now he'd won over the Championship Distance, knocked out Rodriguez in 11 and was the European Champion.)

Leon Spinks-Ali I. Leon had failed to impress against Righetti, and drawn with Scott LeDoux, yet got a shot at just 7-0-1. Incredibly, he won, thanks to what we now know was the neurological damage Shavers had just permanently inflicted on Ali. Subsequently, Leon's challenge of Holmes wasn't questioned after he stopped the big and deadly punching Mercado in nine, but with Ali, Leon has a case for being the least qualified challenger to ever actually win a championship.

Rademacher actually handed Patterson Floyd's first career knockdown, although he obviously had no business challenging Patterson. (Later though, Pete did outfence Chuvalo masterfully, slowly retreating behind his long jab. One did not stand directly in front of Chuvalo. Both Rademacher and Floyd's next challenger, Roy Harris, lived to be 90.)


Although Larry Holmes said Marvis was like taking candy from a baby, Marvis had beaten Broad and Bugner over ten, and would go on to have a reasonable career with decision wins over Tillis, Ribalta and Bonecrusher before Tyson did exactly what Tyson did to a number of other victims like Etienne, Savarese, McNeeley and a few others. I have a few reservations about Marvis being mentioned repeatedly. Very few belonged in the same ring with Larry at that time.


Caveman Lee had no business being in the ring with Hagler, everybody knew it, knew it would be an extremely quick blowout, and Howard Cosell went on a televised prefight editorial tirade against this mismatch before it was broadcast by colleague Keith Jackson on ABC. One needed to be able to take a punch, and John LoCicero proved in an exciting match with Caveman that while Lee had a good punch, he did not have a good chin. Previously, the oft televised southpaw Frank "The Animal" Fletcher also exposed Caveman as highly vulnerable.

 

Corbett wanted to punch out Mitchell. Sullivan wanted Corbett to punch out Mitchell. My great-great-great grandfather in Florida wanted Corbett to punch out Mitchell. Everybody wanted Corbett to punch out Mitchell. Corbett punched out Mitchell. Everybody happy...

 

Amazing that Ali’s neurological damage didn’t get in the way of him avenging his loss to Spinks.

 

Glad to see this one included in the discussion.

People like to excuse it as ‘Lee was a substitute for Mickey Goodwin’ … and exactly who the **** did Mickey Goodwin ever beat to earn a title shot, lol? Goodwin was a very carefully-crafted 29-1 with his only notable win over 20-6 club fighter Teddy Mann and a loss to a 2-9-2 guy by stoppage. Most of the opponents with winning records on his resume were like 7-5ish.

Then they’ll tell you, ‘No, you don’t understand. They were setting up a fight between Marvin and Thomas Hearns, so he was going to fight a Kronk guy first …’ Why? Nobody had ever even heard of Goodwin and Caveman’s biggest claim to fame was splitting a couple of ESPN fights while that network still wasn’t in most homes.

How the heck did Hagler-Lee (same if it had been Mickey) generate even one iota of interest in Hagler-Hearns? How many PPV/closed circuit buys did it generate, how many tickets did it sell? I’ll give you a hint — zero.

There was no excuse for this fight whatsoever, nor for Hagler-Goodwin (I think Mickey got injured in training, saving him a whupping).

 

Per boxrec, Frenchman Jacques Royer Crecy was the first to knock down Patterson, in Floyd’s 15th fight (and first after his initial defeat at the hands of Joey Maxim). It happened in the first round of their scheduled eight-rounder (Floyd won by TKO in the seventh) for a six-count.

 

I'd have to look into that further (newspaper reports for example), but BoxWreck can be a dangerous and misleading tool. (Once upon a time, they had former 5'4" LMW contender James "Hard Rock" Green the one guy who taunted John "The Beast" Mugabe as having insufficient power, listed at 5'11"!) While BoxWreck can be a tremendous convenience, it doesn't supersede actual footage or newspaper reporting, and I would never subscribe to it.

 

I think he's a very worthy mention on the subject matter. In the timeframe you just mentioned ('36 - '40) Mccoy's record was 21-12-2. Not exactly earth-shattering and this is why. For all those fighters you just mentioned, he also lost several times to them in rematches. He was spotty at best and the last time he held a world ranking was in '35, and that was at light heavy. No, definitely a shameless defense.

 

There was a reason Bob Foster was stripped of the light heavyweight title back in the day. Here are 3 glaring reasons why:

Frankie DePaula - Bob's first title defense after years of claiming he was being ducked and he takes on a New Jersey clubfighter with a record of 19-6-3 who had only gone 10 rounds once in his career. Presumably that fight - a 10 round loss to Dick Tiger - got him his shot as he gave a 'gutsy performance'. The result of the defense was predictable, however, a 1st round KO for Bob.

Roger Rouse - What was the point of this? Roger was slaughtered by Bob in 5 rounds a year and a half earlier in a non-title bout and had gone 2-3 in his subsequent 5 fights since. Again, what was the point? And Bob slaughtered him again. This time in 3 rounds.

Tommy Hicks - A clubfighter with a record of 12-5-3 with absolutely no name on his record that could suggest fighting for the world title. Amazingly, Hicks made it into the 8th round.

 

I think the smart and swarming well guided Leon of Ali I might have won the rematch, but his corner and the parasites which swarmed over him after he won the title caused his corner to be hopelessly chaotic. (Brother Michael was one of the problems with his useless, "Woogie, boogie!" urgings.)

However, Muhammad also assiduously conditioned his legs to ponderously "dance" through the Championship Distance, staying off the ropes, as Sam Solomon figured out for their first match how to actually exploit the rope-a-dope with uppercuts to split Ali's guard, and by deliberately targeting Muhammad's biceps.

Ali prevailed through sheer conditioning, just as Bobby Chacon did to close out his career after gassing in Boza Edwards I. (The outsized Schoolboy wasn't going to beat Mancini in the one PPV super fight Chacon had earned, and it went pretty much as expected. Weirdly though, that was Mancini's final win and Bobby's final defeat. Schoolboy had an excellent career finale in stopping the excellent Julian Solis and should've had another title shot to end his career on, but that inexplicably did not materialize. However, after Mancini, and despite how Chacon deteriorated in retirement, he looked very good in competition after Mancini, nothing like how Ali looked following Shavers.)