His record may look like he's an absolute bum but he has been robbed countless times, mainly by hometown judges. How many losses should he have if we were to take away some of the losses he should have won?
A lot of times he was robbed, but when a fighter has the number of losses he has promoters start using him in fights where they know the outcome. He then becomes a name on their record. Augustus was robbed a lot, but he was never a fighter on the level of say Freddie Pendelton, who was also prostituted as a fighter.
I thought he was robbed against ward but he has himself to blame too. He threw his fight to vested and often turned in some really poor performances coming off fly good ones (dorrin comes to mind).
Burton, Mora, Kelson Pinto come to mind, plenty others. against Herman Ngoudjo too (how unlucky are you when you get robbed against a supremely unlucky fighter like Ngoudjo?)
Not as many as Peter Buckley, who I suspect, easily lost 30 bouts he should of won, and possibly as many as 50... That said; Emanuel Burton was a quality old school fighter. I remember him making Jon Thaxton look quite the fool, when he upset the Brit a few years back. I should of seen that coming, as he was coming off seemingly being royally screwed in Denmark.
Can't remember the fight, but I recall him being absolutely robbed blind in Detroit. So much so, that Teddy Atlas was asking views to write to the Commission, and I don't always agree with Teddy but in this case I did.
Ngoudjo was a fight he could have won, but he elected to get started only in the last four rounds of the fight, so he probably shouldn't have gotten the decision. But you can throw in his fight with Figueroa as a pretty bad decision.
I think that at least fifteen/twenty of his defeats are robbery. For what I've seen he was robbed against: Bill Coddington, Ivan Robinson, Soren Sondergaard, Teddy Reid, Micky Ward, Leavander Johnson, David Diaz, Alvaro Aguilar, Courtney Burton, Francisco Figueroa. For what i've heard he was robbed against: Tomas Barrientes, Charles Hatley, Vernon Paris. The defeats agaist Kelson Pinto, Antonio Diaz, Omar Weiss and Diosbelys Hurtado were legitimate but much closer than the score card. Also the N'gudjo loss was legitimate, but the African was lucky because he was saved by the bell in the last round. It must be taken into strong consideration that at least 40/50 of his matches have been at short notice
