Worst waste of talent in the history of boxing?

Ray Robinson. He never really did anything but fight Bobo Olson 63 times and a bunch of cans, then retired. :conf It mystifies me that people can rank him over SNV with that resume.

 

SNV. He was never allowed to knock either Klitschko out.

 

Max Baer comes to mind - and from my own neck of the woods Kirkland Laing

 

eric crumble, retired too early, such a shame.

 

Anyone you name is a guy who made something...but you could argue the biggest waste is a guy we never heard of...

But of fighters that our known? Andrew Golota...by all reports he was a beast in the gym...but a head case under the lights, and hence a waste of talent.

 

Tyson,Benitez,Baer,Cooney,

 

Bowe & Tyson.

 

Tony Ayala jnr rates a mention, Sanchez for entirely different reasons

 

Ibeabuci is huge to me ...Womack as well ...

 

Great call on Ibeabuchi. Ive read a bit on Ricky Womack but have only seen some amatuer snippets on film, what can you tell me about how good he could have been?

 

Edwin Valero

 

Mark Breland, one of the most decorated Amateurs ever. If he had Angelo Dundee or something. Maybe he could have been a superstar like Leonard.

 

Breland is always the first one that comes to mind for me. He was very gifted and had some success as a pro, but all his big victories were sort of setups in a way. I mean, Harold Volbrecht wasn't any good when Cuevas knocked him out many years earlier. A boxing magazine at the time described his first title-winning effort there as "more of an appointment than a coronation," and it was an apt description.

The first real fighter he faced (Starling) took him to school and treated him like a pit bull treats a rag doll.

Still, he's an interesting character, because it goes to show that just because a guy has talent doesn't mean he's going to be real good. He apparently never really had the head for it, and was interested in film (acting in one motion picture whose name escapes me now), writing, dog training.......he was just meant to do other things, despite his gifts in another arena.

This is a microcosm of life sometimes.

 

Jimmy Slattery
Bernard Superbad Mayes