The worst fighters to get title shots? past or present

I truly, truly, truly, hope this poor chap is not related at all to Chris and Kevin Finnegan, two rock-hard fighters if there ever were ones atsch

 

Richard Dunn

 

Most of Joe Calzahges early WBO title defenses

Andrew Golota against Lennox Lewis

 

true

 

He was the first one I thought of when a I saw this thread. Actually Dunn "earned" the shot by beating the German, I think his name wash Bernt Augst (or something) who had said before the fight that had he beaten Dunn, he would have declined an Ali fight simply because he wasn't in the same class as the big boys. Intelligent guy.

 

Most recent worse has to be Gary Lockett who even admitted before hand that he was only taking the fight for money.

Worse of all time... Jesse Ferguson against Bowe...

 

Worst ever to win a title shot has to be Luis Santana
http://www.boxrec.com/list_bouts.php?human_id=1701&cat=boxer

And his two wins against Norris were absolute bull**** acting jobs

 

Dorazio? how could you list him? He was perhap the greatest spoiler of all time, making him a dangerous contender to fight.

Here is what Chuck Hasson had to say about Gus Dorazio



"Dorazio was the greatest spoiler in the heavyweight division during the late '30's and early '40's. with upsets of Pastor, Wild Bill Boyd, Harry Bobo (TWICE), Al Hart (twice), Lem Franklin, Joe Baksi, Buddy Walker.
Dorazio was a rugged, tough as nails heavy and a great body puncher, whose loss to Sheppard caused a scandal in Pittsburgh when most local scribes including Harry Keck had Dorazio winning 8 of the 10 rounds (check the fight reports in one of the later IBRO Journal issues). His loss to Baksi in Washington was so bad that it brought about an investigation of the D.C. boxing commission. His losses to Buddy Walker (who he dropped for a "long count" in his hometown") and Lou Brooks were highly disputed, and he avenged both losses in return matches.
He beat Bobo two out of three and it is interesting that the Bobo win was disputed. He easily beat Baksi in returns.
It is common knowledge in Philly that Dorazio's loss to Willie Reddish was very questionable when Referee McGuigan stopped the fight in the eighth for stalling and awarded Reddish a TKO. Dorazio had never been hurt and the gamblers were outraged and claimed the fix was in.
Dorazio was one of the few heavyweights to fight Louis who wasn't afraid and actually thought he was going to beat Joe and waded right in but got nailed by a perfect right hand.
Did you ever read the reports of the Dorazio vs. Billy Conn match ? The fight was pretty even up to ref Houck stopping for it on a cut. The reports stated that Dorazio made Conn "look awful."

It really bothers me when people talk of the white heavys who ducked the black heavys but never credit the white heavys who took on all the top black heavys like Dorazio, Ettore, Pastor and Melio Bettina, who Louis' management DID duck. (By the way compare the records of Bettina and Bivins during the '40's-VERY comparable)."

Chuck Hasson

 

November, 1978, 5-9-0 Nicaraguan Julio Hernandez sustained a one round knockout loss in Las Vegas against an opponent making his professional debut. His reward for this was a shot at Wilfredo Gomez for the WBC super bantamweight title the following June.

In his second and third fights, Hernandez went the ten round distance in losing to a young Arguello, and dropped some other ten and 12 round decisions to respectable and highly experienced world class competition, but that hardly justifies a championship opportunity against a kingpin who was then widely regarded as the P4P best. (This was less than a year after Gomez had taken care of Zarate.)

A number of title challengers have retired with losing records, while some challengers with losing records in the pioneer days may have had significant unrecorded experiences and successes. The outrage of Gomez-Hernandez is that this occurred during the modern era with the challenger having a losing record at the time of the event, particularly coming off such an ignominious defeat.

CBS actually televised this farce live.

 

Far from being a worst fighter. I still think that it was BullS^*#t. That Joe Louis recieved a title shot first against Braddock. Instead of the man who had just knocked Louis out-Max Schmelling.

 

Larry Holmes passed up Greg Page for one Scott Frank.That was ridiculous.

 

I nominate (for the modern era) Rafael Lovera:

http://www.boxrec.com/list_bouts.php?human_id=51391&cat=boxer

 

I'm not totally sure, but in the second fight when Santana was carried out on a stretcher, people saw him SMILING which obviously meant he knew he pulled an acting job and got rewarded for it

 

Why do you say that?